Super

News, Reviews & Features

Review: Project Power hits the right beats but offers nothing new

Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 26th August 2020

Netflix is an odd one isn't it. In order to operate they need to attract a certain amount of subscribers, so cast a wide net of shiny mid-budget fare with no pretension the films don't exist to reel in the dollars. It's pure returns-driven broad entertainment, designed to appeal to as many people as possible but that leaves little cultural footprint. Other studios do this, of course - it is a movie industry after all - but the frequency of ho hum numbers generated by Netflix does nothing for their reputation as a production line serving up gruel, and the next announcement always comes with a twinge of doubt. Anyway I just watched this new Netflix film called Project Power.

Read full article »
20 exciting and totally achievable ways the DC Universe can rebuild

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 17th September 2018

The DC universe is broken. Henry Cavill is done with Superman. Ben Affleck is too goth even for Batman and reportedly wants an escape route. Wonder Woman accidentally became the most successful one and now all the men at the studio have no idea what to do with her. And Aquaman... exists. Forget whatever humanitarian crises the Fake News Media are pushing on you this week: we need to focus our efforts on figuring out how to fix these adult manbaby movie franchises, and STAT. These 20 ideas to fix the DCCU by yours truly are a start, but frankly, I'm not hearing anything coming from your end. Is this thing even on?

Read full article »
What if Ethan Hawke played ALL the superheroes? Huh? What happens then?

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 27th August 2018

Indie actor Ethan Hawke caused shockwaves in the nerd community this week when he dared suggest that superhero movies are not as good as Ingrid Bergman movies. So, Ethan Hawke thinks we're a group of illiterate and reactionary morons, huh? BURN ETHAN HUNT TO THE GROUND.

Read full article »
Let's take a deep dive into the first Aquaman poster aka Finding Greebo

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 17th July 2018

I'm being forced to embrace the disjointed madness emanating from DC Headquarters right now, because while Marvel have cracked the formula and landed on a consistent tone for their cinematic universe, DC have got nothing to lose. They're playing discordant, cinematic jazz. We're fully in 'no bad ideas' territory with this insane new Aquaman poster: it's the last day of school term and the kids are running the classroom now. They're all over the fucking shop, is essentially what I'm getting at.

Read full article »
Justice League

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 19th November 2017

It wasn’t evil aliens that defeated the Justice League: it was facial hair.

Read full article »
Advertise with us!
Important investigation: what would Henry Cavill's Superman look like with a moustache?

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 25th July 2017

In the true spirit of investigative journalism, we recently learned that Henry Cavill will be sporting a moustache during his Justice League reshoots, so we set to work imagining what such a thing would look like. Screw you, Failing New York Times, that Pulitzer is mine.

Read full article »
An oral history of superhero actors complaining about going to the toilet

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 6th July 2017

There's a strange, unspoken relationship between a journalist and a film star that absolutely nothing personal must be discussed during an interview. Except, that is, when that film star is playing a superhero, in which case it's absolutely on message to ask them exactly how they pissed and/or shat while wearing their super-suit. The weirdest thing is just how willing the actors are to share.

Read full article »
Logan

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 9th March 2017

There only three things that are certain in life: death, taxes and the fact that someone is hard at work writing a sequel to the X-Men movie you're currently watching. Logan, the third Wolverine standalone movie after X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine, is the exception: it is the last in its series, because Hugh Jackman says so, and not just because they've run out of ways to name Wolverine movies. Buoyed by the success of 15-rated Deadpool and supported by Jackman's desire to leave a lasting legacy for his defining role, Logan is that rare superhero movie that feels like a full stop rather than a comma. Intentionally distanced from the rest of the X-Men universe and its frankly Gordian timelines, Logan stands alone as the best of the series: a bleak, bold and mold-breaking masterpiece of the genre.

Read full article »
Suicide Squad, DC and the Warner Bros war against coherence

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 8th August 2016

It should be abundantly clear now to anyone with even a passing interest in superhero movies that the concept of the "shared universe" should be feared. Credit to Marvel: they took a big risk, did their groundwork and built up their shared universe by releasing not one but four successful individual franchises, before bringing them together like a corporate executive doing an overbite and interlocking his fingers in the universal sign language for 'synergy'. Everyone else saw The Avengers' box-office success and thought, 'Yeah, we'll have a bit of that. But sod all that hard work!' And thus, the very blueprint for superhero movies was torn up, sellotaped back together and plonked on the desks of finance departments throughout Hollywood.

Read full article »
X-Men: Apocalypse

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 19th May 2016

Forgive me for sounding like I'm on the company payroll, but have Marvel movies ruined superhero movies for everyone else? I fear they have. The Marvel Cinematic Universe made its own space in the superhero sphere; it owns the area marked 'fun'. DC, as a countermeasure to all the lousy fun everyone was enjoying, staked their claim on the 'serious' space; heroes with grim faces carved out of rock, pre-tantrum lip-wobble expressions lashed with rain. Where does this leave the X-Men? I'm sure I don't know anymore, because X-Men: Apocalypse attempts to be all things to all people and ends up being neither overtly fun or remotely serious, just entirely ridiculous. It feels like a superhero movie back from when no one really knew what that was supposed to mean, or, as a friend of mine put it so perfectly: "It's like a shit superhero movie from the nineties".

Read full article »

Support Us

We are now using Patreon to cover some of our hosting fees. So if you like our brand of "content" and would like to see us do more, please consider chucking a few digital pennies our way by clicking on the link below. Thanks!