The phrase that jumped out at me is, “I love you.” Said freely between adult men. It got me thinking that maybe all those incel-ish men out there wouldn’t feel so lost and alone if they allowed themselves to be closer with their friends. All the lone wolf, sigma male manosphere bullshit separates you from your friends. Others are viewed as your competition, and if they aren’t helping you build your brand or help you on your #grindset, you’re supposed to leave them behind. But the thing is, your interactions with other people contribute to you being seen as a viable dating prospect! You have to practice being good! Having friends, and being able to talk with them, take care of each other, that’s how you learn to be a good person.

The next video came up a few swipes after the first one, and the comments on Facebook for it perfectly summed up the problem (this is the TikTok version for easier sharing).

It’s another video of Buffalo Bills players having fun on the sidelines (this is from a game last year I think, judging by the weather), but one of the first comments had me rolling my eyes.

I didn’t even notice it on the first watch, but after this I did see Frank Gore Jr. leaning up against one of his teammates. But this commenter, and the guys like him, can’t stand the idea that straight men can be close (physically or emotionally). They literally can’t believe that Travis Kelce would be happy as the less “successful” person in a relationship. All you have to do is look at clips of Taylor Swift announcing her new album to see how absolutely smitten he is with her. Travis and Jason hyped her up, and more importantly, she looked comfortable and safe with them. Men, if you want a woman to give you the time of day, use THAT as your guide. Quit listening to Andrew Tate, and tell your homies you love ’em. Be the guy that your girlfriend would tell her work drama to, not the one they cover their drink around. Practice being a decent person, and even if you don’t get more dates, you may find yourself feeling happier anyway. Your happiness and contentment needs to start with yourself.

I’m going to end this post with one of my favorite non-football examples of non-toxic masculinity – the viral pic Mark Ruffalo took of Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, and Taika Waititi piled together sleeping on the way to SDCC back in 2017.

The Story

In both forms, we are following a Security Unit (SecUnit) that has hacked the module that makes it obey humans. It…keeps working as a SecUnit, because doing any of the normal “rogue robot” things like killing all the humans around it and escaping would get it captured and melted down. That would be painful. Besides, all Murderbot (the name it chose for itself) wants to do is watch media. That’s easy enough to do while standing watch over a bunch of hippie scientists. Murderbot soon comes to realize that life is never that easy.

That new contract is where the two versions of the story show their differences. In the book, we don’t really get to know the human characters, other than Dr. Mensah. We don’t really need to, since the story focuses more on Murderbot’s internal struggle to pass as an unmodified SecUnit. By necessity, the TV show needs more for Murderbot to play off of, so each member of the Preservation
Alliance research team gets some development.

The Cast

Alexander Skarsgård plays Murderbot (SecUnits are robots with 3D printed human flesh) skillfully, balancing the robot and human aspects as Murderbot’s secret is found out. Noma Dumezweni is excellent as Dr. Mensah, the motherly leader of PresAux. The scene where Murderbot helps her with an anxiety attack by using one of his favorite episodes of media is perfectly played. I’d also highlight David Dastmalchian as Dr. Gurathin. Dastmalchian is having a heck of a run the past few years, and Gurathin is another character that gets a huge boost on the TV show. His traumatic backstory plays well into his immediate distrust of their SecUnit. Seeing the evolution of Gura’s relationship with Murderbot played out really shows off the cast’s acting chops. Skarsgård and Dastmalchian’s last interaction as Murderbot and Gurathin had me tearing up.

“The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon”

I couldn’t talk about Murderbot without mentioning “The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon”. In the book, all we really know is that Sanctuary Moon is Murderbot’s favorite show. On TV, they expanded the importance of it, and filmed several scenes. Imagine the most soap opera-ish Star Trek clone you could have and you’d be close. The out-of-this-world outfits and campy dialogue delivered by Hollywood favorites John Cho, Clark Gregg, DeWanda Wise and Jack McBrayer leave me hoping for more scenes in the future. Considering Murderbot tends to use lean on Sanctuary Moon when trying to interact with humans, it’s a safe bet we’ll get more.

Murderbot is on AppleTV+ (there’s a 7-day trial), and many of the books are on Kindle Unlimited.

“There is something wrong with me. An emptiness.”

Yelena Belova

We catch up first with Yelena Belova, doing clean-up work for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. She is struggling mightily, with her history as a Red Room assassin, and with the loss of her sister Natasha. But right from the start, we see an issue. There’s nothing wrong *with* Yelena. She’s been through unimaginable trauma, even for someone living in the MCU. It’s understandable that she’d be in pain. She needs help, and no one is providing it.

“The light inside you is dim, even by Eastern European standards.”

Alexei Shostakov, The Red Guardian

She visits her father, Alexei (in case you don’t remember, they were all posing as a family in the US in the 90s), who Yelena hasn’t seen in a year. The former Red Guardian is stuck in the past, barely keeping things together by watching old footage of himself and ordering takeout. He yearns for connection and for his life to mean something, like it did back then. Alexei clearly cares about Yelena but isn’t quite sure how to help her.

The pattern of depression and loneliness continues as we meet the rest of the cast. John Walker, the disgraced former Captain America, whose wife left him and took his child. He had a very public failure while holding the shield, and like Yelena he tries to throw himself into his work to feel better (or feel SOMETHING). Ghost, the former Hydra!SHIELD operative who lost both her parents in the lab accident that gave her powers.

The main group of misfits is brought together when Valentina sends them all on a final “clean-up” mission at a remote site. The inevitable superhero fight occurs, but is interrupted by “Bob”. Bob isn’t sure why he’s there (he came out of suspended animation in a crate), but ends up showing off amazing powers while hinting at an even more horrific upbringing.

“When I look at you, I don’t see your mistakes.”

Alexei Shostakov, The Red Guardian

Valentina wastes no time in attempting to make Bob her puppet. She charms Bob with his costume, and she talks him up. Tells him he’s ‘perfect’, and that she she accepts him. He’s oblivous to the manipulation, desperate for someone to like him, to matter. She knows about the horrific abuse he dealt with, the drugs, and she’s good with him? It’s what he always wanted to hear.

“Righteousness without power is just an opinion.”

Valentina Allegra de Fontaine

As you can imagine, Bob goes off the rails quickly. She dresses him up in the costume (very comics-accurate!), coaxes him to try out his powers, tells him he can do “anything”. Valentina sets him up to easily wipe the floor with the Thunderbolts*…and he immediately questions why a god needs to take orders from her?

“You all know the truth. You can’t outrun the emptiness.”

The Void

From here on out, it’s not a typical superhero dust-up. Val attempts to kill Sentry with a failsafe when he questions her, but of course it doesn’t take. This allows the dark side of Bob’s personality to take hold. Quite literally, the darkness envelops him, and he truly becomes the Void. Hovering ominously over New York, he begins…what seems like removing people from existence. All that’s left behind is a blast shadow. Imagine the terror the people of New York feel, still recovering from The Blip. The Void spreads outward, more and more people swallowed up.

After a heartwarming reunion between Alexei and Yelena, and everyone getting a few superhero moments rescuing civilians, Bob/The Void takes aim at our team. Yelena willingly steps into the shadow, and we see her ‘shame room’ again. It’s her first Red Room test, luring another girl into the forest to be killed. She escapes that room but only ends up in another. The Thunderbolts, trusting that Yelena knows what she is doing, follow her into the Void.

We soon learn that it isn’t killing them, but imprisoning them in a room that shows them their deepest shame. Which might be worse. Yelena fights past multiple shame rooms until she finds Bob. He’s hiding in one of the less bad rooms, which, after you see it, helps you understand just how bad his life has been.

“Oh, I’m fine. I have a great past so I’m totally fine.”

Bucky Barnes, The Winter Soldier

Bucky, Walker, and the rest of the Thunderbolts finds their way out of their respective rooms and they decide that the key to getting out (and helping Bob) is to go to the worst room.

“I have these good days, you know, where I feel invincible…but then there are a lot of bad days, and I remember that nothing, nothing matters.”

Robert Reynolds

The worst room turns out to be the lab where it all started. It’s the building we see Yelena destroy at the beginning of the movie. Bob talks about how he hoped the trial drug would make him stronger, to show everyone that he was “more…something”.

“The most shameful thing of all, was thinking you could be anything more than nothing.”

The Void

The Void traps everyone else, and Bob tries to fight it. It does not go well. It becomes clear, especially to Yelena and Bucky that the Void *wants* Bob to fall fully into despair. Yelena breaks free and…hugs Bob. The rest of the team follow suit, letting him know he’s not alone, and maybe for the first time in his life, it is true.

As someone who has struggled with belonging and the fear of being alone throughout his whole life, this movie delivered one hell of a gut punch. Clearly it did, I’ve been thinking about it for weeks. But seriously, a found family story, where the “villain” was defeated through the power of love? And ends up living with that family of traumatized heroes? Honestly I was tearing up before I knew what was happening.

Is Marvel “back”? That remains to be seen. I’m on record as having my doubts about the whole RDJ as Doom plan. But I loved this, and while Brave New World was uneven, I had some fun with it. Thunderbolts was several steps above that, now we need The Fantastic Four to hit.

Thunderbolts is now available to rent or buy.

The fights were fun, even when they weren’t anything *new*. The one technical thing that bugged the heck out of me is the way they are shooting these. The visuals feel like they were shot on one of those green screen sets used for the Mandalorian, even when they were on location. They looked like a small step up from an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series.

I have been waiting for Samuel Sterns to show back up. Way back in Agents of SHIELD I thought he was “the Clairvoyant” so I feel some small bit of vindication that he was basically playing a role like that here. Sucks that they then used him to spout off randomly about the multiverse at the end credits.

I know Marvel had to re-tool and shift away from Kang, but it’s been a long time since they had a genuinely great movie. Guardians 3 is the last one I’ve wanted to re-watch in these two phases, other than Shang-Chi. The guy that made it is with their main competitor.

Captain America: Brave New World isn’t a return to form for Marvel. They are quickly running out of time to do so. Here’s hoping Fantastic Four: The First Steps is amazing. I’m past assuming it will be, though.

This leads to what might be the best part of the movie – Dave Bautista being a doting boyfriend in a henley. He made comments a few years ago that he’d love to be in a rom com but had never been asked, and it’s clear from this part of The Killer’s Game that he could handle it.

After getting a terminal medical diagnosis (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease for you House watchers), Joe decides to end his own life by taking out a contract on himself so Maize will get his life insurance. His own handler won’t do it (Zvi, played by Ben Kingsley), so he goes to Pom Klementieff’s Marianna Antoinette (really). She’s more than happy to put it on the wire, because Joe killed her Dad, which of course won’t come back to bite him.

BUT! The diagnosis was a mistake! Joe’s not dying! Too late though, every hitman cliche is now chasing him. There’s the Scottish brothers who are subtitled, a Korean gang who, if I remember correctly we meet singing karaoke, a pair of British strippers, and a Spanish guy who dances and fights. It’s all very dated in a “some of this is probably offensive but we’re going with it” sort of way. The non-Bautista humor is definitely stuck in the 90s, with Pom’s Marianna making crude sex jokes to her subordinate which would’ve been the height of hilarity in a late 90s/early 2000s action movie.

The big climax stretches over two sites. One is a castle where Joe is able to set up Home Alone traps that take out professional killers. He succeeds but Maize is hurt so he retreats to a church, patches her up, and convinces the priest to marry them. That is interrupted by the final fight against Marianna’s main thug, and her comeuppance at the hands of Zvi for “breaking the rules”.

I wish I could say it’s worth a rental or a purchase, because I love the cast (and definitely support Bautista in a rom com), but look for it on a streaming platform you already pay for in the near future.

Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Kate, who has an idea to destroy tornadoes by filling them up with the stuff inside diapers. Powell’s “Tornado Wrangler” Tyler Owens chases storms for the ‘gram, but has a secret heart of gold. Anthony Ramos plays Javi, who had been on Kate’s team in college when they tested her process. Javi seemed to have a bit of a crush on Kate, but couldn’t act on it when she had a boyfriend…and then the tornado got the boyfriend.

That’s a lot of words to say “here’s a movie where tornadoes just rip a whole bunch of stuff apart with decent effects”. Twisters delivers the visuals, no question. The interpersonal stuff and writing are suitably cheesy for a movie like this…

You don’t face your fears, you ride ’em. -Tyler Owens

…but why would you expect anything else? Twisters is just a fun movie. It’s not gonna win awards, but if you didn’t catch it in theaters, it’s worth checking out now if you need a ‘turn your brain off’ popcorn flick. Amazon has it to rent or on DVD if you want physical media.

How the heck does the Despicable Me universe work?

But back to the Despicable Me universe. You have supervillains, who operate with seemingly no superheroes to stop them. The villains are so numerous that they have boarding schools dedicated to raising the next generation of evil-doers. These schools are well-known enough that a regular teenager knows about them and plans to attend. The only opposing force for villainy we see is the Anti-Villain League (AVL). It’s a supposedly “covert” agency dedicated to stopping villains. How covert? Check this:

Does, uh, announcing your identity on clothing help with the covert part of your job? -Carol Danvers

Despite the fact that what we would consider traditional supervillains have existed for at least 50+ years, Despicable Me 4 is the first time anyone on the side of good tried granting someone, or rather, some thing, superpowers. The fact that they tested the process on a Minion tells you all you need to know about the AVL. They aren’t completely ineffective, as we see they did manage to keep some villains in prison. Take that, Arkham Asylum!

The Theory

Like many nerds before me with the MCU or DC universe, I tried to imagine what it must be like to live in the Despicable Me universe. I came to the conclusion that the world governments must have come to an agreement with the supervillains in how they can operate. There’s no other explanation as to why there’d be whole villain schools, or villain conventions. There was some inciting incident that led to a back-room deal. As long as the villainous plots involve minimal loss of life, the AVL won’t escalate to mass encarceration.

Gru himself might be the only flaw in this theory. His theft of the moon in the first movie would’ve been a catastrophe. It was reversed almost immediately, and it’s obvious he has a good heart, but I still think that should’ve given the AVL pause about working with him, if such a deal was in place. Lucy falling for Gru and marrying him may have worked in their favor.

All silliness aside, the Despicable Me franchise is one that the kids and I still enjoy. Despicable Me 4 is worth a matinee viewing if you like the theater, or pre-order the Blu-Ray/Digital copy.

But apparently, Kevin Feige and the Marvel braintrust have such little confidence in their ability to create new stuff that their only option was to cast the fan-favorite RDJ in another role. And, if Feige is to be believed, this isn’t an evil multiverse Tony Stark turn, which at least might’ve been interesting for folks like Rhodey and Peter to deal with. No, they are putting him behind the mask of the iconic villain, Victor von Doom. The whole thing feels like nothing more than lazy stunt-casting. Doubly so if Feige goes back on his word that Tony Stark’s death is an untouchable moment that can’t be undone.

I’ve had thoughts in the past on how to handle Doom and the Fantastic Four. Reading them back now, I largely still agree with them. If you want Doctor Doom, establish him in a series. His origin would make for great television. Give it to the same folks who made Loki or Wandavision. I guess that ship has sailed, but I still think that would’ve been the way to go.

Bringing back Robert Downey Jr. for this role is such a missed opportunity to establish someone new to drive the MCU forward. Take a chance! There are so many amazing actors that haven’t been in your movies yet. Re-treading with RDJ might be a safe way to guarantee you make money, but it’s not interesting. The uneven quality of Marvel’s recent output should push them to take MORE risks. They’ve forgotten what got them to the top of the heap. This isn’t the company that let the director of Slither and Scooby Doo make a whole series of movies that established an important chunk of your universe. That guy, by the way, is now in charge of movies at your main competition.

All of this, combined with Disney’s overall inability to support the women and people of color leaves the company vulnerable. It’s only been DC’s own mistakes and shitty leadership that has kept them from overtaking Marvel. That won’t continue forever.

Riley’s panic attack, though. I felt that deep inside, I was doing fine throughout the movie, but that scene brought out some unexpected tears. The build up throughout the movie felt so real – just little things at first, but the way they combined to push out the other emotions resonated. Been there, felt that.

Maybe this is what happens when you grow up. You feel less joy.

-Joy

It all culminates in a big mistake during a hockey game. Anxiety-led Riley is convinced that her whole life, her future, depends on doing well during this scrimmage at hockey camp. She wants on the team with all the cool girls she met, but in trying to show off and dominate the game, she injures one of her friends from home. She’s left to sit alone with her thoughts in the penalty box, and that’s when she starts to truly spiral. Literally, Anxiety spins out of control at Riley’s console, creating a whirlwind that pushes all the other emotions away. In real life, we see Riley feel the physical chest pain so many of us who deal with anxious feelings have felt. It’s this anguish and pain that affected me as I watched.

In the end, Riley is able to come to terms with everything that she did. Her friends forgive her, and they tearfully reunite. Internally, Joy and the other emotions are able to soothe Anxiety and stop the spiral. Riley chooses joy, and in doing so is able to create a new, more complex equilibrium between all of her emotions. She regains a sense of self that integrates who she was before and includes more nuanced feelings.

Inside Out 2 is a solid follow up to one of Pixar’s better movies. I’m glad I got to see it, and share it with my daughters. Even if they thought the stuff that happened to Riley was ‘cringe’. Teenagers!

That said…there’s no reason for Garfield to be getting a movie now. The more recent cartoons have been unimpressive, and the strip was never really deep. There’s only so many “I hate Mondays”/”let’s bully Odie”/”Jon is a creep to the hot vet” jokes you can make.

I was a bit surprised when my daughter suggested The Garfield Movie for our delayed birthday movie outing. Y’all, this movie is a mess, and I don’t know who it’s made for. Garfield (with, *sigh* Chris Pratt as his voice) only sort of resembles the cat from the comic strip if you squint. Kids will find the convoluted plots unintelligible. Garfield’s Dad, Vic (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson) comes back into his life! But gets him caught up in a milk heist he has to do for Jynx (Hannah Waddingham) who’s trying her best Yzma (unsurprising since director Mark Dindal’s most highly regarded previous credit is The Emperor’s New Groove). Every heist movie cliche gets rolled out, from the plan drawn in the dirt, to a training montage, and ending up in “the one place you can’t go!”. Added to the already messy heist plot and daddy issues is a bull voiced by Ving Rhames who wants back in to the target dairy to rescue his girl.

What we’re left with is a movie that too serious for kids, and too dumb for adults. It’s also an affront to the parents who actually remember how Garfield used to be. Yeah, abusing Odie isn’t something that would really fly today, but if the end result is this complicated and anti-nostalgic, just leave it alone. No one would’ve missed this, and it stings just a bit more when The Garfield Movie makes it to theaters while other films are getting shelved for tax breaks. Perhaps it was the absolutely rampant product placement that allowed this to be finished? I assume Olive Garden gets points on the backend the way they were mentioned.

I’m going to do something a little different when I look at rating a kid-centric movie. Introducing the P-MTR! It stands for Parent Movie Tolerance Rating, or “P Meter”. It’s a simple 1 to 10 scale that let’s you know if you, the parent, will enjoy the movie. The 1 end of the scale houses atrocities such as Thomas and the Magic Railroad or the Baby Geniuses series, while the other end would have family faves like Megamind or The Lego Movie. Sadly, The Garfield Movie is a 2 on the P-MTR. Very little humor that got more than a chuckle out of me, and the scenes that were supposed to be heartwarming left me cold.

PS: I’m trying not to be excessively negative but seriously stop hiring Chris Pratt and other celebrity voices, especially for what are basically cameo parts. He’s already Mario and Star-Lord, isn’t that enough?