Spider-man

The complaints about the Marvel Cinematic Universe are by now widely known. Their films follow predictable formulas and story beats. Characters become increasingly indistinguishable quip machines. The stakes are never high. The streaming content is overwhelmingly forgettable. Other than the death of Tony Stark onscreen and the sad passing of Chadwick Boseman offscreen, emotional moments are few and far between, as it's hard to care about characters when everything can be reset with a bit of multiverse mumbo jumbo. And then there's the problem of, well, as the Critical Drinker refers to it, THE MESSAGE. Expect a lot of that in the already twice-postponed production of The Marvels, girlbossing into theaters this winter.

Lady Gaga fans, unite in grief. Their idol — who was widely expected to win the Best Actress Oscar this year for her performance as the murderous Patrizia Reggiani in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci — has not even been nominated for the award. In her place are Kristen Stewart, Jessica Chastain and Nicole Kidman — who are recognized for playing real people, respectively Princess Diana, Tammy Faye Messner and Lucille Ball — as well as Oscar stalwarts Olivia Colman and Penélope Cruz. Any of them stands a decent chance of winning now that the Gaga threat has been removed. But this still represents the greatest volte-face in what is otherwise a largely predictable set of Academy Award nominations.

The box office news from earlier this December was mixed. The stupendous success of the latest Spider-Man sequel, No Way Home, indicated that fears of the Omicron variant have not deterred audiences from coming out in the millions: it grossed $260 million at the US box office and $600 million globally. But it also trampled other less franchise-friendly films. Guillermo del Toro’s new picture Nightmare Alley debuted to a dismal $3 million, and Steven Spielberg’s version of West Side Story will be one of the director’s greatest flops, having grossed a mere $18 million in the US so far. The chances of either film — expensively mounted period pieces from A-list directors — recouping their production budgets at the theater, let alone their advertising costs, is zero.

The teaser for Spider-Man: No Way Home, out this Christmas, which had a record number of 355 million views in the first 24 hours of online availability, delivers three minutes of thrills. Tom Holland is back, in the titular role, with his girlfriend from the previous Spidey movie, his best friend Ned, references to Mysterion, jokes from Benedict Cumberbatch as master wizard Dr Strange, plus engagement with that most playful of Marvel concepts, the multiverse. Bring in the multiverse, and anything, everything, is possible. Are you old enough to recall that moment in Dallas when the shooting of JR was revealed to be a dream? Well, the multiverse does all that, and some. Time is not a constant.

If there is one thing this cursed year of lockdown has been good for, it’s been video games. The right game — in a way that a box set cannot — will give you a sense of steady progress and achievement, a series of goals; and a world more forgiving and expansive than the four walls of your living room. My kids, for instance, have become very good indeed at Mario Kart Wii and have built vast empires in Minecraft; and I don’t dare look at my own total playing time on World of Warcraft.  With the prospect of the tier system continuing well into the new year, now is a good time to stock up on the best new goodies. The big news in gaming this autumn has been the release of the latest generation of consoles.