My Ten Best films of 2022

 

In an especially busy year, I haven't been able to catch as many new films as I would have liked, nor find time to fully review all the ones I have seen. Still, I did manage to see a fair few, including some that really stood out. Here, then, are my choices for the ten best films of 2022. (Alphabetically to begin with, with my choice for the film of the year at the end. Details I consider too spoilerific I've hidden, you can just highlight them to read them.)

The Batman

(Matt Reeves)

I did manage to review this one when it came out. Long story short, this film justified rebooting the Batman franchise yet again with a powerful and impactful take on the hero and his rogue's gallery, with excellent performances from Robert Pattinson, Zoe Kravitz, Paul Dano and and almost unrecognisable Colin Farrell as the Penguin. Naturally, there will be a sequel, but whether it can have the impact of this scathing attack on male obsession remains to be seen. Flawed, certainly, but one of the best movies to come out of DC/WB in a long time.

Where to watch: available as part of a NOW TV subscription, and available to buy on DVD/Blu-Ray, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play and YouTube.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

(Ryan Coogler)

Following up 2018's seminal Black Panther was never going to be an easy job, but to do so after Chadwick Boseman's tragically early death seemed impossible. Marvel's decision to focus on his legacy rather than recast the T'Challa is a wise one, and while Letitia Wright's Shuri was an obvious choice for his successor as Black Panther, she really does elevate this film from a solid sci-fi actioner to something really special.

She's ably supported by Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira and the great Angela Bassett, who all give effortlessly classy performances, and while Michaela Coel and Florence Kasumba are underused, it's a great MCU debut for Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams. There's a risk with these films that putting the blocks in place for the next run of stories will overwhelm the one being told now, and Riri is here partly to set up Armor Wars and Ironheart, but she's is a perfect foil for Shuri, two engineering geniuses who happen to be young black women, but from vastly different backgrounds.

It's Tenoch Huerta Mejia who perhaps has the hardest job as Namor. While the mutant is one of Marvel's oldest and most important characters, he's also one who really skirts the line between super and silly, and it's to the credit of Huerta and Coogler as director that a man with tiny wings on his feet remains a serious and formidable presence on the big screen. While changing Namor's origin from Atlantis to an offshoot of the Mayan civilisation doubtless owes more to not wanting to be compared to closely to Aquaman, it works thematically, with both Wakanda and Talokan representing fantastic versions of cultures threatened by western imperialism. (Wonderfully, Huerta couldn't swim before this, learning specifically for the role.)

Martin Freeman's Everett Ross still seems out of place, and the film is at least half an hour too long, but it remains the best comicbook movie of the year, a thrilling and visually stunning story of two vastly powerful forces meeting explosively.

Where to watch: still out in cinemas, and coming to Disney Plus on 20^th January.

Elvis

(Baz Lurhman)

One of two singer biopics in the list, although they couldn't be more different. Elvis sees Baz Lurhman regain his standing as the master of musical spectacle, but more importantly, restores the life of Elvis Presley to the legendary status it deserves. Presley's death long after his prime, and the decades of cultural familiarity since, has left him as an archaic figure for many, and a joke for many more. The film puts him back into the spotlight to remind us just how exceptionally talented he was, and how important he was to the history of popular music.

Austin Butler is truly exceptional in the lead role, and is definitely one to watch (a tenner says he's cast as Clark Kent in the latest Superman reboot), but holding much of the film together is Tom Hanks in a truly unforgettable turn as the self-serving Colonel Parker. While Presley comes off a little too innocent here – laying the blame for his addiction troubles purely at Parker's feet is unrealistic, and the film rapidly skirts over his preference for much younger girls – ultimately it's a largely accurate and heartbreaking look at one young man so swept up in his own success that he couldn't see how he was being exploited.

The decision to have Butler sing his own songs, untouched, in the early scenes, then to very gradually blend in Presley's own voice as the film progresses, was an ingenious one. The final scene, where Butler finally shifts into Presley himself in his final performance, is powerful.

Where to watch: available to buy on most streaming services, including Amazon Prime Video, YouTube and Google Play, and out on DVD/BluRay.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

(Rian Johnson)

2019's Knives Out was a joy, and from the outset Johnson had hoped to continue Benoit Blanc's adventures in successive films. Setting it during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic should have made the film feel dated (a testament to our ability to pretend the damned thing isn't actually still happening), but by luck it's been released perfectly in time with Elon Musk's catastrophic self-own, making this tale of billionaire idiocy absolutely on point.

Edward Norton is a perfect choice for Miles Blon, the Musk-like antagonist, not least because apparently very few people actually like working with the guy. As obnoxious as Miles is, his hangers on are somehow worse, particularly men's rights activist Duke (the ubiquitous Dave Bautista) and the near mindless model and influencer Birdie (Kate Hudson). We've also got brilliant turns from Kathryn Hahn and Leslie Odom Jr, who play somewhat more balanced characters, but still just as amoral as the others. Janelle Monae is even more impressive, but I really won't spoilt why here, as this is a compelling mystery and to give any more way would spoil it. It's not quite on the level of the original Knives Out, but it has a re-watchability that means I'm certain to revisit it.

Daniel Craig, as well as being the best Bond ever (no, I will not change my mind), is a truly brilliant character actor. Benoit Blanc is an irresistibly watchable character, an Craig is clearly having a ball playing him. Netflix have bought the rights to one more Blanc film, but I could see the character continuing for years, or at least as long as the current vogue for murder mysteries lasts.

Where to watch: available on Netflix with subscription, with a limited cinema release coming.

Nope

(Jordan Peele)

Peele's third horror film, and perhaps the most divisive, not for its content but its style. Yes, it's undeniably slow to get going, but every element is so essential to the story and its themes that it's essential to pay close attention. Bizarrely, some commenters have struggled to identify the themes of the film or the need to include the flashbacks to the brutal events with the chimpanzee in the TV studio. The major theme of the film – that of exploitation and underestimation of animals – is so clearly written that it seems impossible to miss.

While there are other themes involved, such as the racial element, and the power of media exposure illustrated by various characters' obsession with getting footage of the creature, it's this that is the most essential. Animals, be it OJ's horses, the suddenly violent chimpanzee Gordy, or the mysterious and unearthly Jean Jacket, must be treated with respect and understanding, and to assume they can simply be used without such care leads inevitably to tragedy – for the human handlers and bystanders, and the animals themselves.

More than that, though, the film is an ingenious take on the UFO phenomenon, albeit not an entirely original one. Whether Jean Jacket is a previously unknown terrestrial animal (which seems to be the intention of Peele according to interviews) or an extraterrestrial organism (which was my interpretation – it's nature as a cloud-living creature and the prominently named “Jupiter's Claim” convinced me it's Jovian in origin) doesn't really matter.

Aside from a couple of moments, Peele has managed to create a horror film that is both full of spectacle and truly disquieting without being gory or over-the-top. It also works as a truly modern neo-western, with a thick atmosphere of isolation and hopelessness from the get-go. Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun and Brandon Perea are all excellent in their roles.

Where to watch: available to buy on DVD/BluRay, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Google Play and Curzon home cinema.

Pinocchio

(Guillermo del Toro)

There are, somehow, three adaptations of The Adventures of Pinocchio out this year, and while I'm sure to watch both the Disney remake and the Russian animation at some point, this is the one that caught my attention and had to be considered a must-see. You know that any film from del Toro will be a visual extravaganza and a chilling fantasy, so yes, to some extent you know exactly what you're getting from a film marketed as Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. Yet the directions he has chosen remain surprising, with the story shifted from the late 19^th century to interwar Fascist Italy to provide a historical lesson that has uncomfortable implications for the way politics is moving today.

The voice cast is excellent. Gregory Mann is a charming, mischievous Pinocchio, with David Bradley giving us a flawed but sympathetic Geppetto. Ewan McGregor gives a solidly entertaining performance as the cricket (Sebastian J. Cricket in this version), who is also our narrator. It wouldn't be a del Toro film without Ron Perlman turning up, but the most surprising casting is Cate Blanchett as abused performing monkey Spazzatura (“garbage” in Italian, the poor thing). She gets one chance to speak, as Spazzatura performs through puppets, and otherwise communicates in screams and grunts. It's a stop motion film that stars a puppet and other characters that talk through puppets, which has a certain surreal genius to it.

Tilda Swinton is haunting as the two main supernatural beings in the film, the Wood Sprite and Death. The former is still the blue fairy we'd expect, but rendered more as a terrifyingly Biblical angel, while Death is sort of sphinx or chimaera, who has many meetings with Pinocchio as he repeatedly dies and is resurrected. It's a quite astonishingly dark take on the story (although less terrifying than the Disney classic's donkey transformation scene), but one that is ultimately very beautiful and hopeful.

Where to watch: the cinematic run seems to be over, so on Netflix with subscription.

Prey

(Dan Trachtenburg)

I've never been the biggest fan of the original Predator, brilliantly done through it is; it's altogether too macho for my tastes. So this reworking of the central concept appeals to me greatly, with Amber Midthunder captivatingly cast as the Comanche hunter Naru. Having a woman in the central role gives the film an entirely different feel and verve to the previous instalments (including AVP, which was really just a huge videogame cutscene), and the period setting means that a forty-year-old franchise manages to feel fresh again. It's not the first time this has been tried (there are some extraordinary fanfilms out there), but it represents a different direction for the series on film proper.

Trachtenberg's direction is taught and nerve-wracking, and there is some truly gorgeous cinematography. Comanche/Blackfeet producer Jhane Myers was responsible for ensuring much of the historical accuracy of the script, and the resulting film is an intelligent discussion of traditional gender roles as well as the brutal treatment of Native populations by alien invaders (not just the Predator, but the dreaded French). Notably, this is the first feature film to be released in Comanche. Plus, there are some satisfyingly gruesome kills and a great update on the Predator design.

Where to watch: available to buy on DVD/BluRay, or to stream on Disney Plus with subscription.

Six Years Gone

(Warren Dudley)

Among all the big names and blockbusters, there's still room for indie films to make a huge impact. Six Years Gone might well have passed me by if I didn't have a fleeting connection to its star, Veronica Jean Trickett (my partner Suzanne was in the short film The World Can Wait with her). Trickett has risen from such shorts to starring in this multi-award-winning, Cannes Award Trophy-nominated drama, and she gives an astonishingly strong performance.

Written and directed by Warren Dudley, Six Years Gone is the unflinching story of Carrie, whose daughter disappears from outside school on day. Six years later, Carrie is in emotional and financial ruin. While the early scenes are a little clunky in terms of exposition and dialogue, the film rapidly tightens up to become a disturbingly real insight into loss and desperation. Carrie's life unravels as her situation worsens in a chain reaction of impossible choices, but there is, ultimately, some hope to be found. Powerful, upsetting and moving, largely down to Trickett's performance.

Where to watch: available to buy on Amazon Prime Video, YouTube and Google Play (only £3.49 in the UK).

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

(Eric Appel)

Unusually bankrolled and released by Roku, Weird is a biopic presented the only way that Weird Al could do it: as an ingenious parody. Eric Appel co-writing, Yankovic has done something genuinely clever: taken as many liberties with the truth as acclaimed films such as Rocket Man and draw attention to them. The result is baffling and hilarious. Daniel Radcliffe, who has grown into the choice actor for weird roles, is perfect in the lead, while Evan Rachel Wood is a great choice for Madonna. The singer, who actually did suggest that Yankovic parody “Like a Virgin” with “Like a Surgeon,” has been the source of Weird Al rumours, including suggestions that she disapproved of his work and tried to get the single pulled. It seems fitting, then, that this film has led to a spate of internet searches to see if she and Yankovic really did have a relationship, when in reality they barely know each other. Madonna's real life opinions on being made into both the love interest and villain of this film remain unknown.

Where to watch: only via the Roku Channel, so you'll need a Roku device. However, there's no subscription needed. Alternatively, Weird Al himself has mentioned that there might be a TORRENT of alternative channels on the DOWNLOad.

Finally, my film of the year:

Everything Everywhere All at Once

(Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)

That rarest of things: a genuinely original film. While the multiverse is, of course, the in thing at the moment, Everything Everywhere is the first film I've seen that really runs with the concept and does something worthwhile with it. As much as I enjoyed Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Spider-Man: No Way Home (which would have made the list if had been released a few weeks later), their use of the multiverse was primarily as a source of fan-pleasing in-jokes. Nothing wrong with that, of course, and No Way Home in particular married it to a meaningful story, but it's shallow water compared to this.

Michelle Yeoh continues to show that she's a true star of the modern era of film-making, with a subtle and very real performance as the unwitting heroine Evelyn combined with some spectacular martial arts. Originally it was conceived by the Daniels as a vehicle for Jackie Chan, and yes, I can totally imagine that, but he wouldn't have given it the depth that Yeoh does. And how amazing to have a sixty-year-old woman as the lead in an action movie?

It's also a joy to see Ke Huy Quan back on screen after so long, with a performance so assured you'd never think he took a decades-long break from acting. Really standing out is Stephanie Hsu as Evelyn's daughter Joy and her nihilistic alter ego Jobu Tupak, an absolutely stunning performance that elevates the long series of confrontations into something truly special. It's a treat to see Jamie Lee Curtis again, in a very different role to what we're used to – at 64 she's now allowed to be old, grim and frumpy, and she's still allowed a romantic subplot. Well, one iteration is anyway.

The film is a wonderful examination of Asian American identity, family dynamics, the agonising loss of hopes and dreams and deeply philosophical questions of reality and identity. It's also a surreal, truly unpredictable action comedy, which goes beyond the normal twists of parallel universe fiction to present some unforgettable images. You won't get hotdog fingers world out of your head for a while. A brilliant, affirming, hilarious, smutty, cosmic, ingenious adventure, an absolute must-see.

Where to watch: available to buy on DVD/BluRay, and on YouTube, Google Play and Curzon home cinema. It's currently included as part of an Amazon Prime Video subscription, but that could change to a paid ,purchase-only option at any time.

Marvel Review Round-Up: Eternals

So, although I've been watching all of Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as it's been released, I've not found time to sit down and review the films. Having just got back from watching Eternals, and with Black Widow and soon Shang-Chi up on Disney Plus for a rewatch, I'm going to work my way backwards along the films over the next few days. (Probably won't bother with What If? because, although it was great fun, I haven't much to say about it.)

Eternals has received some very mixed reviews, some absolutely scathing, others glowing, and I can completely understand that. It feels both very different to the rest of Marvel's films, yet at the same time just another in a long line of superhero films. The decision to hire Chloe Zhao to direct (and largely write) the film was an interesting one, and the greater creative freedom that Disney/Marvel are giving their directors can only be a good thing for the franchise's future (one of the better decisions that DC/WB made in its attempt to rival the MCU was to let directors have considerable creative control, and Marvel is finally following suit). There's a much slower, more melancholic feel to Eternals than to any previous MCU production and this gives helps it stand out. A film embracing the truly mythic side of Marvel's canon is overdue, with characters who have lived for millennia and literally world-shattering events granting a sense of scale that we really haven't seen before. The huge range of different location shoots helps as well (although I was pleased to see the film start in London's Natural History Museum, one of my favourite places). 

Yet it still feels somehow more of the same. Your mileage may vary, but I'd say the modern era of the superhero film began in 2000 with X-Men, although you could certainly push it back further if you wanted. Still, I'd say that was the start of the current run of hugely successful film properties based on, largely Marvel, comic series. That was twenty-one years ago. Even if you don't look further back to the many popular superhero films of the nineties, eighties and even seventies, that's a long time with a lot of movies packed in. The Eternals, in spite of being the alleged inspirations for various mythical heroes and gods, come across as just another superhero team. You've got the super-fast one, the zappy one, a couple with magical-type powers, the one with superstrength, flight and laser-eyes, who's explicitly likened to Superman... While some have more interesting and less common powers, notably Phastos who can build anything and create mechanisms from nowhere, it's still mostly stuff we've seen time and time again. 

Likewise, the fight scenes, although impressive, are the most standard Marvel the film gets, and while they're visually interesting, their style and magical graphics look too much like those scene in both Shang-Chi and Doctor Strange to stand apart. I get it, this is what magic looks like in the MCU, but could we not have some more visual variety? When fighting the Deviants, reimagined here as elaborate but mostly uninspired monsters, Eternals falls into the trap of looking like a video game, something that the MCU had largely managed to avoid so far. 

Which is a shame, because there's some wonderful stuff in here. The cast is both star-studded and truly impressive, while also being proudly diverse. Unlike the comics, which had largely white male Eternals in the main line-up, the film has a cast that involves people from various ethnicities, equally split down the sexes but largely focused on the women. We have a deaf actor in the form of the wonderful Lauren Ridloff, and finally some prominent gay characters in the MCU, and while half of this is getting cut for Middle Eastern and Asian releases (where they haven't banned it altogether) at least they're doing something. And look, this is, as far as I'm aware, the first time we've had Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie together in a film, which is an incredible thing in itself. Both are absolutely brilliant, of course, still incredibly beautiful and playing powerful, noble characters who push the narrative in interesting directions.

Gemma Chan is very good as Sersi, although I feel she has relatively little to work with for the first half of the film. Once things kick up a notch she really gets to take a bit of the role. Oddly, she's already been in the MCU, painted blue as Minn-Erva in Captain Marvel, and clearly the PTB were impressed with her seeing that they brought her back so quickly. It's good to see a solidly strong actor finally get a major movie role. Standing out is Lia McHugh as Sprite, fifteen but playing someone eternally twelve/thirteen years old, but giving the role more depth and pathos than many adult actors I've seen in a long time. Whereas everyone in the cast is strong, not many of them really give the impression they've lived for seven thousand years; McHugh, in spite of being the youngest, manages it best. 

I particularly liked Don Lee as Gilgamesh, reinterpreting the legendary warrior in an entirely new way, and Bryen Tyree Henry as Phastos, the Enternals equivalent of Hephaestus, but my favourites are easily Kingo and his valet, Karun. Kumail Nanjiani is hilarious as the Eternal-cum-moviestar, and Harish Patel provides a much needed human touch. Obviously we're going to get sequels to this, but I really want to see a prequel with Kingo and Karun building a Bollywood career in the 1950s. Richard Madden is suitably inscrutable as Ikaris, but there's surprisingly little of Kit Harington as Dane. Hats off to them for resisting the urge to drop in some Game of Thrones jokes, especially when they were both there talking to a character called Sersi. Harington is very likeable, though, and the film sets up his inevitable return as the Black Knight, with a whole plotline that runs along in the background unseen. 

That's probably, though, where the film struggles the most. While the shout-outs to the MCU are some of my favourite moments, they feel weirdly detached from the rest of the film. Had this been entirely separate, it would have stood on its own merits more, but as it is, it feels like an uneasy insert into the existing continuity. The reason given for not interfering Thanos's assault on reality is slender. Sure, the Eternals have their prime directive which prevents them from interfering in human conflicts, but this falls down on numerous fronts. One, we see them interfering in other conflicts in human history, even though they agonise over it. Two, an alien invasion is scarcely an internal conflict. Three, they talk aboit how they helped Odin fight the Jotnar, which proves the point of number two. And four, gratingly at least for any fans of the comics, Thanos is a bloody Eternal so why the hell wouldn't they get involved with that? It's a small thing in relation with the film it itself, but it makes it hard to accept as part of the overall story.

Really, this is Eternals all over. There's so much in there that's good, but it doesn't quite gel together, finally giving us something that's enjoyable but ultimately unsatisfying for reasons it's hard to articulate. It's certainly too long, some of the dialogue is spectacularly clunky, but the real problems are deeper than that. It's a shame, because there's a lot to recommend it, but ultimately it's an also-ran in the MCU.

REVIEW: Loki Season One

Loki is a far better series than it has any right to be, even considering that they have the endlessly entertaining Tom Hiddleston as their star. For all the twists and turns, it's ultimately quite predictable, and is hugely derivative of any number of things that came before. What you'll mostly see as an influence depends on your fandom and reading material. Of course, for me, I couldn't escape how much this was like a high budget Doctor Who, riffing on such concepts as individuals who exist across different incarnations, a vastly powerful civilisation that rules time, a villainous time traveller who begins to learn redemption... It's all there, but it's not like Doctor Who was ever wildly original with much of its material anyway. No, much of this goes way back to the early annals of sci-fi, with huge debts to Asimov's The End of Eternity, Norton's The Crossroads of Time, and Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself, to name but a few. And of course, everything in here is based, to a greater or lesser degree, on Marvel's comics. 

But originality isn't all it's cracked up to be. This takes the time-travelling, dimension-hopping melting pot of influences and mixes it up into a new combination, full of colour, beauty and pathos. Derivative as they are, the Time Lords Masters Bureau Variance Authority are a brilliant concept, rendered with style and wit. Loki's had his journey from troubled prince to supervillain to uncertain hero before, but here it plays out completely differently. It's never anything other than hugely entertaining, even in the somewhat slow, rather flawed final episode. Having the restraint to keep the series down to a mere six episodes helps keeping everything moving and never gives us a chance to get bored. 

This has all standard elements of the MCU: highly choreographed fighting, absurd plot contrivances, spectacular visual effects that get way to busy by the end of thing. Yet, the MCU's most important element, the real key to its success, is its characters, their relationships, and the actors who portray them. This is perhaps why the last episode feels like a bit of a cop-out, introducing as it does a major new character without earning his presence, even if that in itself was also predictable. Still, there's a fine balancing act in play here, between the small and intimate and the vast and cosmic. This series sets out the scope of Phase Four in a way that WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier only hinted at. Everything in the first three phases is revealed to be nothing more than a sliver of a huge universe. The first episode knocks the stuffing out of Loki by proving to him that the TVA is an organisation of phenomenal power, hammering it home with the revelation that minor agents use Infinity Stones as paperweights. 

I had assumed, before the series began, that we'd be seeing a return to the outright villainous Loki of The Avengers, given that this variant had jumped from immediately after those events. While we do get that for a spell, it doesn't last long. This Loki's redemption is fast-tracked, the sheer futility of his "glorious purpose" being shown to him by the catastrophic consequences of his actions in the main timeline. More so, however, it's his relationships with the people he meets during his bizarre quest that lead him to change. In Mobius, Loki finds his first genuine friend, someone who has no time for his God of Mischief shit but all the time for him as a man, if he ever allows himself to be one. Mobius is beautifully realised by Own Wilson - who ever thought we'd get a subtle, understated performance like this out of him? Mobius goes on his own journey of discovery, of course, with Loki's presence being the catalyst. The tenuous friendship he shares with Ravonna Renslayer - the absurdly over-the-top name for a quietly intense and dangerous character, played perfectly by Gugu Mbatha-Raw - is at once touching but clearly can't survive his new friendship with Loki and the revelations it brings.

Hiddleston's performance is heartfelt and affecting, hilarious and tragic at turns, and he's come on years from his performance on the first Thor, and he was pretty damned excellent then. The real hit of this series, though, is Sophia di Martino. Sylvie could easily have been a slim, contrived character. A female alternative of Loki, written as essentially a combination of Lady Loki and the second Enchantress from the comics, she rises above the gimmicky character she could have been and becomes a fascinating character in her own right. di Martino's fluid, emotionally wrought performance makes it, along with her chemistry with Hiddleston, but she's an intelligently written character with a far more rational motive than Hiddleston's Loki. She presents in a very different way, too, with di Martino using her gently northern accent as a distinct contrast to Hiddleston's posh RP. Her downtrodden survivalist character is a world away from the Asgardian prince, and her more down-to-earth style completely different to the Etonian old boy's superiority-based characterisation. And yet, the design, writing and performance show similarities throughout, so you can absolutely believe they're two versions of the same person. Again, the Doctor Who similarities are obvious. And a blonde, northern female time traveller from a race of cosmic beings... it's hard not to see Sylvie as better-realised version of the Thirteenth Doctor.

The fourth episode ends, of course, with the fabulous cliffhanger of Loki deposited abruptly at the end of time, faced with four other variants of himself. We're verging more on DC territory here, embracing the concept of the multiverse and endless versions of familiar characters. DC/WB have, of course, pretty much cornered the market in this sort of thing on screen lately, with the Arrowverse's huge crossover events on the CW, culminating on Crisis on Infinite Earths, but this crisis of various Lokis comes close. The writers, headed by Michael Waldron, wring it for all the pathos it's worth but happily embrace the absurdity of it all. Having Richard E. Grant, looking more animated than he has in years, portraying Classic Loki (a perfect recreation of his early comics look and persona but actually prime Loki's alternative future), is a masterstroke, but let's not forget the rest: Jack Veal as Kid Loki, being the only one who successfully killed Thor, is bound to be back in some capacity (Young Avengers on the horizon?); DeObia Oparei as the still-villainous but otherwise Thor-like Boastful Loki; and everyone's favourite, Alligator Loki. The only thing more delightful than the existence of Alligator Loki is the bit of trivia that the rest of them acted alongside a cuddly toy before the CGI was inserted in post-production.

We also have the face-off with President Loki and sundry other variants, clearly inspired by this moment from The Mighty Thor series, but it's the quieter interactions between Lokis that tells us the most about their character. Of course, Loki has always been a fluid character, in both the comics and the original Norse mythology. It's only right that the writers embraces this - there are few other characters in the MCU who could've withstood the approach in this series. Pretty much it's only Spider-Man (that's got to be the only person with more variants than Loki, right?) Playing with Loki's sexuality and gender is all part of the parcel. With crushing inevitability, some people are furious at a brief line suggesting Loki is bisexual, apparently blissfully unaware that he was completely fluid in sexuality and gender in mythology. He fucked a horse, for crying out loud. Alligator Loki doesn't seem so wild now. Of course, it might have had more impact if they'd had Loki share a romance with another male variant of himself, but we can't have everything.

Loki, Sylvie and Mobius are the centre of the series, but there are other interesting characters involved too. There's a clear opportunity for some fascinating stories developing from the revelations about Renslayer, and the turncoat time soldier Hunter B-15, who becomes something more interesting than she first appears as performed by Wunmi Mosaku. There's potentially a lot more that could be done with Sasha Lane's damaged Hunter C-20, and we need more Miss Minutes. In fact, we need more Tara Strong in any capacity.

After everything, the final episode is both a huge event and a bit of a damp squib. There were only ever two likely candidates for the identity of He Who Remains. The obvious one, for those not versed in the comics but watching the actual show, was another Loki variant. The other, for those of us steeped in comics lore, was Kang the Conqueror. This is who we got, although they never quite come out and say his name yet, but there we go. Jonatahn Majors gives it his all, although he dies just in time as his relentless OTT-larking about was on the verge of becoming intolerable. When he returns as Kang proper in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, it's likely he'll give a very different performance. While setting up the new big bad for the franchise is an understandable move, his presence in the story feels arbitrary in the way that another Loki variant wouldn't have.

Nonetheless, the ending, while predictable as ever, is a perfect cliffhanger. With the multiverse well and truly reestablished and allowed to run riot, history itself in the firing line and potentially infinite realities to explore, the MCU can expand into unknown territory. We're already expecting to see elements of this explored in Quantumania, Spider-Man: No Way Home and, most of all, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, which will bring back both Loki and Wanda. Where Sylvie will come into this remains to be seen, but given a second season of Loki is guaranteed, we haven't seen the last of her. Or indeed, anyone: there's no character that now can't be brought back in one way or another. It doesn't get more comic-booky than that.

 

Review: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

 SPOILERS for this one... I've given you a week, but if you're not caught up, don't read on.

REVIEW: WandaVision

 There's no way to review this one without considerable SPOILERS. Go away and watch it, if you're in any way inclined but somehow haven't done so yet. I recommend it.