Mystery Archives - The Wide Screen

October 17, 2021

“The Batman” 2nd Trailer Has Changed My Mind On Matt Reeves’ Vision

Hot take, but when the first trailer for Matt Reeves’ The Batman released at last year’s DC Fandome event, the truth is that I wasn’t immediately blown away by it like many were. That first trailer was very brief to be fair, on account of The Batman only being about 25% complete at the time, but the initial impression it gave me was that Reeves’ interpretation of the timeless character of Batman and the iconic locale of Gotham City would be very gritty and grounded in realism – which is fine if you like that sort of take on superheroes, but I’m somebody who generally enjoys more fantastical elements in comic-book stories.

That’s the reason why, as a rule, I’ll almost always gravitate towards the…shall we say, zanier corners of any cinematic universe – whether that be WandaVision in the MCU or Shazam! in the DCEU – but it’s a rule with enough exceptions (for instance, I thought the recent Black Widow movie would have benefited from being significantly more grounded) that I really have to explain why I feel this way specifically with regards to The Batman, before we discuss the new trailer released yesterday.

It’s partly because I feel as though gritty edgelord Batman has been done and overdone; not always well, but it’s hardly a novel concept in comics or on camera, either. The one truly new aspect that Matt Reeves is apparently bringing to his portrayal of Batman is an emphasis on the character’s role as a detective…which is something that the trailers haven’t shown a great deal of, probably for fear of clever fans piecing together clues and figuring out the film’s twists and turns months before it releases in March of next year.

But more importantly to me, it’s also because Batman and his rogues gallery are always more interesting to me when they’re allowed free rein to be eccentric, campy, and/or straight-up weird. The Riddler, the Penguin, and Catwoman, all of whom will have major roles in The Batman, all have an element of capricious whimsy baked into their characters that Matt Reeves seemed to be removing from all three – especially the Riddler, who is now a genuinely terrifying mastermind styled after the Zodiac Killer, but with little of the Riddler’s typical flair and colorful charisma. For me personally, that’s why The Batman‘s first trailer, while very well-edited, extremely atmospheric, and exceptionally beautiful, didn’t really affect me the way it did others.

But one year later, here we are at the end of the second annual DC Fandome event; and thanks to endless release date shuffling and excruciating delays, we’ve finally gotten to see only our second trailer for The Batman. It’s a full-length trailer this time, more seamlessly stitched-together than the first and with a lot more action and CGI to show off. And much to my surprise, I think this trailer may have changed my mind on Matt Reeves’ vision.

I knew I was going to like it more than the first teaser when the trailer opened with a scene of Paul Dano’s Riddler being apprehended and arrested by Gotham City police in a coffeeshop, while the camera lingers on the character’s iconic question-mark emblem written in the foam of his coffee. It’s a simple yet striking stylistic choice that feels very much in line with the Riddler’s established history and characterization while still serving this new persona that Reeves is crafting for the villain, and seemed so deliberately quirky (at least to my eye) that it immediately piqued my interest. I mean, it’s much too clean a question-mark. Realistically, it shouldn’t have held that perfect curlicue shape for that long. But that’s what I love about it.

And there are plenty more scenes like that sprinkled throughout this trailer. The character of Selena Kyle, as played by the fabulous Zoë Kravitz, looks to have sauntered straight off the comic-book page through a revolving door of stylish wigs and glamorous fits – emerging with a Catwoman suit that, while in need of a couple tweaks and refinements, will make for a good starting-point for her character. Her on-and-off clandestine romance with Batman is complemented by stunning shots of the Gotham City skyline at its most romantic, offering a welcome counterbalance to the chaos erupting in the streets far below.

But lest the villains should sneak in and steal the spotlight, the most over-the-top moment of all in this trailer is wholly Batman’s to own – because as many have pointed out and as Reeves seems to understand, Batman is a lot like his villains in that he excels at putting on a show. That’s why he dresses like a bat, lurks in a cave, emblazons his logo on the night sky, and why driving the Batmobile straight through a wall of fire to chase the Penguin, while his cape flaps in the wind behind him like bat-wings, is completely in-character for him. And that’s why the Batman should never be grounded too heavily in realism, in my opinion at least. You lose more than you gain.

I would say the same of the Penguin too, but this is unfortunately an instance where I feel Matt Reeves has possibly missed the mark. Without his signature monocle, parasol, top hat, and flock of highly-trained penguins, this version of Oswald Cobblepot is Penguin in name only – and for the life of me, I still can’t figure out the reason behind casting Colin Farrell in the role only to bury him under a mountain of facial prosthetics and makeup, and then have him affect a boisterous Italian accent.

Stuff like that still gives me pause, and makes me concerned for how Matt Reeves will adapt other characters from Batman’s rogues gallery in the future, but I’m willing to give The Batman a chance. Visually, there’s no question that the film looks breathtaking – thanks in large part to cinematographer Greig Fraser, who also worked on Dune and Rogue One. It’s got action, it’s got mystery, it’s got an all-star cast. The only real question, for me at least, is whether it has the panache that I expect and demand from my Batman content.

Trailer Rating: 8.5/10

July 2, 2021

“Katla” Review!

The devastation left in the wake of a volcanic eruption is immeasurable: lives lost, entire civilizations wiped out, ecosystems and weather patterns thrown off-balance, lands left scarred by rivers of lava and falling ash. But over time, our miraculous planet always finds a way to rebuild. The lava cools and hardens into rock, the rocks are broken down into soil, plants take root again, animals return, humans follow, and the cycle continues: faster in some places than in others. Life doesn’t ever go back to the way it was, but it does come back eventually. And Netflix’s Katla takes that simple premise to an extreme only capable through science-fiction.

Katla, Netflix’s first original series produced in Iceland, is named for one of the island nation’s largest and most formidable volcanoes, which hasn’t erupted since 1918. Well, at least in real life. The Netflix series imagines a world where Katla awakens in the present day, forcing the citizens of the nearby village of Vík (also a real place) to flee. The few survivors who stick around, whether to monitor Katla or because they can’t bear to leave the only life they’ve ever known, are themselves hardening and/or breaking down, much like the cooling magma which surrounds them.

But a year after the eruption, as most of the world is too preoccupied with which way the wind will blow Katla’s ash-fall to worry about the people of Vík who stubbornly choose to live in its shadow, the looming mountain sends a new kind of devastation down its slopes and into the village – a quiet, intensely personal devastation that affects each individual differently, as they’re confronted by mysterious strangers who appear to have stumbled out of the volcano’s heart, covered in ash and without any memories of how they ended up that way. These strangers are people from Vík’s past: some are recreations of Katla’s casualties; a few are younger, seemingly happier doppelgangers of people still alive and unwell; one is a murderous child. All are united by a single purpose which is slowly and delicately unfolded over eight episodes.

For a town so depleted by the volcano and its aftereffects, Katla has a surprisingly large ensemble cast – and once the doppelgangers start arriving in droves, that cast quickly becomes so sprawling that it’s a miracle the series is able to maintain its sense of intimacy. The decision to refrain from exploring its most outlandish science-fiction concepts proves a wise one from a purely thematic standpoint because the sci-fi is ultimately only in service of Katla‘s plot, not the plot itself, although I’m sure that will disappoint some viewers who tuned in specifically for the supernatural elements. Similarly, the “cliffhanger” ending can be read as either a thematically satisfying conclusion to the entire story that acknowledges the cyclical nature of life, or an invitation for a second season that’s more akin to what most viewers probably thought they were in for, which is a larger-scale epic. I’d be down for that too.

Katla isn’t exactly small in scope as it is, however – certainly not when the series puts its entire location budget onscreen, with stunning shots of southern Icelandic scenery including Katla itself, the towering prongs of the Reynisdrangar sea stacks, and the stark silhouette of the Víkurkirkja. The show’s overwhelmingly bleak cinematography tries to further accentuate the natural beauty of the land and its encircling ocean, although I still felt neither was shot with the dignity they deserve and indeed command. I felt this again when the show finally takes us into the cavernous heart of Katla – yet never gives us a moment to marvel at the mountain’s very real and very beautiful cave system. You know that shot from literally every documentary about speleologists ever, where our human protagonist stands in the pinpoint light from their helmet, dwarfed by the scale of the caves illuminated around them? Yeah, that’s what I was missing.

In contrast, the town and its variety of interior locations are small, bleak, and untidy – reflecting the general malaise that has settled upon the survivors, reducing them to bleary-eyed, weather-beaten shadows of their former selves…former selves who, mind you, come wandering out of Katla looking youthful and radiant once they’ve scrubbed off the ash that coats their bodies. Guðrún Ýr Eyfjörð Jóhannesdóttir, who has a vibrant pop-music persona under the stage name GDRN, is here at her most mellow and understated, playing the central character Gríma – a first responder whose grief over losing her sister to the volcano is the impetus for much of what follows, although she has only a tangential connection to the first doppelganger who appears; a Swedish woman named Gunhild (Aliette Opheim) who was involved in an affair with Gríma’s father Þór (Ingvar Sigurdsson) twenty years earlier.

Gríma is an interesting character, albeit very guarded, but Opheim is phenomenal playing two sides of the same coin – the wide-eyed ethereal vagabond Gunhild who walks out of Katla under the assumption that it’s still 2001, and the rigid, world-weary, older version of Gunhild who is still alive and living in Sweden, and is both shocked and shaken to her core when she discovers that her younger self is back, stirring up memories of the traumatic events that shaped her. Although a couple of characters meet versions of themselves, Opheim and Sólveig Arnarsdóttir – playing the once effervescent Magnea, whose arc seems distanced from the rest until near the very end, where it becomes the highlight of the show’s finale – are the best at distinguishing these doppelgangers while subtly emphasizing their similarities to the versions we know in ways I found fascinating.

Again, this is a slow-burn, suspenseful, character drama – one which masterfully uses the building blocks of good sci-fi, but which never indulges in the sci-fi to the point where it overwhelms the story. If that sounds interesting to you, and you either understand Icelandic or simply don’t mind subtitles (I usually watch non-English media with subtitles, but pick a few scenes to test out the English voice-dub – Katla‘s is better than some, but not good enough to warrant missing out on the beautiful undulating sounds of spoken Icelandic, an endangered language that needs shows like this to remind people why it’s worth speaking), then this series will make an excellent addition to your Netflix watchlist.

Series Rating: 8.5/10

April 5, 2021

“Loki” 2nd Trailer Leans Into The Absurd Side Of Marvel

WandaVision was the gust of fresh air that blew open the doors to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s untapped reserves of sheer absurdity, and for that I think we will always be thankful. But WandaVision‘s weirdness was very specifically engineered to produce a sense of dread in the viewer, an understanding that something had to be terribly wrong – because worlds like the one Wanda had created for herself couldn’t possibly exist in the (mostly) grounded MCU. Loki, on the other hand, reassures those of us who loved WandaVision that the MCU actually is just…weird. Permanently.

I’ve compared the upcoming Loki series’ concept and styling to the works of British fantasy author Terry Pratchett before, and the second trailer (released today quite out of the blue: classic God of Mischief move) only makes that comparison more apt – as well as making a convincing argument for everyone involved in the production of this series going on to develop an adaptation of any one of Pratchett’s novels after this is done. There’s also shades of Dr. Who, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, and Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – basically, every zany, high-concept, British sci-fi/fantasy ever made rolled up into one.

The new trailer for Loki treats us to one deliciously abstract visual after another, beginning with a charming elevator noise as a magical glowing door appears in the wall of what looks like a horrendously ugly 1980’s subway-station with brown, orange, and mustard-yellow tiling; soon revealing a man in a German stahlhelm, holding the Tesseract in one hand, and gripping the Norse deity’s arm with the other. I mean, seriously, just read that sentence and tell me it doesn’t sound like the opening to a Dirk Gently mystery.

The atrocious color palette is echoed throughout all the lobbies, waiting rooms, offices, and elevators of the Time Variance Authority, or TVA for short, in whose headquarters Loki has unwillingly ended up. As in the Marvel Comics, it appears the TVA work from behind-the-scenes to monitor the flow of time, making sure everything runs like clockwork and working to ensure that alternate timelines are cut off before they in turn sprout innumerable other timelines – each an entire universe of possibilities. Like Wanda walking out onto the empty soundstage of her life and finding stage-lights and auditorium seating, we’re seeing for the first time the nuts and bolts of the MCU.

From their seemingly infinite office space (which I’m fairly certain is tucked away in its own dimension, not limited by the confines of our earth), the TVA dispatches heavily-armed soldiers (including one prominently played by Lovecraft Country‘s Wunmi Mosaku) across the Multiverse to locate anyone caught moving across timelines, and drag them back for trial…where they will presumably face Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Judge Renslayer. This character’s first name hasn’t been revealed, but don’t be surprised if it turns out to be Ravonna, since Princess Ravonna Renslayer is a notable comics character who shares a long romantic history with Kang the Conqueror, a time-traveling Marvel villain who’s already been confirmed to appear in Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, played by Jonathan Majors of Da 5 Bloods and Lovecraft Country.

The TVA’s agenda is still not entirely clear, so it’s possible – I’d say probable – that they have an ulterior motive for keeping Loki alive and enlisting him into their army of timeline-hunters, beyond just needing his “unique Loki perspective”, as Owen Wilson’s Mobius puts it. They, or at least some of their top agents like Renslayer, might be working with Kang to conquer all the timelines simultaneously, and Loki’s knack for causing mischief might work in their favor. Kang could even be the hooded figure we see battling TVA hunters in the agency’s hallways and utilizing their glowing portal technology – though, with alternate universes in play here, that could just as well be Lady Loki, or Old Loki, or another of the God’s many variants.

But while that mystery is sure to be compelling, the thing that has me most excited for the series is the thought of traveling back in time through the history of our earth, and of all the Nine Realms yet to be explored – and all the versions of them that exist throughout the Multiverse. Loki has already been seen playing the part of notorious real-life hijacker D.B. Cooper in the 1970’s, but now we get a clearer glimpse of other locations he’ll travel to, including a Medieval festival (where we later see a TVA hunter wielding a jousting lance); a Roman street that’s probably in Pompeii based on the wall of ash and smoke bearing down on the grinning God; a Roxxcart supermarket; a ruined New York City; an otherworldly mining facility; and two diametrically-opposed castles, one bathed in golden light and the other dark, laced with cracks as if made of glass.

Another awesome reveal is the return of Loki’s magic powers, an aspect of his character that’s been sidelined in his last few movie appearances in favor of his twin daggers. Those beautiful weapons still show up in the trailer, but it’s nice to see him wielding magical green energy-blasts as well, particularly given how badly the Russo Brothers used him in Infinity War; not even allowing him to pull a signature magic-trick on Thanos before having his neck broken. It’s still one of the most embarrassing character betrayals in the MCU, if you ask me.

But the crucial difference is that this Loki is Avengers-era Loki, at the height of his game, riding a massive confidence boost from escaping the Avengers on Earth, and still significantly more villainous than heroic. And the writers have clearly gotten into the character’s headspace from that period, because the chaotic mess of Shakespearean angst that we all fell in love with is finally back, and I can’t wait to see where (and when) his story goes from here.

Trailer Rating: 8.5/10

January 23, 2021

Who’s Who In “WandaVision”

**SPOILERS FOR WANDAVISION AHEAD!**

As WandaVision‘s central mystery expands across several decades of television history and at least two distinctly separate realities, so too does its cast of characters, both major players and bit parts. And with Wanda raising the stakes dramatically in episode three, it’s becoming more important to tell characters apart and work out the most important details in any Marvel Cinematic Universe property – who’s connected to whom, and who’s working for whom? WandaVision hints at the idea that charming newlyweds Wanda Maximoff and Vision are being manipulated by dark forces lurking within their quaint suburban community of Westview: but after yesterday it’s looking more likely that Wanda herself has a hand in causing the strange events that plague her and her husband from day one of their married life together.

Let’s get into it, shall we?

Wanda Maximoff

Our series’ heroine has always been something of a lone wolf. After the events of Avengers: Endgame, with Vision dead, her strongest tie to the Avengers family was severed – and it looks like she decided to finally follow Hawkeye’s lead and just retire. But Hawkeye already had a family with which to settle down. Wanda first had to build one of her own, which would require her to do…whatever she did to bring back Vision back to life, possibly only in her dreams. Noting how violent her reaction has been to the S.W.O.R.D. logo whenever it pops up in Westview, many fans have speculated that Wanda was working with S.W.O.R.D. (which stands for Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division in the MCU) to resurrect Vision when she went rogue and decided to hijack the experiment, eloping with her android boyfriend into a pocket dimension that she created on the site of the real town of Westview…or which someone else created for her, in order to lure her into a trap. Either way, it’s beginning to look like the citizens of the real Westview are now trapped there with her against their will, and are the real victims in this messy situation.

Allegiance: let’s mark her down as a free agent for now. It may turn out she’s being too heavily manipulated to see the chaos she’s causing, but honestly, it looks like she has a lot of control over Westview and is enjoying her newfound power. So even if she’s not entirely at fault, I don’t think she’s blameless either.

Vision

How did Vision go from being killed by Wanda to being resurrected by Thanos, to being killed by Thanos, to being resurrected yet again in WandaVision? Well, extrapolating off the theory that Wanda was working with S.W.O.R.D. to resurrect the android post-Endgame, my guess is that S.W.O.R.D.’s tech was capable of rebooting Vision – but without any of his past memories, including those he shared with Wanda. Learning this could easily have spurred Wanda to betray S.W.O.R.D. and steal the android’s partially-rebooted body for her own purposes, and would explain why Vision’s memory seems so fragmented. He clearly remembers Wanda, or at least has been convinced to think he does, but he seems clueless about his past, and even his purpose in Westview: unlike Wanda, who enters the sitcom reality with a clear motive to settle down and fit in. But he’s also inquisitive, which will serve him well in the coming days/decades.

Allegiance: I believe he’s linked to Wanda, at least for now. He’ll probably try to exercise his free will as the couple clash in later episodes, but I have a nasty feeling Wanda will be able to tug him along whithersoever she goes. Doesn’t mean we won’t get an epic battle sequence out of it, though.

Agnes

Many of us are so convinced that Wanda’s overly-friendly next-door neighbor Agnes is actually the evil witch Agatha Harkness from Marvel Comics that it’s become almost second nature to refer to her as Agatha. With literally every clue pointing towards this being the case (apart from the similar names, Agnes’ wedding anniversary is the same day the Salem Witch Trials started, she wears a witchy brooch, and even owns a rabbit named for Harkness’ son in the comics), it seems almost too easy a connection to make. Personally, I suspect Agnes will be Agatha in some form or another, and is probably still a witch, but I’m not convinced Marvel isn’t totally reinventing the character as a more sympathetic antiheroine, a victim of manipulative forces. My guess: she’s responsible for luring Wanda into the pocket dimension surrounding Westview at the orders of Mephisto, Marvel’s devil, and is thus aware of what’s going on – but isn’t fully evil.

Allegiance: Agatha Harkness being Mephisto’s right-hand woman in the comics paves the way for Agnes to fill a similar role. But her small panic attack in yesterday’s episode makes me think she’s unwillingly serving the devil and trying to escape from him. There’s an interesting story to be told there about the toxic and abusive relationships endorsed by the same patriarchal system that many classic sitcoms upheld.

Dottie And Phil Jones

Dottie (and, to a lesser degree, her husband Phil) is perhaps WandaVision‘s biggest enigma to me at the moment, and I’ve cycled through several theories about who – or what – she is. Her high status among the citizens (particularly the women) of Westview strongly implies that, like Agnes, she may be a witch. And with witches and Mephisto going hand-in-hand in Marvel comics, it’s not too much of a stretch to extrapolate that she could be working with the devil to steal Wanda’s twins – after all, she did lead the eerie communal chant of “For The Children”. But I’m beginning to wonder if the lemonade glass exploding in her hand and revealing her red blood (in the black-and-white episode) was an attempt by Mephisto to alert Wanda to the fact that Dottie, whether she’s a witch or not, is also a third-party intruder with her own agenda in Westview.

Allegiance: if Dottie has an ulterior motive for wanting Wanda to hurry up and have kids, what is it? Like Mephisto in the comics, she could be trying to absorb young Billy and Tommy into her soul to increase her demonic power…or, if she’s not evil, she might be trying to protect the children before someone else has a chance to kidnap them.

The Townsfolk

Despite how it looks, not everybody in Westview has some grandiose plan to steal Wanda’s babies – and now that episode three has confirmed that Westview is a real town in the real world, it would seem that most of the background players in WandaVision are just regular people who got sucked into the sitcom fantasy against their will. Judging by how close Westview appears to be to a large S.W.O.R.D. complex, some of these people might be low-level S.W.O.R.D. staffers, nonthreatening to Wanda. Vision’s co-worker Norm could fall into this category (his actor, Asif Ali, also played a low-level Cybertek employee in Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.). Others, like Herb and possibly the mailman Dennis, might have a better idea of what’s going on – Herb even begins to disclose the truth to Vision, telling him that “Geraldine” arrived in Westview “because we’re all…she came here because we’re all…” before being stopped by Agnes, who confronts him with a panic-stricken expression. We’re all…trapped, I assume? Dennis has his own bizarre run-in with Agnes while walking past Wanda’s house, where they exchange what seems like coded banter.

Allegiance: most of these folks, with the possible exception of Herb and Dennis, probably don’t have any strong allegiances that will put them at conflict with Wanda, Mephisto, or even neighbors like Agnes. If that changes, I’ll be sure to point it out.

“Geraldine”

Long before WandaVision premiered, it had already been confirmed by Marvel that Teyonah Parris would be playing Monica Rambeau in the series, so “Geraldine’s” secret identity was never much of a mystery. Set photos and promotional material had also revealed that Rambeau, last seen in the MCU as the young and impressionable daughter of retired test pilot Maria Rambeau in Captain Marvel, would now be working with S.W.O.R.D. in some capacity. If WandaVision were following the comics exactly, this would totally make sense: there, S.W.O.R.D. deals with space and explores alien worlds, and MCU Monica grew up surrounded by aliens thanks to Captain Marvel’s dealings with her mother. But MCU S.W.O.R.D. tackles “sentient weapons”, making Monica’s chosen career path a little more confusing. In the comics, Monica also has superpowers – which I think Wanda might have accidentally given to her when she wrapped Monica up in a hex-magic cocoon and tossed her out of WandaVision.

Allegiance: Monica seems loyal to S.W.O.R.D.; though a conflict could arise if S.W.O.R.D. responds to Wanda’s actions with further violence, and Monica cautions them to go gentle. Monica was raised to see the good in everybody: I think she’ll sympathize with Wanda’s pain, and genuinely want to help her.

“Ralph”

In the first three episodes of WandaVision, we’ve learned more random details about Agnes’ mysterious husband “Ralph” than we’ve learned about Agnes herself…but where is he? Who is he, really? Until he shows up in person, we won’t know – but my suspicion is that he’s none other than Mephisto himself, and that his marriage with Agnes is more metaphorical than anything (but literal enough that Agnes actively avoids her “mother-in-law”), a way of hiding in plain sight while observing Wanda. Agnes’ remarks about him paint a disturbing picture of a repulsive character whom Agnes wants to leave, but can’t.

Allegiance: if “Ralph” truly is Mephisto, he serves no one but himself, but freely manipulates those around him, like Agnes, Dottie, and of course, Wanda.

So what do you think? Which WandaVision characters do you want to know more about heading into episode four? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!