The Amazing Spiderman 2

Reboots. They happen all the time now. Why this year there will be yet another reboot of Spiderpants, er man. Because this second outing for Andrew Garfield as the webby one didn't really do so well with critics or audiences. 

Garfield was a rebooted Spidey himself. After diminishing returns from Toby ‘I Hunch’ Maguire in three movies, Spiderplant came back as Garfield. Not an orange cat, you idiot, Andrew Garfield. I thought I’d already made this clear? Pay attention will you?

Or don’t. Not to the movie anyhow. There’s too much crammed into the film and with little genuine plotting to make it work. Electro Boy looks really different from his time with The Mighty Boosh. The Green Goblin is arch and camp and a terrible disappointment. Gwen Stacey is Emma Stone, the new darling of tap-dance, sing-song Hollywood musical revivals. Her eyes are big. Her impact on the movie small, despite some decent lines and a bit of the action.

Nobody impacts on the movie, they’ve got nothing to work with. Swing and prevent crime, Spidey. Just like the cartoons. Only with fewer dimensions to your character. Be a ghostly presence haunting Peter Parker, Dennis Leary. Like you spirited away Bill Hicks’ material all those years ago and pretended it was your own. Look translucent and sparky blue, Jamie Foxx, and try to forget you're an Academy Award winner slumming it here. 

Superheroes are bad for those they care about. We knew this. It’s peppered through every 21st century Marvel movie to provide moral fibre for the otherwise diarrhetic orgy of making the most of having amazing powers. You hear that, Amazing Spiderman? Stop having girlfriends or they and/or those close to them will die. Not so heroic now, are you, you creepy insect boy?

Bet the rebooted rebooted still peddles this cliche, though, don't you?

Iron Man 3

Iron Man is dead. Again. Officially. Because of that bloke from Neighbours who was in Memento. And that woman who played Lynne Frederick in Frost/Nixon. Her botanical shenanigans and his evil nemesis master skills combine to create a loopy, loopy scenario in which the disabled can grow back amputated limbs. It's not all fun, they also sort of become human bombs.

To cover for the early mistakes in research and the explodey consequences that bloke from Neighbours creates a phantom terrorist overlord, using that British guy who played Gandhi who in this film isn't playing Gandhi, he's a slobby actor.

Tony Stark isn't dead. Obviously. Because of his brilliant Iron Man suit. Suits. Plural. Oh, he was already doing that in Two. Anyway. He is miles from his now blown up home and his brilliant Iron Man suit needs serious repair work. He sneaks into a kid's barn, grooms the kid and is arrested by the authorities. No, hang on, that's Jim'll Man 3. He sneaks into the barn, befriends the kid and together they learn stuff. Like the stuff I've already told you about the blowy uppy tendencies of the new limb gang.

Oops, that bloke from Neighbours has kidnapped Pepper Potts. Ha ha. It's a joke name. Get it? Well if you haven't got it after forty odd years of graphic novels and three movies then you're not much of a giggler, are you? He also kills the Lynne Frederick woman and wants to do another murdery thing to the chap playing the President (character names aren't all jokes so I'm not bothered about them that much). To prove his evilness. Again. As if we didn't know. We knew, didn't we? We bloody knew.

And it all kicks off at the end with many Iron Man suits plus War Machine (or the neutering rename, Iron Patriot), plus Tony, and eventually plus an almost explodey Pepper combining to beat the living fuckery out of Neighbours bloke. Couldn't happen to a more horrid bloke from Neighbours. Although he was actually quite nice in Neighbours. Remember? And he didn't release a cash-in pop single which is another reason to love him. Except when he's in Iron Man 3. Loathe him and be glad he's dead.

As ever the Stark character is tailor-made for Robert Downey Jr. Sardonic, laconic, a lush, a little louche, and yet someone who always wins through in the end. I get confused with the Marvel universe chronology; was Captain America: Civil War after this film? This one seems like a swan song for Downey but if he's donned the suit again for purposes of Avengering then he could continue clanking across our screens for some time to come. No argument from me. Even though this movie is more percussive than substantial.

Doctor Strange

He isn't Sherlock. He isn't Khan from Star Trek Beyond. He isn't that rubbish siege negotiator from Four Lions. He's strange. With a capital S. But he's kinda small S strange too.

Yes, Bendyback Cumblebath has entered the Marvel fray as the franchise's biggest oddball. The original comics were a sixties take on a normal human being acquiring superpowers not through exposure to radiation or technological genius but by delving deep into the world of mysticism. Like wow, dude, that's so hippy.

But he's not a hippy. No, he's an arrogant son of a bitch who also happens to be one of the greatest surgeons on the planet. He doesn't HAVE to be American even though he is in the source material, but he is played American so we know he isn't Sherlock. Or Khan. Or that negotiator. Or because Stan Lee would have had a heart attack if they'd messed with his counter-culture baby too much for its big screen debut.

One car crash and two fucked up hands later Dr Stephen Strange is so desperate to cure himself and return to arrogantly saving people's lives in an operating theatre that he alienates his former girlfriend (a disappointingly male-gaze empty shell of a character played, presumably with little enthusiasm, by Rachel McAdams) and heads to the Orient in search of salvation.

What he finds is Tilda Swinton as an ancient guru type. Oh she's allowed to have a British accent. She's allowed to be a woman which she most certainly was not in the graphic novels. She's also awesome, both as a character and as the actor playing that character (sorry, did I break the fourth wall? Geek off, you'll be complaining about spoilers next).

Tilda teaches Bendyback how to do the warping space in on itself stuff from Inception only more magic mushroom stylee but Mads Mikkelson can also do this and he's a bad guy. He's stolen bad naughty knowledge from Tilda's special books and is going to summon up ultimate evil to eat up this universe. Luckily there are, we learn, an infinite number of universes but we're humans so we only give a shit about the one we're in and Comfybath has to save everything and everyone. With some help from the Ancient One's non-bad disciples.

Do they succeed, you wonder, if you haven't seen the film. Let's just say a sequel is in the pipeline, shall we?

Cumblepatch is suitably strange to be Strange and suitably different from Mr Downey Jr not to make the character seem too much like a riff on Iron Man (with hocus pocus instead of a big metal suit). Mikkelson is a heavyweight enough villain to ensure the self-centred Strange rises to the occasion when required. The visuals are astonishing without overshadowing the action or the plot.

Plot - it's not the best and it's not the worst in the celluloid Marvel universe. It's a prolonged setting of the stage for the weird doctor to presumably get completely fruitloop on us next time out. It works well enough. I'd watch it again. I watch most things more than once if they have Tilda Swinton in them, though. And so should you.