Thunderbolts* and Marlon Williams: Ngā Ao e Rua – Two Worlds are both in cinemas.
If the last couple of products I’ve seen are anything to go by, Marvel are going to some interesting and dark places which means there’s a bit of dissonance there in terms of traditional costumed capering on screen.
We watched Daredevil: Born Again on Disney+ because we’d recently seen the series Echo (set in the Choctaw nation and featuring a superhero, Alaqua Cox as Amaya Lopez, who was not only Native American but also deaf and with a prosthetic leg) and that series featured an appearance from Vincent D’Onofrio as the Kingpin, Wilson Fisk, attempting to repair the damage from a falling out with Lopez in which she shot him in the eye (!).
Anyway, this was my first exposure to D’Onofrio’s Kingpin and I found him compelling enough to justify committing to nine episodes of this new series and – hoo boy – was it bleak. And violent – very much grown-up television, despite its relationship to the family friendly MCU. To be honest, after going through similar brutality with Colin Farrell’s The Penguin over the Christmas holiday, we are keen to watch something a little more wholesome next.
But what’s interesting about Daredevil: Born Again – and why I bring it up in relation to the new Marvel feature Thunderbolts* – is the relationship between trauma and violence and how we can be brought up to believe that violence solves our problems and resolves our conflicts.
In Thunderbolts*, a ragtag assembly of cast-off superheroes and costumed mercenaries are thrown together when their boss tries to dispose of them all as part of a politically necessary clean-up operation. Florence Pugh is Yelena, an assassin and sister of the late Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). Wyatt Russell is John Walker, at one point going to be the new Captain America until he was found to be psychologically unsuited to the role. David Harbour has a lot of fun as Yelena’s father Alexei (aka Red Guardian), Sebastian Stan returns as Captain America’s best mate Bucky and there’s a character called Ghost (Hannah-John Kamen) who I don’t know anything about.
Escaping the plot to kill them hatched by Julia-Louis Dreyfuss’ shady C.I.A. chief Valentina de Fontaine, they rescue another misfit – Bob (Lewis Pullman), who was a victim of some misguided medical experiments and has some creepy powers as a result.
Noisily encouraged by Alexei to become a team – the nickname the Thunderbolts is not related to the character of “Thunderbolt” Ross who was played by Harrison Ford in the last Captain America picture but is instead much cuter but also much sadder – the group heads to New York where Bob will discover his destiny as a superhero called The Sentry and, not long after after, reveal that childhood trauma and adult bipolar disorder is not a good combination with god-like super powers.
What’s that phrase? “Stare into the void for long enough, eventually the void stares into you.”
The tonal shifts are bipolar in their own way. The road movie bickering among the gang is often pretty funny but this is a superhero film that finally acknowledges that you can’t punch your way out of trauma, and the deep wells of sadness that all the Thunderbolts have is made moving by real actors encouraged to do some real acting.
The content below was originally paywalled.
It’s fascinating to me how Marvel can create these deeply psychologically damaging situations and then only vaguely understand how they might deal with them on a character level. I mean, the Blip (where Thanos in Infinity War ended the lives of half the living creatures in the universe with a snap of his Infinity Gauntletted fingers) was an extraordinary thing that affected everyone. You were either one of the gone or one of the left behind and there have been lots of films and shows since that occasionally mention it, allowing for a brief pause and a “Yeah, that was a bit rough, eh?” before going back to business as usual. Maybe the MCU gurus are trying to suppress it like everyone suppresses traumatic memories? As Yelena says, “You push it down.”
I mentioned here a few weeks ago that I’d seen a preview of the Marlon Williams documentary, Marlon Williams: Ngā Ao e Rua – Two Worlds, and how Williams’ music is connected to my memories of my late sister, so I won’t go back over that here. (I’ve lifted the 30-day paywall, though, so new subscribers can read it.)
The film is out now and I recommend you go and see it. It’s not a sanitised ‘record company approved’ promo for an album – Williams is too goofy and sincere and unguarded for that. But the film is about the making of a record – Te Whare Tīwekaweka which is his first album to be written and recorded in Te Reo Māori.
Williams’ tentative steps towards the project – and his own journey into the language – alongside his conviction that he cannot not make the record are very relatable. I’ve heard some tracks from the finished collection now and – from memory they are a lot more lush and polished than the versions we hear being recorded in that old community hall in Haast.
Further reading
My ego usually means that any further reading links go to other stuff I’ve written, but today I want to direct your attention to a couple of other Aotearoa Substack posts that are worth a read.
First up, freelancer and regular contributor to the Herald and RNZ, Karl Puschmann has a couple of new Substacks. Pixel Fix is about gaming and Screen Crack is about, um, screens – film and TV. Karl’s review of the Marlon Williams documentary is astute and heartfelt.
This film amply shows its value in a beautifully understated and honest way. Not just to Marlon Williams, but to Aotearoa New Zealand as a whole. Because we may be one country, but there are two very different worlds living here.
One is a world where music can act as the great unifier, bridging the cultural gap and giving all people a path to come together, to celebrate each other and embrace what makes Aotearoa such a special and unique place.
The other is a world that wants to burn those bridges and instead build barricades from which to lob sneers and hate while grotesquely masquerading under the delusion of being civilised people.
And that’s not a world I want any part of.
And disinformation researcher and author Byron Clark’s Feijoa Dispatch has taken aim at the recent spate of streaming service evaluations by listing 11 streamers that are available here but, for one reason or another, never get mentioned:
Price: Plans start at NZ$16.99 a month
The launch of VivaMax was expedited during the pandemic when cinemas closed, and it’s grown to become the largest Philippine streaming service despite (or maybe before of) a controversial reputation for their large catalogue of erotic thrillers and dramas (senator Jinggoy Estrada called out the streaming service for allegedly allowing younger audiences easy access to “sexy contents“. This doesn’t mean VMX films are lacking artistic merit though, for example 2022’s ‘Virgin Forest’, about a brothel servicing illegal loggers, is a story about the exploitation of both people and nature. I’m reminded of how Stephanie Rothman “the R rated feminist” imbued drive-in fodder with progressive themes.
Recommendation: The Woman Who Loses Herself [Ang Babaeng Nawawala sa Sarili] (2022) Erotic horror is not everyone’s cup of tea, but if it’s yours, I recommend watching this one.
