The third False Fall came and went without a blip and the actual Autumnal Season has finally flown in on a gentle, cooling breeze and brought sighs of relief to everyone in Post-Apocalypse Texas. Here at the bunker we have embraced the change with our usual aplomb; the crock pot is out, the decorative gourds are on display, and I’ve located my green hoodie and have worn it out in public, twice. As you can see, we’re off the chain and running wild.
Health and Wellness Update: Shoulder Update
And not a moment too soon. I’m moving back onto a rigid protocol following the completion of two rounds of physical therapy to get my arm back into shape. While it’s not quite there, the nerve pain has disappeared, my range of motion has increased dramatically, and more to the point, we’ve identified what the problem was to begin with; namely, I type like a hunchback.
Some corrective posture, a new office chair, and a brace of take-home exercises will dovetail into daily walks, and then back to yoga. Oh, and there will be broccoli. And cauliflower. So much broccoli and cauliflower.
The Recovery Team at Wilbarger General did a great job of getting me in and out of Physical Therapy with only a modicum of stupid human tricks, like hooking both of my wrists into a giant rubber band and then leaning against a wall on my forearms. The exercise is to widen your forearms as far as you can, while also doing a sidestep, and then closing back up in your original position, some two feet further down the wall. I had to count off, “Five, Six, Seven, Eight,” before I could do it, and my therapists, all lovely young women who had no problem calling me “sir,” were not allowed to talk to me unless it was in rhythm, because I was doing this stupid-ass step-ball-change-side-shift to the count of twenty and I wasn’t planning on starting over. They were kind enough to humor me and put up with my various rants, dad-adjacent jokes, and the occasional expletive that slipped out as I struggled to stretch, pull, or otherwise reconfigure my shoulder assembly into something more akin to a ball and socket joint and less like hastily-installed tongue and groove connection.
There’s more I want to talk about, but we’ll save it for next week. For now, please enjoy the small rant concealed inside my glowing review of The Marvels.
Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
We had a lot of smaller reviews ready to go, but Administration insisted on something a little more timely.
The Marvels (In Theaters)
A cosmic occurrence, and a bit of old school Kree energy, entangles the powers of Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, and Monica Rambeau—named Photon in the comics, but not in the MCU....yet. Every time one of them uses their powers, they physically change places with the other. In the midst of all that confusion comes a crisis that affects the Kree, the Skrull colony, and of course, Earth. Can the Marvels stop what’s happening to them, and keep the sun from winking out?
This film has had a storied journey, moving around on the schedule, first as a TV show and then movie, and, then there were the rewrites, the reshoots, and depending on which nattering nincompoop you get your entertainment news from, the assured destruction of the Marvel Cinematic Universe because, heh, you know, even though I haven’t read any Marvel comics made in the twentieth century, “insert conspiracy theory about icky girls here,” and Brie Larson, amirite, guys? So that’s why it sucks, be sure to like and subscribe.
Longtime readers of this newsletter are well aware that I hold about 91% of the entire Internet is contempt, and none more so than 27-year old “content creators” on YouTube and TikTok and wherever the troglodytes of the world congregate online these days to bolster their egos by confirming their “hot takes” with the huddled masses. I shouldn’t have to say, out loud to you, that they are wrong about The Marvels, but I’m going to because, while I don’t condone the counting of digital coup, I think it’s important to speak truth to impotence, repeatedly, to drown out their bleats and glottal clicks.
The Marvels is charming, engaging, laugh-out-loud funny at times, and really enjoyable. Here’s what it gets right, by my calculations: it simultaneously addressed my problem with the first Captain Marvel movie (she had no personality) and it fixed my problem with the Ms. Marvel mini-series on Disney+ (too much high school). On top of that, they sprinkled in about 25% of the secret sauce from Guardians of the Galaxy, and you know what? It works. It worked for me, anyway.
There are a few callbacks (expect the flerken, right, I mean, like you weren’t gonna see it). For the most part, though, we get to hear about what Captain Marvel has been doing for all this time in space—or rather, we get bits and pieces of that. She gets exponentially more interesting as Marvel’s Green Lantern, where some worlds love her unconditionally, and others call her the Annihilator. Her characterization, with some experience under her belt, is frankly fantastic, and something I wish they’d been working on from the outset. I love Carol Danvers Ms/Captain Marvel, and we’re finally getting to see her.
I loved the casting of Kamala Kahn; it was the best thing about the show, and Iman Vellani is pitch perfect in this movie. We also get to see more of Teyonah Parris in her post WandaVision incarnation as the all-grown-up niece of Carol Danvers with an outsize chip on her shoulder because Aunt Carol said she’d come back and she didn’t.
Putting everyone together and watching the personalities bounce off of one another is vintage MCU and you know what? If it ain’t broke... only, instead of Tony Stark being the group asshole, you have Kamala Kahn fangirling out with every character entrance, every name drop, every scene change. She almost steals the show, no fooling.
The movie covers a lot of ground in under two hours, and gives everyone a chance to shine. This confirms something I’ve been afraid to say out loud for a while now. As with the comics themselves, not every character in the MCU is a headliner. Some of them make damn good guest-stars, and nearly always, less is more. The Marvels is a corrective that moves a lot of detritus out of the way and clears the path for Phase Five. If the mid-credits scene is any indication, and provided you haven’t had it spoiled already, it’s a jaw-dropping promise of things to come.