Fin: Marvel is in trouble, the president fears The Entity, and the many Tommy DeVitos

This week's notes column.

A bombshell Variety story this week looked at the sorry current state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The highlights: The movies aren’t sure things anymore, the arrest of Jonathan Majors has screwed up their next several years of movie plans, the planned Blade movie is in disarray, and there’s less of an appetite than assumed for several Disney+ MCU shows every year in addition to the movies.

Also, while the company’s visual effects workers are pushing to unionize, moviegoers are starting to notice that the effects in a lot of the recent movies and shows have looked awful- more a symptom of rushed deadlines and overworking than anything else.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, released earlier this year, was probably the worst MCU release to date, and no one seems all that excited about The Marvels, which is set for release next week. There’s even talk of bringing back Robert Downey, Jr., and Scarlett Johansson for some future movie, despite their characters being dead.

Three big takeaways from the story:

1. They should just go ahead and recast Jonathan Majors. A no-brainer of no-brainers.

2. At this point, hasn’t Marvel had enough time? The MCU’s reign at the top of popular culture has lasted about 15 years, that’s a really long time, and it was never going to last forever. Why not give something else a shot?

3. This quote, about the troubled Blade development, has gotten the most attention of anything in the piece:

One person familiar with the script permutations says the story at one point morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons. Blade was relegated to the fourth lead, a bizarre idea considering that the studio had two-time Oscar winner Ali on board.  

That just strikes me as… almost certainly not true (and a writer who worked on the project says he doesn’t remember that part). Was this an idea that was once brought up in a meeting? Maybe. But it sounds an awful lot like the sort of interpretation someone who heard about it third-hand might have had, especially if that person happened to be an anti-wokeness zealot. That does sound exactly like the sort of thing an anti-wokeness zealot would make up in their head, does it not?

Remember the story that an executive had once proposed that Julia Roberts play Harriet Tubman? It was always very thin — a screenwriter was told that an unnamed executive had said it in a meeting — and the same is true of the Blade story. Then again, there was one franchise movie in the last ten years in which the title character was sidelined for much of the film, with female characters taking center stage instead. That movie? Mad Max: Fury Road, one of the best films of the last decade.

I do, however, strongly disagree with the MCU fanboy consensus about The Marvels, which amounts to, “Girls are annoying, and Brie Larson is a girl.”

Biden’s Tom Cruise-driven A.I. fears

Earlier this week, President Biden issued an executive order on what the White House described as “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence.” Also this week, a White House aide talked, also to Variety, about what brought that about.

In addition to fake A.I. images of himself, Biden was inspired by a viewing of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which was screened at Camp David. That film, released this summer, featured an evil A.I., known as The Entity, which is capable of taking over financial accounts, weapons systems, and most other functions of government.

“If he hadn’t already been concerned about what could go wrong with AI before that movie, he saw plenty more to worry about,” Deputy White House Chief of Staff Bruce Reed said in the story. (Reed, in another life, wrote a 2008 campaign blog for Slate, in which he frequently railed against Mitt Romney, often comparing him to Guy Smiley- “there is no joy in Mittville—Guy Smiley has dropped out.”)

It’s probably good that Biden saw Dead Reckoning and not the recent movie The Creator. Not only is the former movie much better, but the latter took the weird view that fears about A.I. are overblown, that A.I.-driven robots are worthy of civil rights, and that America is wrong to worry so much about A.I., while China has it right.

After watching Dead Reckoning, hopefully, Biden has also been discouraged from visiting the Austrian Alps and attempting to land his motorcycle on a moving train.

One, two, many Tommy DeVitos

Following an injury last Sunday, the New York Giants brought in a rookie quarterback named Tommy DeVito, who happens to be a New Jersey native. Most of the jokes about his name, for some reason, referenced Danny DeVito. But isn’t everyone aware of the extended history of the “Tommy DeVito” name, right there in northern New Jersey?

There was a real-life Tommy DeVito, born in New Jersey in 1928, who was a longtime member of the Four Seasons (he died in 2020, at age 92.) The other famous Tommy DeVito was Joe Pesci’s character in Goodfellas. It’s not a coincidence, either- Joe Pesci was a lifelong friend of the Four Seasons Tommy DeVito, and when Goodfellas was made in 1990, his character was given that name as a homage (the real mobster was named Tommy DeSimone.)

The Comeback noticed, with a story headlined “Giants fans celebrate new quarterback’s name.” What were the odds, that the name “Tommy DeVito” would have a more multifaceted history in New Jersey, than the name “Daniel Jones”?

This year in “tainted Halloween candy”

From newsrooms to Halloween parties, I’ve become somewhat notorious in recent years for my insistence that stories about poisoned or tainted Halloween candy are never true. Two Halloweens ago, I took to the Philadelphia Inquirer to make this argument, and I spoke to Joel Best, the University of Delaware professor who has been studying this topic for more than 40 years.

I was beginning to get the sense that this freakout was beginning to dissipate, finally (remember last year’s panic about “Rainbow Fentanyl?”) There were quite a few pre-Halloween debunkings this year, including by the Washington Post, which interviewed Best as well. So I took a look at the headlines on November 1, and…

I’ll be sure to check in next week for the debunkings…

This week’s writings

This week, I (mostly) wrapped up my coverage of the Philadelphia Film Festival, although other reviews will trickle out in the coming weeks. Here, I reviewed Saltburn, my favorite film of the festival, as well as several documentaries from the fest (American Symphony, Silver Dollar Road, Copa 71, and Break the Game), and Sly, another documentary that hits Netflix today. And I looked back at two older films, The War Room and Shattered Glass, on their anniversaries.

Elsewhere, I reviewed Priscilla for Splice Today and Milli Vanilli for Living Life Fearless. For 19FortyFive, I talked about Trump being old too, a strange exchange between Fox News and the White House press secretary that pissed people off across the political spectrum, and John Fetterman’s complete break with his left flank.

And as I mentioned last week, I covered the Jewish Priorities Conference at the Weitzman Museum here in Philadelphia. My report for the Jewish Exponent is online now.

Next week: An essay on what this time of year is like for me, a look back at a favorite Aughts comedy, a review of a documentary about a comedy icon, and another review of a festival centerpiece. As always, thank you for your support.