Ben Child

London

Freelance Writer at The Guardian

Film Critic and Writer at Freelance

Film critic and blogger. The Guardian's Week in Geek column and now on Yahoo! https://t.co/HjWJWNpqrF

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Articles

was Thunderbolts* always doomed at the box office?

2 weeks ago | msn.com | Ben Child

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
Heroic indifference: was Thunderbolts* always doomed at the box office?

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Ben Child

There’s no such thing as a sure thing in Hollywood. Just ask Marvel Studios – once the box office equivalent of a cashpoint duct-taped to a golden goose, now resembling a busted slot machine in Skegness.
Mark Hamill has finally ruled out a return as Luke Skywalker. Can Star Wars survive without him?

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Ben Child

Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker has been Star Wars’ ultimate backup plan for at least half a decade. The original trilogy has faded into the distance, and the movies set in that galaxy far, far away have become so poor in recent years that we’d all rather watch Andor. But there was always the option of plugging in Hamill – a sort of human Star Wars USB stick, primed to conjure up 1970s vibes as required. Not quite getting your fill of Force nostalgia?
Ryan Reynolds has pitched an ‘R-rated’ Star Wars. What would that look like?

4 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Ben Child

Take all the essential ingredients of Star Wars – samurais in space, adventure among the wookiees, aliens with backward syntax, evil cyborgs with a penchant for murder by telekinesis – then imagine George Lucas hadn’t given us all of that through a PG prism. This, it appears, is what Ryan Reynolds did when pitching to Disney. “I said, ‘Why don’t we do an R-rated Star Wars property?’” Reynolds told The Box Office podcast. “‘It doesn’t have to be overt, A+ characters.
are Marvel’s end-of-credits scenes still worth the wait?

1 month ago | msn.com | Ben Child

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
are Marvel’s end-of-credits scenes still worth the wait?

1 month ago | msn.com | Ben Child

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
Endgame ennui: are Marvel’s end-of-credits scenes still worth the wait?

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Ben Child

Let’s face it, hanging around to watch post- or mid-credits sequences is a pretty weird thing. The movie is over, we’ve all had our fill – of CGI skybeams, multiversal migraines and superheroes punching each other in the feelings – and it’s time to head out into the night to debate whether the film was brilliant, baffling or just a $250m trailer for the next one. But leave we cannot, because something monumental might just happen after the credits roll. Or during them. Or, increasingly, not at all.
James Gunn’s new Superman is more human than alien god - but can he still inspire awe?

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Ben Child

In the 1960s, Marvel comics made its name by dragging superheroes down to street level. Peter Parker worried about his homework. The Fantastic Four bickered like flatmates. Even the Hulk, a walking nuclear tantrum, was really just a green and muscular guy having a bad day. Over at DC, though, the heroes remained clean, polished and largely unbothered – moral titans gazing down from above, solving problems without ever really having any of their own.
The Thunderbolts* big twist means Marvel wants them to save the MCU. Are they serious?

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Ben Child

This article contains major spoilers, so do not read if you have not watched Thunderbolts*. There was always something deeply suspicious about that asterisk, and now the word is out. If you’ve been to see it during the past week, you’ll know that the motley crew of antiheroes and sometime superheroes led by Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova and David Harbour’s Red Guardian may well be the New Avengers. The problem is that even with the cat out of the proverbial bag, there’s something off here.
Has Marvel shot itself in the foot by bringing superfreak Sentry into Thunderbolts*?

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Ben Child

Is there ever a right time to introduce into your superhero universe a psychologically unstable god-being with the potential to sneeze a continent off the map? It is probably not when – 17 years in – you are being accused of having lost half your audience to superhero fatigue. But that’s exactly what Marvel is doing this weekend as Thunderbolts* brings us Sentry, quite possibly the freakiest superhero to ever grace the comic book publisher’s hallowed pages.