Yes, There’s a Scene After the “Deadpool & Wolverine” End Credits

Deadpool and Wolverine tied up together in a wasteland.

Now your two favorite Canadian antiheroes come bundled, like cable! (Not to be confused with Cable, not included.)

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: I’m the hypothetical boogey-moviegoer who lurked in the MPA’s hivemind imagination when they invented the PG-13 label! This prudish geek is back for another round of simultaneous enjoyment and irritation flared up from the inner turmoil between my oft-undiscerning appetite for comics-based movies that aim to deliver Something Different, versus my general disdain for F-bombs (with extremely few exceptions) and sex jokes (more adamantly unilaterally). I realize I’m outnumbered millions-to-one among geekdom-at-large, but I find ways to cope, such as typing into the void upon my tiny, mostly nonpaying hobby-job site.

I skipped the first Deadpool in theaters and instead watched it on a Black Friday Blu-ray with variant Christmas cover, where a smaller medium helped minimize its gratuitous indulgences. All the other parts of Tim Miller’s directorial debut were amazing, though, so I upgraded Deadpool 2 to a theatrical outing. The first one was better, but David Leitch delivered far more satisfying renditions of Colossus and Juggernaut than their half-baked mainline forms. I appreciated both films offering pleasures beyond the guilty kind, sometimes to an intentionally daffy extreme, which is not something that automatically bugs me. All told, the Merc with a Mouth’s two misadventures as a headliner were better than most X-films and, fun trivia, outgrossed them all.

Hence more of the same, but no longer confined to a licensed offshoot series that doesn’t “count”. One corporate merger and a few non-superhero films later, Ryan Reynolds and his entourage of masked stunt doubles are back! And this time, it’s more all the way! More fanboy pandering! More fourth-wall breakage! More pop culture references! More overplayed Top-40 oldies from across the decades! More F-bombs! More sex jokes, obsessively specializing in gay-panicky snark! But the more, more, MORE begins with its very title: Marvel Cinematic Universe After Dark! Wait, no, I mean Deadpool & Wolverine!

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My Free Comic Book Day 2024 Results, Ranked

Two black-and white panels: angry hunter points his shotgun in the face of a small-town sheriff. Sound effects are in Japanese.

What we have here is a failure to communicate. Art by Masaaki Ninomiya.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Saturday was Free Comic Book Day! Per annual tradition, publishers and retailers nationwide collaborated to offer some four dozen comics gratis to any and all comers. Some comics generously featured brand new stories. Some contained excerpts from upcoming or previous works. A few were, at best, ad pamphlets. I visited four central Indiana shops, came away with 23 freebies in all, and bought additional cool things from each place.

Per my own annual tradition, my reading results came out as follows, ranked subjectively and upwardly from “Not My Thing” to “Buy More on Sight”:

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“Madame Web”: O, What A Mangled Web We Grieve

IMAX poster for Madame Web in a theater hallway. Visual elements include five eyes in separate circles surrounding a falling body. In the middle there's a tiny spider. There are concentric circles and some cluttered webbing.

Note the use of classic spider elements, such as webbing, multiple unmatched eyes, and someone falling down a waterspout.

We interrupt our annual Oscar Quest for this breaking announcement:

“If you take on the responsibility, then will come great power.”

Is your mind blown yet? Your life irrevocably changed? Your latent Spider-powers activated? Your craving for scrambled Marvel Easter eggs whetted?

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My 2023 at the Movies, Part 2 of 2: The Top 10

Four main cast members from the Dungeons & Dragons movie step into a medieval arena, booed by the crowd.

Over 300 films stepped into the 2023 arena. Ten step out.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s listing time again! In today’s entertainment consumption sphere, all experiences must be pitted against each other and assigned numeric values that are ultimately arbitrary to anyone except the writer themselves. It’s just this fun thing some of us love doing even though the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.

Of those 24 releases, 15 were sequels or chapters in an ongoing universe or venerated popcorn-flick IP. Eight were superhero films. Two were animated. Two were entirely subtitled. Ten had scenes during or after the end credits. Four were screenings at the 32nd annual Heartland Film Festival, not all of which have received wide U.S. runs as of this writing.

Here’s the annual rundown of what I didn’t miss in theaters in 2023, for better or worse. Links to past excessively wordy reviews and sometimes bizarrely construed thoughts are provided for historical reference…

And now, on with the Year’s Best Movies countdown:

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Yes, There’s a Scene During “The Marvels” End Credits

Iman Vellani in costume as Ms. Marvel, standing in a spaceship cockpit and smiling starstruck at an off-screen Captain Marvel.

I rarely do entries about Marvel’s TV shows, but I really, really should’ve done one about the cheerfully grade-A Ms. Marvel before now.

Critics in the long run can be a slowly forgiving bunch whenever films break old rules, up until a film breaks one of the rules they happen to like. More than any other series since the end of the Rin Tin Tin canon, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s narrative/marketing design has ceased any and all compliance with their longstanding preference for every film to be a self-contained work unto itself, welcoming any and all newcomers and generously bringing all viewers up to speed on preexisting elements without requiring homework or unconditional obsession. I read four different professional reviews of Marvel’s The Marvels before I saw it for myself, and three of them admitted up front they hadn’t kept up with the Disney+ shows that are now integral to the overall continuity. In possibly unrelated news, none of them gave it five stars or an A++.

To be fair, no one — pro, amateur, or non-writing casual — is obligated to love Marvel, embrace superhero films in general, or keep tabs on it all. The cosmopolitan scholars out there who routinely write book-length essays on the works of Abbas Kiarostami or Apichatpong Weerasethakul may not have much recreational use for “popcorn flicks” or TV shows in general. They may, in fact, want to spend their downtime away from screens. For our family, the MCU is one of our bonding rituals, each new film or episode an occasion in which we all put away our respective devices and gather before a single device for an hour or three. Fans who’ve followed along moment-of-release can tell you it isn’t actually that hard to keep up. Sometimes entire months fly by without new MCU stories. It only piles up if you step away for years. With very few exceptions (Anne, like many, still rejects Eternals) we’ve kept up and we helpfully remind each other of characters or plot developments that we’ve forgotten along the way. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

So I can say with at least a modicum of hobbyist authority that the baffling incoherence of The Marvels‘ first half has nothing to do with forgotten lore or skipped content; its structure is shoddy and wobbly entirely on its own terms. In deference to the intent of director/co-writer Nia DaCosta (the fourth Candyman) to bring the runtime under two hours, she and co-writers Megan McDonnell (WandaVision) and Elissa Karasik (Loki) whittled the proceedings down to 105 minutes, making this 33rd MCU entry the shortest one to date, but tried to economize by front-loading it with action and shuffling too much useful exposition and cause-and-effect basics to the middle of the film.

I’d be more irritated if The Marvels also weren’t so delightfully all-out fun, provided your brain has an MST3K-programmed “You Should Really Just Relax” mode, which comes in handy for 1950s B-movies and for occasions like this. If it helps, I can sort through some of that disjointedness without major spoilers. Not all of it, mind you.

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Cincinnati Comic Expo 2023 Photos, Part 1 of 2: Cosplay!

Five cosplayers doing "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" - refer to caption.

Questing around from Monty Python and the Holy Grail – King Arthur, Tim the Enchanter, Sir Bedivere, Sir Galahad, and Brother Maynard bearing the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. Naturally they brought coconut shells.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife Anne and I enjoy attending entertainment and comic conventions together, whether in our hometown of Indianapolis or in our neighboring states (and sometimes even farther). We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

This past Friday we drove two hours southeast of Indianapolis to attend the thirteenth annual Cincinnati Comic Expo in the heart of their downtown that’s not so different from ours. This was our fourth time at CCE, though it’s been four years since our last occasion — partly due to the pandemic and partly because one side effect of the Midwest comic-con boom is that shows frequently have overlapping guest lists with no one new for us to meet. This year Cincy brought in an enticing lineup of folks we hadn’t seen before. At first it felt odd to return to a “normal” comic-con contained within a single convention center after our recent Dragon Con adventure and its downtown-sized sprawl. By the end of our weekend we’d forgotten any such reservations and were thrilled at how, in at least one respect, Cincy succeeded where Dragon Con had failed us.

But first and foremost, as usual: cosplay! We begin with a showcase of the costumes we photographed during our hours walking through and around the exhibit hall. The humble duo here at MCC enjoys the panoply, and appreciates the makers and wearers who enliven every comic-con with their talents and their exaltation of various fandoms. We regret we can only represent a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the total cosplay wonderment that was on display this weekend. We’re just an aging couple doing what we can for happy sharing fun. Enjoy! Corrections welcome on those we may have misidentified and the one that completely stumped us!

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Dragon Con 2023 Photos #8: Cosplay Parade Presents the Walt Disney Family of Companies

Mandalorians marching, one in the foreground who's red with gun pointed to the sky.

Hey, kids! Mandalorians! This one’s from the Mandalorian Mercs cosplay group.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In 2019 my wife Anne and I attended our very first Dragon Con in Atlanta, Georgia. As one of the longest-running science fiction conventions in America, Dragon Con had received rave reviews from our internet friends over the past two decades, some of whom recommended it to us more than once and, according to my notes, would never shut up about it. We had so much of a blast that we returned in 2021. Third time was the charm this Labor Day weekend as we repeated the eight-hour drive from Indianapolis to that amazing colossal southern spectacle…

Hi-diddly-ho! It’s our fourth gallery from D*C’s annual Saturday morning cosplay parade, always one of our favorite events. The starter exhortations in Part 5 still apply here: if you recognize any characters we didn’t, by all means please let us know! We like meeting new faces, broadening our knowledge, correcting errors, and bridging the gaps in our aging memories where those character names used to be. Between us we took over 600 photos and couldn’t possibly have known everyone. Related note: if you or someone you know was in the parade and you’re hoping for shots of them, pretty-please let us know! We’re taking requests! We’ll be happy to search our files and post ’em if we got ’em. You might come away disappointed, or you might not!

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Fan Expo Chicago 2023 Photos, Part 2 of 4: More Cosplay!

Mantis, Drax, Star-Lord and Kraglin

The stars of one of 2023’s best films so far, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3! (Full disclosure: Mantis and Drax — in Holiday Special gear! — are official Friends of MCC.)

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the second edition of Fan Expo Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. Last year they arose from the ashes of the late Wizard World Chicago, which we attended eleven times and whose already-shaky financial standings didn’t fare any better during the pandemic. Fan Expo threw such a great inauguration party, and invited such a staggering guest list this time that we agreed an encore was in order.

Before we attempt any real storytime, let’s do mandatory cosplay photos!

And now, the other half of all the cosplay pics taken by us two aging geeks whenever we weren’t trapped in lines or off resting our weary bones somewhere. Enjoy! Again!

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My Ten Favorite Spider-People in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen sitting upside-down on the underside of a ledge, looking out on New York City.

Two Spider-friends chatting about their tangled webs.

It isn’t writer’s block exactly, but jovially verbose movie entries that amount to “WOWIE WOW WOW WOW 11/10 no complaints!!!!1!!” take far longer to coalesce in my head than irritated MST3K-ish nitpickery of a more disappointing flick. Hence why Transformers: Rise of the Beasts got an entry before Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse did, even though I saw the latter first on opening weekend. Obviously I can’t simply not write about it, but it took days to turn “WOWIE WOW WOW WOW 11/10 no complaints!!!!1!!” into any kind of fun writing exercise. Hence: pointless listicle time! I haven’t churned out one of those in months.

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Yes, There Are Scenes During and After the “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” End Credits

Rocket mid-speech, surrounded by his friends' legs.

Guardians Origins: Rocket. This time, it’s fursonal.

Just as the Fast and the Furious saga proudly demonstrates found-family pop-culture franchises aren’t just for whitebread folks, James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy series has demonstrated they aren’t just for humans, either. Whether you’re a little-league space hero, the daughter of a genocidal madman, a 1950s kaiju, a funny-animal gunslinger, or some other kind of ill-formed misfit who’d never be invited to apply for Avengers membership (okay, maybe the Great Lakes Avengers), these losers gave us hope that we too might find the right motley crew out there who needs us on their team so we can all become all-stars with our own action figures.

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