owen-watts

Thunderbolts took an age to show up, changing most of its cast and crew late in the process and deciding quite clearly to double-down on the brief "Marvel's Suicide Squad" by daring to ask the question '...but... why DO you feel indifferent to death...?" to a bunch of misfit anti-heroes. It's refreshing for that and with its stripped-back plotting and likeable cast it ends up coming across fairly well and feels somewhat more like an "origin" movie despite all the wider universe baggage. It still suffers from the standard MCU drawbacks; a bloated climactic sequence that, however different, goes on a little long and despite the marketing not really sticking the landing on the whole "hey THIS time we're going to be doing an A24 film!". That being said, the nepo lads pull their weight terribly well and Pugh is some sort of fully-formed geological outcrop of pure living charisma. Even though it was heavy-handed I got all sorts of deep fellow-dad feelings from Harbour's embarrassing sloppy old boy, as I am destined to that path also.

Part of what is slowly turning into an annual tradition of a slew of short Clone Wars-era minisodes loosely grouped by theme. This third time is that particularly 20th Century American aspect of the Wars universe, "the vague seedy underbelly". The bounty hunters and lawbreakers, none of it ever more than euphemistically gritty, especially compared to the shockingly raw contemporaneous Andor Season 2.

Here the first set are the strongest; following an unlikely resurrection, Asajj Ventress is walking the path between light and dark in aide of a likeable young Jedi played by the phenomenally brilliant Lane Factor (Reservation Dog's evergreen Cheese). The Filoniverse is as by-the-numbers as Star Wars gets but this was a deceptive little arc that surprised me. I'd like to see more of these two. I want a Strata subplot in the Mando movie.

The Cad Bane part is less interesting, he's always been more Scrappy-Doo than Clint Eastwood for me as a character, forever showing up and adding little beyond cliché and mannered vocal delivery. His three-part tragic backstory doesn't flesh him out much and plays out like any well-worn "two street-rats separated by destiny doomed to never reconcile" story. Eff.

After the first Jedi series I keep hoping these continuity stocking fillers are far more consequential than they are, but that's not what the Clone Wars era Star Wars was built for. It's there to keep the wheels turning, the content churning out, and to go nowhere particularly interesting in no particular hurry.

By complete coincidence our household watched this mere days after Mission Cleopatra, the only live action one that "gets it" and masterminded by comedian Alain Chabat, who also brings us Asterix's first proper TV series. Miraculously, this Netflix modern interpretation does also "get it" and is by turns playful, heartfelt and good fun. Not all of it is perfect and alongside the usual awkward mistranslations of French wordplay there also are some structural weak spots but the animation is sharp, the tone is consistent and the whole thing really does feel like a breath of fresh air in the long history of this particularly indomitable franchise. There's a real keen hope that we may see more of these and the completely brilliant bonus 2D "minisode" at the end of the whole thing is pure icing on the cake.