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Darren Mooney

@darrenmooney.bsky.social

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 7d

With #Peacemaker wrapping this week, it's a good time to look at what makes James Gunn such a distinctive superhero filmmaker.

How Gunn puts himself in his work, how "Superman" & "Peacemaker" are about the internet, and what Gunn gets about superheroes as a genre.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DieY...

How Peacemaker (and Superman) Are About the Internet | The Backdrop

YouTube video by Second Wind

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by Darren Mooney

Second Wind @secondwindgroup.com · 1d

Peacemaker Season 2 expertly wrestles with the idea of whether its hero is beyond salvation.

@darrenmooney.bsky.social digs into the themes running through the entire season + finale of the latest DC story.

Read now on Patreon -- www.patreon.com/posts/column...

[COLUMN] Peacemaker Asks if Its Hero is Beyond Salvation | by Darren Mooney | Second Wind

Get more from Second Wind on Patreon

www.patreon.com

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 1d

#AfterTheHunt is, unfortunately, Tárrible.

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 1d

#NowWatching#AfterTheHuntMovie

Reposted by Darren Mooney

the babahuck @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 2d

In 2004, Parisian police were conducting a training exercise in the french catacombs and found, after moving past a desk and a tape playing audio of snarling dogs, a fully functional movie theater and bar. When they returned 3 days later, the equipment was gone, with a note: “Do not try to find us.”

Members of the force's sports squad, responsible
- among other tasks - for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.
After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.
Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.
Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs".

There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.
A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said.
"The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there."
Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 2d

Rewatched "Bring Her Back" with a friend, and she noted that Sally Hawkins in "Aunt Gladys in a different font."

And, while both movies were produced independently, I can't unsee it.

(It is interesting that both movies are about abusive guardians.)

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

"I have 15 messages from concerned House members on our side of the aisle."

It's a small detail, but - similar to making sure that de Fontaine is the head of the CIA and not some made-up organisation - it's nice that the film seems pretty clear she's a political partisan.

Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

Obviously, as in the comics, Sentry is an obvious stand-in for Superman. If Superman wasn't technically the first superhero, he was the character who codified the genre.

And so, paired with the Utah desert, "Thunderbolts*" is taking the superhero genre back to its roots.

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

In doing so, "Thunderbolts*" makes a clear connection back to the western genre, that American mythology that was shaped and defined by images of this landscape.

It situates the superhero in the same lineage as the classic cowboy. The American outlaw hero, not a soldier.

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

In contrast, the desert sequences in "Thunderbolt*" are very explicitly America.

More to the point, they are shot in Utah, a few hours away from Monument Valley, one of the most iconic locations in American cinematic history.

It's visual shorthand for "the American West."

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

However, there are some very important differences.

The desert in "Iron Man" was Afghanistan. That movie was firmly rooted in the War on Terror, baking the War on Terror into the fabric of the nascent Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Our hero fighting terrorists "over there."

a man in a tank top is standing in a dark cave holding a hammer .

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

Similarly, the CIA's discovery of a god-like power source in a crater in the middle of the desert is evocative of Coulson's trip to Arizona in "Iron Man 2" and "Thor."

"Thunderbolts*" is very overtly evoking the movies that led to the original "Avengers."

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

"What happened to 'bulletproof?'"
"Bulletproof-ish."

"Thunderbolts*" is in conversation with the history and the iconography of the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The attack on the vehicle in the desert - with exploding humvees - evokes the opening of "Iron Man."

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

"It’s the John Doe. He’s Sentry Project."
"No, everyone who went through Sentry Project is dead, Mel."

I do appreciate that "Thunderbolts*" is built entirely around a pun concerning "the end of the American Sentry/Century."

a man in a yellow superhero costume is standing in front of a window with kepler written on the bottom right

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

It is very interesting that the congressional subplot just completely disappears from "Thunderbolts*" at around the two-thirds mark with no pay-off.

Very much a "this is not what the movie is" choice, that I admire.

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

"Oh, God. Boring."

The "Bucky goes to Washington" plot feels in many ways like a commentary on the desperation of these sorts of films to be taken seriously.

In that Bucky goes to Washington, and immediately decides it was more fun being Arnie in "Terminator 2."

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

That said, there are small moments of cowardice in "Thunderbolts*", such as the decision to have Yelena merely identify her classmate for execution rather than executing her herself.

(It is something that "Peacemaker", for example, commits to much better.)

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

(And, to be clear, that was the case with "The Avengers" too.

"We're not soldiers!"

Except, by the time you get to "Infinity War" and "Endgame", they are functionally generals commanding armies on the field of battle. The MCU heroes *are* soldiers.)

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

It's very telling that the bulk of the eponymous superhero team is made up of soldiers and assassins, many of whom are officially state-sanctioned murderers.

These... are our heroes? These are the people we venerate?

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

"Thunderbolts*" is a movie about what it means to make an "Avengers" movie - one of the defining cultural artifacts of the Obama era - in the context of the Trump era.

What do superheroes mean now, so far removed from that cultural context? It's a very loaded question.

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

That enthusiasm wouldn't last.

There is a delineation between the blockbusters of the early Obama era (like "Star Trek") and the late Obama era (like "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes").

The defining line arguably falls between "The Avengers" and "The Dark Knight Rises."

an older man is sitting at a table in a restaurant holding a menu and a wallet .

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

"The Avengers" is one of the defining movies of the early Obama era, like JJ Abrams' "Star Trek", a movie bristling with the enthusiasm and excitement that defined that era.

It was very much a reaction to the Bush era moral ambivalence of films like "The Dark Knight."

thor and captain america are fighting in front of a building that says group hug on it

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

If superheroes are tied to American self-image, a fundamentally American creation, what does it mean to tell a superhero story in an era where it feels like American culture and institutions have abandoned even the myth of moral righteousness?

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

"You know, Kierkegaard says that life can only be understood backwards."
"Very true."
"Is it?"
"I don’t know, actually. It did sound good, though. He did believe that it was up to individuals to create values."

And that is the movie's take on the superhero genre, in a nutshell.

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

"This must all seem like ancient history to you."

"Thunderbolts*" is a film engaged in a conversation about the fate and status of the MCU.

How do you attract a young audience, the audience going to the cinema, that is too young to remember "The Avengers?"

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Darren Mooney @darrenmooney.bsky.social · 3d

"This gaudy Avenger propaganda reeks of desperation."

It is, admittedly, kinda funny to put this line in a movie that was rebranded as "The New Avengers" by the Monday of its opening weekend.

But, again, gets at the sense that this is a movie *about* superhero fatigue.

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