To be honest, I could hardly call what I read “movie reviews”. One of them, the more erudite of the two, basically praised it as “box-checking, the movie”. And the author wasn’t being ironic. That was his actual hook. This movie checks all the right ideological and political and demographic and marketability boxes, therefore it’s great!

The second review headlined it as being great also, but forgot to take time to talk about the movie. Instead, the first third of the review was about the ethics and politics of going to a movie theater during covid, the second third was about the ethical and political bona fides of the film, and the last third was all about the politics of marketing and streaming vs box office releases. Lost somewhere in there was the actual concept of a work of art.

Movies. Such objects apparently do not exist any more, except as extensions of some elaborate power game. Reviews, in turn, now consist mostly of propaganda. It’s arguable that what they actually are now is a review of how well the movie in question serves as propaganda of one kind or another. Movies are entitely instrumental, the artifice of political, racial, and economic games. And so they are reviewed appropriately as such.

On a side note that isn’t really relevant to my above discussion, I did eventually see the movie, and it was totally…OK. I can see why reviews focused on other things. There wasn’t a lot to get either excited or upset about. It was a lot more of the same sort of things we’ve seen a lot of, done in a procedural and uninspired but very competent way. It borrowed elements from a dozen other movies. And I once read the same plot for the main threat in a My Little Pony comic book. But it did it all fine.

So it didn’t stand out in any regard. It was an OK way to waste a couple hours. It probably would have been better if it was 45 minutes shorter. If you want some real excitement, Michelle Yeoh has done a bunch of much better, much more compelling martial arts movies. As a Marvel movie, it retreads too much familiar territory and adds little to the existing formulas and characters. It tries to be a Marvel movie and it tries to be a martial arts epic, and it doesn’t succeed above a C at either, maybe because it’s trying to cram too many things into one package.

The Wolverine combined martial arts action with comic books tropes in a much more compelling movie, and people don’t remember or appreciate it much. So I don’t expect this to have much sticking power beyond the ability of Disney to support it as part of their larger brand efforts.

It reminds me of Instagram food, like the shakes with a donut and cotton candy and a lollipop on top. It looks very exciting, the idea seems fun, all the elements are fine on their own, but they don’t add up to any greater fusion. Ultimately you’ve just got an OK donut on top of an OK shake with some OK candy. No one put enough investment into any one element to make it really stand out. There’s nothing bad, but nothing really great or interesting.