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      ‘Black Widow’ Star David Harbour Loves Being a Big-Screen Loser

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      The actor talks about his roles as a failed superhero in the new Marvel blockbuster and as a milquetoast accountant in Steven Soderbergh’s “No Sudden Move.”This article contains spoilers for the films “Black Widow” and “No Sudden Move.”It’s never a particularly good time to be a loser, but it’s an excellent moment to be David Harbour, who embodies misbegotten characters so fully in his latest movies.Harbour, who may be best known as the reluctantly heroic police chief Jim Hopper on Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” can currently be seen in “Black Widow,” the Marvel movie directed by Cate Shortland that opened over the weekend. In it, he plays Alexei, a Russian super-soldier who formerly led a thrilling life as the costumed champion Red Guardian. Now confined to a wintry prison where he has become feral and overweight, all he can do is reminisce about good old days that may not have happened as he remembers them. That is, until his rescue by Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), the spies he raised as his own daughters.Alexei is the latest in a series of strangely compelling deadbeats for Harbour. He also appears in Steven Soderbergh’s new HBO Max thriller, “No Sudden Move,” as Matt Wertz, a milquetoast accountant drawn into a criminal enterprise that’s well out of his league.And these are precisely the kinds of characters that Harbour loves to play. As he explained in an interview on Thursday: “Winners are great, and we like them, rah-rah. But to me, the beauty of human beings is in the flesh and the failures. We’re all frail.”Having performed over the years in Broadway productions of “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “The Coast of Utopia” as well as in films like “Brokeback Mountain” and “Revolutionary Road,” Harbour called his current renaissance “another step in a very even-keeled, slow trajectory, which I like.”Now 46 years old and married to the pop singer Lily Allen, Harbour said he was happier to have found success at this stage of his life. If he’d had this much attention as a younger man, Harbour said: “Oh God, that would be miserable. It took me so long to cultivate an artistic voice. If I had people judging me so early about whether or not they liked what I did, I wouldn’t be able to survive that.”Speaking via video from New Orleans, Harbour talked further about the making of “Black Widow” and “No Sudden Move,” his offbeat influences and the comfort of working with Soderbergh during a pandemic. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Harbour with Scarlett Johansson, left, and Florence Pugh in “Black Widow.”Jay Maidment/Marvel/DisneyIs there a story behind how you were cast in “Black Widow”?It’s oddly pedestrian. I have friends who tested for “Guardians of the Galaxy,” who talked about a top-secret lair and getting sides [dialogue pages] and then they burn them. My agent said Cate Shortland wants to meet you for a movie she’s doing. He didn’t even know what it was about. I sat down with her, and she said, “I’m doing this ‘Black Widow’ movie for Marvel with Scarlett Johansson.” And then she proceeded to pitch my character as this dude who’s big and violent with tattoos and gold teeth and also needs you to like his jokes. She pitched me these incredible contradictions, and we talked about all these family dramedies with desperate people — movies like “The Savages” and Ricky Gervais on “The Office.” And I was like, hell yes, on so many levels.Please, elaborate on the Ricky Gervais connection.It’s just that he’s so desperately insecure, and that insecurity manifests itself in boastfulness. I love people like this. He now has such deep regret and emotional guilt, but he can’t feel any of those things. So all he does is exist on his sociopathic charm and his need for validation. Someone like Hopper [in “Stranger Things”] has guilt, but it’s so internal, whereas he’s loud in every way. Smelly and sweaty and big and hairy. So cringey, as the kids say.Is it flattering to be told by a director that she sees you as this person?I have such an odd ego. I am always flattered, and then I look back years later and I go, what were you flattered by? I’m sort of an outcast myself. Growing up, I was, certainly. And I’ve always wanted to act because I wanted people to feel less alone. Even when I’d play villains, people would say, “There was a way that you humanized the experience so that we understood someone, as opposed to judging them.” So that’s what flatters me — you’re using me as an artist to understand this deeply troubled and confusing individual that a less capable person would make a mockery of. I maybe proceed to do both. But I can hopefully give you some understanding of him.Had you ever worked with Johansson, Pugh or Rachel Weisz, who play the other members of your makeshift family?I had never even met them. But then we had rehearsals for about two weeks, which is rare on a movie this size, and we really did take on those family dynamics, right from the get-go. I did feel like Rachel was the woman I was meant to be with — no offense to Lily Allen, because she is the actual person I was meant to be with — but it did feel like Melina and Red Guardian had something beautiful. Scarlett felt like the oldest child; I started to see her as rigid in a certain way, and I started to poke fun at her rigidity. And Florence really felt like the baby of the family; I just wanted to coddle her and make her laugh.Which did you film first: the prologue scenes where your character is neat and trim, or the main sequences where he has gone to seed?I had grown the beard and the hair for “Stranger Things,” and I was like, “Let’s use the weight.” So I started eating even more. I got up to 280 pounds, and I loved it. I said to the first A.D. [assistant director], “Listen, we have to shoot the flashback stuff at the end, so that by the time we shoot the flashback, I’ll lose the weight and I’ll be thin.” And he was like, “You’ll never be thin.” [Laughs.] I was like, “Yes I will, man.” And I lost like 60 pounds through the shooting. The first stuff we shot was at the prison, so that belly that’s coming at you, that’s all real belly. And then as we shot, I started to lose weight. I was just hungry a lot of the shoot.”I’m the anti-Tom Cruise” when it comes to stunts, said Harbour, with his four-month-old puppy.Akasha Rabut for The New York TimesYou’re a recently married man — how was all of this physical transformation playing at home?[Dryly] It’s a true testament to my undeniable charisma when I say that my wife met me at 280 pounds with this beard and this hair. We went on a date at the Wolseley [restaurant] in London, and she really fell for me at my worst, physically and hair-wise. So as the thing went on, I started losing the weight and working out. And she honestly has some mixed feelings about it. Which is a good place to be in a relationship. It’s really good to start the relationship from that part, as opposed to being the young, handsome buck and watching yourself degenerate over the years.Did you get to do many of your own stunts on the film?They really want you to do it. They’re very encouraging. But I’m the anti-Tom Cruise when it comes to this stuff. I do not want to fly the helicopter. I want Alexei to be a production of eight different people. I’m the face. I’m very happy to put the stunt people in. But I do my own arm-wrestling. I wouldn’t let anyone else arm-wrestle for me.Your best-known characters now are men who, underneath their exterior shabbiness, possess at least the potential to redeem themselves. How did this come to be your particular turf?That’s what I love about Alexei and what I love about Hopper. It comes from my view of Walter Matthau. In “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” you have this schlubby leading man and you put him against Robert Shaw, who’s like the most bad-ass Brit in the world. You think he’s never going to take this guy. But there’s something about his American heart that we want to love, and I love embodying that. Once Hopper rolled around, it was like, swing for the fences. Give him the dad bod and let him smoke cigarettes, have him be a total mess.Just a few years ago, you were playing a lot of intimidating bruisers and flat-out villains. How did you pivot from that?It was very interesting to be perceived as a villain. There were heavies, but then I was cast as true, dangerous psychopaths, too. There’s something about the mental freedom of the psychopath that I can embrace in a certain way. It really was [the casting director] Carmen Cuba on “Stranger Things” who was like, “I know this guy’s been the villain and he’s been fifth and sixth on the call sheets for a long time, but I think he’s the Harrison Ford.” No one had seen that before. I always blamed it on the jawline or the brow, whatever it was. It really takes a sophisticated eye to go, it doesn’t matter whether he has a double chin. His heart is there.Harbour as a milquetoast accountant opposite Amy Seimetz in the new Steven Soderbergh crime drama, “No Sudden Move.”Claudette Barius/Warner Bros.How did you get your part in “No Sudden Move”?It got shut down during Covid, so they refashioned it and put that movie back together. A couple people couldn’t do it so a couple replaced them, and I was one of them. Steven Soderbergh’s process is very simple: He sent me the script. Would you like to do this? Yes, very much. And then I met him on the first day.Going by only the screenplay, what was your read on the character?Matt lives in a prison of his own making. The tragedy of Matt is that he can’t be who he is, and he’s been living this lie for a long time. There is a carrot that gets dangled in front of him, and as one of the characters says in the movie, he had the brass ring and he just let it go by. That’s the true tragedy of Matt Wertz. There’s some excitement that he may actually get to live a life, finally, after so much struggle. And he disappoints us. [Laughs.]Was this the first film you made during the pandemic?That was my first pandemic shoot. “Stranger Things” had come back for Season 4 in September, and they didn’t need me until January. And I freaked out. I love my wife and kids, but I also need to go to work, because I’ll lose my mind here, trying to home-school them. This job came to me, and I took it. We were in Detroit for two and a half, three months, sequestered in a hotel. But luckily it’s Soderbergh. He did “Contagion.” So all the C.D.C. guys that he worked with on that were there on set. We were talking about the vaccines. I would go to Soderbergh and be like, “When is this going to be over?” And he would be like, “Oh, sometime early next year, there’ll be vaccines.” I was like, “Which one?” He’s like, “Pfizer’s doing very well — two shots.” It was incredible. You’re making this movie and you’re finding out what’s actually happening at the C.D.C.Harbour on being asked to play losers: “I have such an odd ego. I am always flattered, and then I look back years later and I go, what were you flattered by?”Akasha Rabut for The New York TimesWhat are you permitted to say about the new season of “Stranger Things”?Ugh. I want to tell you something. I have my prepackaged answer, which is true, that it’s a super-exciting season. It’s gone to a whole other place. It started out, in Season 1, with this small-town police chief, and now it’s become this sprawling thing with a Russian prison and a monster. The brothers [series creators Matt and Ross Duffer] are big into video games, manga and anime, and we definitely play on that this season. We talked about “The Great Escape” and “Alien 3” as influences. In terms of Hopper, you get to see a lot of back story that you haven’t seen before, it’s only been hinted at. As opposed to this dad he’s become, eating chips and salsa and yelling at his teenage daughter, you’ll unearth some more of the warrior that he had been.Having now made a mega-budget Marvel movie, was there anything you could take from that experience into “Stranger Things”?I do a lot more stunts this season than I’ve ever done. And I — if I do say so myself — did some pretty impressive things. And that truly came from being humiliated on the set of “Black Widow,” being not able to do those things. There is an ego in me that’s growing. Hopefully by the time I’m 55, I’ll be hanging out of a helicopter as well, making my own version of “Mission: Impossible.” More

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      Behind Every Hero or Villain, There Is Tech Support

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      Cutting-edge technology is often used in comics by the able assistants who fall under the trope “the guy in the chair.” But they are not always men and are not always helping the hero.This article is part of our new series, Currents, which examines how rapid advances in technology are transforming our lives.Technology has always played a major role in superhero comics. Sometimes the tech makes the hero, like the often upgraded suits of armor worn by Iron Man. Other times it can benefit a team of do-gooders, like the rings used by the Legion of Super-Heroes that give its members, whose adventures are set in the future, the ability to fly.While most technology in comic books is of the fantastical kind, there are some examples that either exist in the real world or are extensions of real-world inventions. The DC hero Mr. Terrific uses dronelike devices he calls T-Spheres that assist him on his adventures with aerial reconnaissance (they can also deploy lasers, holograms and more).Iron Man uses an artificial intelligence system light years ahead of Alexa or Siri. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe he had J.A.R.V.I.S., but he (it?) was replaced by a virtual assistant named F.R.I.D.A.Y., who is also featured in the comics. These days he uses an A.I. named B.O.S.S., which alerts him to threats, monitors his power levels and, in its first comic book appearance, managed his investments while he battled an extraterrestrial threat.But the true heroes-behind-the-hero, one could argue, are those keyboard surfers who type furiously at a terminal and provide critical information to whoever they are assisting in the field. This special kind of tech support falls under the trope known as “the guy in the chair,” but they are not always men nor do they always help the good guys. Below are some examples, both virtuous and villainous.Marvel EntertainmentProfessor XCharles Francis Xavier, or Professor X as he is popularly known, is the founder of the X-Men, Marvel’s mutant heroes who are often feared and distrusted by society. Professor X has often used a wheelchair and has led the X-Men from afar, keeping tabs on the team in the field with his telepathic abilities. He has provided the team with some formidable innovations. The Danger Room, the facility where the heroes train in the use of their powers, started out relatively low-tech: an obstacle course with battering rams and flamethrowers. Later on, thanks to an infusion of alien technology, it was souped-up with holograms that simulated the extreme terrains the X-Men often encountered. Another invention, Cerebro, was like a DNA test combined with Apple’s Find My iPhone app: It can pinpoint the location of mutants and alerts him to the emergence of new ones.Marvel EntertainmentMicrochipDavid Linus Lieberman is the aide-de-camp of the Punisher, Marvel’s antihero. Lieberman, a.k.a. Microchip, provides all manner of illicit services: money laundering, weapons procurement and computer hacking. In his origin story, Lieberman’s initial crime is changing the grades of a fellow college student whose scholarship is in danger. After tangling with a mob-connected bank, he begins a life on the run. From there, he slowly evolves into an underground hacker who also creates computer viruses. He meets an untimely end when he tries to replace the Punisher, who is becoming increasingly violent and unstable.Marvel EntertainmentShuriBlack Panther’s brilliant little sister, Shuri, made a big splash in the 2018 “Black Panther” film with her technological wizardry — Q to her brother’s James Bond. In the comics, Shuri is similarly gifted, but also more ambitious: She has her eye on becoming Black Panther, a ceremonial title of power and leadership in the advanced African nation of Wakanda. Shuri serves as Black Panther when her brother is incapacitated and later sacrifices her life to save him. But worry not: He finds a way to bring her back, and they fight side-by-side today. Shuri is very much a field operative in comics, and she’s responsible for creating an array of gadgets and gear, including a spaceship and nanotech wings (of which she boasts, “My latest success! Emergency flight in a can! I am awesome!”).DCOracleWhen Barbara Gordon becomes paralyzed after being shot by the Joker, her crime-fighting career as Batgirl might come to an end. Instead, Barbara trades in her cape, motorcycle and grappling hooks for a keyboard, multiple monitors and Wi-Fi to become Oracle, a genius-level computer hacker and information broker to the heroes of DC Comics. After undergoing an experimental surgery that implants a microchip into her spine to restore her mobility, she becomes Batgirl again but later decides that she has a wider reach as Oracle. In a recent issue, her father, the former police commissioner Jim Gordon, confirms that he knows about Barbara’s other identities. After a heart-to-heart chat, she outfits him with a special satellite phone in his latest quest to apprehend the Joker. The phone is linked to Batman’s communications system and is set to self-destruct if he does not check in on a daily basis.DCThe CalculatorNoah Kuttler, a DC villain known as the Calculator, was originally a costumed crook with a gimmick: He wore a numerical keypad on his chest and would say things like, “I compute you have less than one minute to live.” Despite his confidence, he never made it to the upper echelon of villains. That changes after Kuttler heard whispers about Oracle. Kuttler ditches his costume and set up a similar operation — this time catering to supervillains at substantial fees: $1,000 per question answered and even more for other services. In addition to supplying information to villains, he also provides a measure of protection: He playfully counters a wiretap setup by the heroes to hear only speeches by Vice President Adlai Stevenson.DCAmanda Waller“The Wall” is an apt nickname for the steel-willed Amanda Waller. She made her mark on the DC Universe as the head of the government program Task Force X, which is also known as the Suicide Squad. Waller enlists supervillains for dangerous missions in exchange for commuted prison sentences — if they survive. One of her favorite pieces of tech is explosive devices, often in metallic collars and sometimes implanted beneath the skin, that encourage the villains to keep within the parameters of the assignment. Waller witnesses a lot of casualties in her line of work but one especially strikes close to home: Flo Crawley, the coordinator of Task Force X’s missions, wants to take part in missions. Waller’s response: “If I let you do that, your mama would shoot me and I’d give her the gun.” But Flo defies orders and takes part in an operation that results in her death.Skybound/Image ComicsCecil StedmanInvincible, the title character in the recent animated Amazon Prime series, is often assisted by Cecil Stedman, the head of the Global Defense Agency, which was vigilant for threats that might require superhero attention. Stedman is a big fan of the gadgetry afforded to him by his government job. Early on, he gets to use a teleportation device, of which he said: “It costs taxpayers $5 million every time we use it, but I just had to try it.” He also outfits Invincible with an earpiece that serves as a direct line to the hero in times of need. Stedman can be a little cocky — he once said, “I’m so high ranked in the U.S. government, I don’t even have a rank” — but his heart is usually in the right place. When Invincible’s family faces a crisis, Stedman leaps into action: His machinations help provide the family with a steady income and he stages a funeral with holograms to help preserve secret identities. More

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      40 Acres and a Movie

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      Disney owns a piece of every living person’s childhood. Now it owns Marvel Studios, too. The co-hosts Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris look at depictions of racist tropes and stereotypes in Disney’s ever-expanding catalog. The company has made recent attempts to atone for its past. But can it move forward without repeating the same mistakes?On Today’s EpisodeThe Marvel Cinematic UniverseLetitia Wright as Shuri in “Black Panther” (2018).Disney/Marvel Studios, via Associated PressTeyonah Parris portrayed Monica Rambeau in the 2021 Disney+ series “WandaVision.”Marvel Studios/Disney PlusEarlier this year — during “season three of the pandemic” — Jenna binged the M.C.U., the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While she appreciated the moral messaging of the movies, which are centered on a fight against evil forces, she was appalled by the lack of nonwhite characters. “You mean to tell me they’ve been making these movies for over a decade — 12 years — and you have still not managed to decenter the whiteness of this universe?” she exclaimed.Jenna and Wesley talked about these offerings from the Marvel universe: “Avengers: Endgame” (2019), “WandaVision” (2021) and “The Eternals” (2021).The Disney of Your Childhood and NowWesley and Jenna discussed how rewatching classic Disney movies with adult eyes has been unsettling, from the colonial undertones in “The Little Mermaid” (1989) to the Orientalist tropes peddled in “Lady and the Tramp” (1955).Disney, however, has tried to atone for its history. On the Disney+ streaming service, some older movies, such as “Dumbo” (1941) and “The Aristocats” (1970), contain warning labels about “negative depictions” and “mistreatment of people or cultures.” And one musical, “Song of the South” (1946), does not appear on the platform at all.Still, the labeling effort isn’t comprehensive and seems to address only movies with instances of blatant racism, Jenna noted. “It’s worth interrogating how all of these movies reinforce the ideas that are so harmful in the formation of this country,” she added.In recent years, Disney has started to make movies that feature more diverse casts and story lines, such as “Coco” (2017), “Moana” (2016) and “Soul” (2020). They’ve also remade classics, including the live-action “Mulan” (2020) and a super-realistic version of “The Lion King” (2019).“Moana” (2016) is about a Polynesian girl who embarks on a journey to save her island from destruction.DisneyBlack FuturesJenna mentioned the essay, “Fandom, Racism, and the Myth of Diversity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” which unpacks how Black and Asian stereotypes are employed in Marvel comics.She also pointed to Alisha Wormsley’s art project “There are Black People in the Future,” which began as “a response to the absence of nonwhite faces in science-fiction films and TV.”Alisha’s project gets at the importance of thriving representation in popular culture. “What is on our screens matters so much,” Jenna said, and “has a huge impact on how we see ourselves.” She added: “We have to be able to imagine ourselves whole, happy and healthy in the future for that to be possible today.”Hosted by: Jenna Wortham and Wesley MorrisProduced by: Elyssa DudleyEdited by: Sara Sarasohn and Sasha WeissEngineered by: Corey SchreppelExecutive Producer, Shows: Wendy DorrExecutive Editor, Newsroom Audio: Lisa TobinAssistant Managing Editor: Sam DolnickSpecial thanks: Nora Keller, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani and Desiree IbekweWesley Morris is a critic at large. He was awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his criticism while at The Boston Globe. He has also worked at Grantland, The San Francisco Chronicle and The San Francisco Examiner. @wesley_morrisJenna Wortham is a staff writer for The Times Magazine and co-editor of the book “Black Futures” with Kimberly Drew. @jennydeluxe More

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      ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ Recap: Lost in America

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      The often thrilling first episode of this Disney+ series is likely to satisfy Marvel fans who’ve invested years in keeping track of these characters and their many, many problems.‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ Season 1, Episode 1Although the title of the latest Marvel Comics television series is “The Falcon and the Winter Solder,” the show is defined by another superhero entirely: the absent Captain America. Both the high-flying military operative Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and the brainwashed, ageless assassin Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) spent time as sidekicks to the original Captain, Steve Rogers, who at the end of the 2019 Marvel movie “Avengers: Endgame” retired from the hero business, leaving his old friends without a partner — or a mission. The question haunting Sam and Bucky now is, “What’s next?”That’s also a good question for the bosses at the streaming service Disney+, who are coming off the recent success of “WandaVision,” their first big post-“Endgame” Marvel TV project. The highly assured, often thrilling first episode of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” is different from “WandaVision” — in that it’s an international action-adventure and not a surreal riff on classic sitcoms. But Episode 1 is likely to satisfy Marvel fans who’ve invested years in keeping track of these characters and their many, many problems.Directed by Kari Skogland and written by the show’s creator Malcolm Spellman, this first episode opens with a rousing aerial chase sequence, reminiscent of some of the better set pieces in Disney+’s “The Mandalorian.” The Falcon and his U.S. Army handler Lt. Torres (Danny Ramirez) pursue enemy agents through the hills, deserts and canyons of North Africa, trying to nab their target before they fly into Libyan airspace and touch off an international incident.Skogland and Spellman provide minimal setup to what’s going on, beyond loosely identifying the bad guys: a band of criminals known as “the L.A.F.,” who’ve kidnapped an Army officer. Most of this show’s first 10 minutes is pure visceral excitement, as we watching Sam in his high-tech flying outfit, dodging bullets and blades, attacking dudes in jumbo jets and helicopters and diving after them when they bail out in glider suits. It is super-heroics at their niftiest, culminating in a daring midair rescue.Sam then gets another moment of triumph before he returns to his post-Captain America existential crisis. While sitting in a Tunisian cafe, Sam talks (in perfect Arabic) to a stranger who thanks him for helping to restore reality, after “the blip” that sent half of the sentient creatures in the universe into limbo for five long years. Like “WandaVision,” “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” isn’t just set in a world still recovering from the trauma depicted in “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Endgame.” It’s also directly about how both the superpowered and the ordinary have been coping with all the loss and the confusion.A big case in point for Sam: After his covert mission in Africa ends, he returns to his family home in Louisiana, where his sister Sarah (Adepero Oduye) has been struggling to turn their parents’ beat-up old fishing boat into a viable business. Sam hopes that his fame and prestige as an Avenger will help swing them a bank loan. But like billions of other people who disappeared in the blip, he hasn’t earned any income for five years, which — perhaps coupled with some old-fashioned institutional racism — means the Wilson siblings don’t get help.Bucky has even bigger troubles. He spent a half-century as a mind-controlled killer, before finally regaining consciousness not long before being blipped away. Since returning, he’s been trying to make amends for the harm he caused, hoping to push back some of the nightmarish memories that torment him at night. But he’s finding that even being kind can be complicated.Bucky doesn’t see as much action this week as Sam does. He’s at the center of one big fight sequence, in a flashback to an old mission from his international assassin days. Instead, most of his story line involves him going on his first date in about 80 years, at the urging of an elderly Asian-American neighbor. The twist? Bucky murdered that neighbor’s son, after the kid witnessed the hit depicted in the flashback.Sebastian Stan in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.”Marvel StudiosMuch of this episode is about the sense of disconnection and alienation these two title heroes feel — not just because they were absent from Earth for a half-decade, but because they have weird jobs. Bucky, who fought in World War II before he was captured by the enemy and turned into a monster, ruefully notes at one point that he probably hasn’t danced with a girl “since 1943.” Sam is a wizard with the advanced Stark technology he works with every day, but he fumbles when it comes to getting his family’s boat motor cranking. When Bucky’s therapist tries to ease his troubled mind by reminding him, “You’re free,” he mutters, “To do what?”By the end of this initial 45-minute chapter, the series’s plot begins to kick in, on two fronts. Early in the episode, Torres tells Sam he’s on the trail of an underground revolutionary group called “the Flag Smashers,” who think life was better during the blip years. Torres locates their leader in Switzerland — sporting a creepy mask with a red handprint across the face — and gets beaten brutally for his troubles. Meanwhile, Sam — who was offered the job of Captain America at the end of “Endgame” by Steve Rogers himself — is rudely surprised when the shield he donated to the Smithsonian is retrieved by the U.S. government and handed to a new guy.We’ll surely learn more about this new Cap (played by Wyatt Russell) next week, seeing whether he lives up to the idealistic comment Sam makes when he donates the shield: “Symbols are nothing without the men and women who give them meaning.” Clearly, in between the white-knuckle action sequences, “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” is going to leave space for some thoughtful rumination on what the American dream means in a world where, as Sam also says, “Every time things get better for one group, they get worse for another.”For now though, he appears to be a living embodiment of that trade-off. When he opted out of becoming Captain America himself, Sam may have thought he could control the legacy of his old friend, by letting his iconography pass into history. Instead he’s finding that whatever he doesn’t take, someone else will — and maybe at his own expense.The All-Winners SquadThe Smithsonian’s Captain America exhibit includes what looks to be the Jack Kirby-drawn cover from 1941’s “Captain America Comics” #1.Fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe surely perked up when Don Cheadle appeared as James “Rhodey” Rhodes, counseling Sam at the Smithsonian. But this episode also featured a more deep-cut M.C.U. character in the kickboxing mercenary Georges “the Leaper” Batroc (Georges St-Pierre), who appeared as the main villain in the opening action sequence of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and serves a similar function here, as the man behind the kidnapping the Falcon foils.Speaking of parallels to “The Winter Soldier,” in that movie Captain America nonchalantly jumps out of the back of a plane, and the Falcon does the same thing at the start of this episode … but with a little more flair. More

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      In Australia, Hollywood Stars Have Found an Escape From the Virus. Who’s Jealous?

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Australia, Hollywood Stars Have Found an Escape From the Virus. Who’s Jealous?Dozens of international film productions have been lured to the country, where cases of the coronavirus are few. In turn, actors have found almost paradise.Chris Hemsworth is filming “Thor: Love and Thunder” in Australia.Credit…Getty Images for The Critics Choice AssociationMarch 10, 2021Updated 4:52 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — In the photo posted to Instagram, the actors Chris Hemsworth, Idris Elba and Matt Damon, all wearing 1980s-style sweats, embrace. They are maskless. Touching. Happy, even. The caption reads: “A little 80s themed party never did any harm!”Their fans, indignant, peppered the post with comments. What of the pandemic? Social distancing? Masks? We are still, after all, suffering through a pandemic that has all but crippled the travel industry and blocked most people from casually taking off for vacation in paradise.But the Hollywood brigade was in Australia, a country that has effectively stamped out the coronavirus, allowing officials to ease restrictions for most gatherings, including parties (with dancing and finger food). As a result of the near-absence of the virus, plus generous subsidies from the Australian government, the country’s film industry has been humming along at an enviable pace for months compared to other locales.Australia has managed to lure several Hollywood directors and actors to continue film production. In effect, many celebrities, including Natalie Portman, Christian Bale and Melissa McCarthy, have found freedom from the pandemic there.As one person wrote on Mr. Hemsworth’s Instagram post: “Before you comment, remember that not everyone lives in America.”Though the quickened pace of vaccinations in the United States has raised hope of returning to some semblance of normalcy by the summer, the country still leads the world in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths. Movie theaters reopened only last week in New York City. Some fans are cautiously creeping back, while others are still wary of contracting the virus.But thousands of miles away, many stars who appear on the big screens can be seen frolicking, or filming, on location in Australia. (Mr. Hemsworth is himself a permanent fixture — he moved back to Australia in 2017 after several years of living in Los Angeles.) In the United States, where hundreds are still dying every day, some fans have looked on with envy.“These Hollywood stars have been transported to another world where the problems of this world aren’t,” said Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University in New York. He added that the temporary exodus from the United States revealed a further crumbling of the myth that Hollywood was the endgame for celebrities.Village Roadshow Studios in Gold Coast, Australia.Credit…Bradley Kanaris/Getty ImagesAustralia has become the “hip place” where “fabulous people want to go,” Professor Thompson said. “When you’re trying to be a star, you’ve got to go out to the West Coast to make your bones.” When you become “a really big star,” you buy property somewhere exotic, like Australia, he added.“It definitely feels like a time machine,” Ms. Portman, calling in from Sydney, told the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel in December. “It’s so different, all the animals are different, all the trees are different, I mean even the birds, like, there’s like multicolored parrots flying around like pigeons,” she added. “It’s wild.”A spokeswoman said the government had helped 22 international productions inject hundreds of millions into the local economy. Paul Fletcher, the federal minister for communications, said, “There’s no doubt it’s a very significant spike on previous levels of activity.”But even as celebrities preen and pose on social media, some Australians grumble that the country’s strategy for stamping out the virus has left tens of thousands of citizens stranded overseas. Several tennis players and 2021 Australian Open staff were allowed into the country for the tournament. And now, they say, Hollywood’s rich and famous are turning up during the pandemic, angering critics who see a clear bending of the rules for those with money and power.“Everyone knows there’s a separate set of rules, it seems, for everyone that’s a celebrity or has money,” said Daniel Tusia, an Australian who was stuck overseas with his family for several months last year. “There are still plenty of people who haven’t been able to get home, who don’t fall into that category, who are still stranded,” he added.In an emailed statement, the Australian Border Force said that travel exemptions for film and television productions were “considered where there is evidence of the economic benefit the production will bring to Australia and support from the relevant state authority.”A year ago, Tom Hanks, Hollywood’s everyman, made all-too-real the threat of the pandemic when he and his wife, Rita Wilson, tested positive for the coronavirus in Queensland, Australia, while he was filming an unnamed Elvis biopic. Their illness made personal a threat whose seriousness was only beginning to become crystallized at the time.The actors Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles last year. They tested positive for the coronavirus in Queensland, Australia, about a month later.Credit…Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut by May, Australia appeared to be on track to quashing the first wave of the virus, and the soap opera “Neighbors” became one of the world’s first scripted TV series to resume production. The federal government has committed more than $400 million to international productions, which, together with existing subsidies, provides film and television producers with a rebate of up to 30 percent to shoot in the country.More than 20 international productions, including “Thor: Love and Thunder,” a Marvel film starring Mr. Hemsworth, Mr. Damon, Ms. Portman, Taika Waititi, Tessa Thompson and Mr. Bale; “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” a fantasy romance starring Mr. Elba and Tilda Swinton; and “Joe Exotic,” a spinoff of the podcast made following the popular Netflix series “Tiger King,” starring the “Saturday Night Live” actress Kate McKinnon as the big-cat enthusiast Carole Baskin, are all either in production or set to be filmed in the coming year.Ron Howard is directing “Thirteen Lives,” a dramatization of the 2018 Thai rescue of a soccer team from a cave, in Queensland (the coast of Australia makes a good stand-in for the tropics). And later this year, Julia Roberts and George Clooney are set to arrive in the same state to shoot “Ticket to Paradise,” a romantic comedy.Though a number of American stars have landed in the country for temporary work, some like Ms. McCarthy, originally in Australia to work on “Nine Perfect Strangers,” have decided to stay on to shoot other projects, said those in the industry. “Oh, the birds!” she gushed in a YouTube video. “I love that I’ve seen a spider the size of my head.”Others, like Zac Efron, appear to have settled here permanently.Zac Efron has been spotted all over Australia.Credit…Lucy Nicholson/ReutersHis Instagram is flush with Australiana: Here he is in a hammock, in the red-earth desert, appearing to participate in an Indigenous ceremony or wearing the Australian cowboy hat, an Akubra. Last year, Mr. Efron even got what an Adelaide hairdresser described as a “mullet,” a much-maligned hairstyle popular in Australia.“Home sweet home,” he captioned one image of himself in front of a camper worth more than $100,000.Chances are the stars will keep showing up. They’ve been spotted camping under the stars, heading out to dinner sans masks, and partying (yes, like it’s 1989). Mr. Damon said in January that Australia was definitely a “lucky country.”But locals in Byron Bay — the seaside town that in recent years has been transformed from hippie to glittering — have complained that the influx of stars in the past year has irreparably changed the town.“The actors and the famous people are the tip of the iceberg,” said James McMillan, a local artist and the director of the Byron Bay Surf Festival. He added that the large cohort of production crew member from Melbourne and Sydney was pricing locals out of real estate.“It’s definitely changed more than I’ve ever seen it change in the past 12 months,” Mr. McMillan, who has lived in Byron Bay for two decades, added. “People have got stars in their eyes.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘WandaVision’ Fills In Gaps in Marvel History

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘WandaVision’ Fills In Gaps in Marvel HistoryThis week, the series drew from many other Marvel shows, movies and comics. Here’s a breakdown of some of the key references.Elizabeth Olsen, left, and Kathryn Hahn in “WandaVision.”Credit…Disney+Feb. 26, 2021, 5:52 p.m. ETGrief and personal loss fill in gaps in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Friday’s episode of “WandaVision,” the eighth of the season and, at 48 minutes long, the longest to date. Titled “Previously On,” it is the installment that most clearly ties the show’s events to other Marvel movies and TV shows, like “Avengers: Age of Ultron” and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”At the same time, it is an origin story for the disorienting sitcom world that much of “WandaVision” has inhabited. Through a series of extended flashbacks, the tortured superheroine Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) relives the traumatizing events that led her to transform the contemporary New Jersey suburb of Westview into the Hex, a TV-addled neighborhood that she has surrounded with a mysterious energy dome and cut off from the outside world.More often than not, Wanda’s flashbacks suggest that she is consistently motivated by the death of her loved ones, especially the loss of her parents, Iryna and Olek Maximoff (Ilana Kohanchi and Daniyar) and her brother, Pietro (Evan Peters). “Previously On” also hints at what motivates Wanda’s witchy rival, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), whose antagonistic behavior in “WandaVision” contrasts with her cryptic but benign personality from earlier Marvel comics.Here are some of the key comic book and movie references in this week’s “WandaVision” episode. Major spoilers follow.Agatha Harkness’s Salem Witch TrialsThe episode begins by flashing back to Salem, Mass., in 1693, when Agatha was confronted and almost burned at the stake by a coven of witches. Evanora (Kate Forbes), the group’s leader and Agatha’s mother, accuses Hahn’s villainess of betraying her fellow spellcasters. This flashback parallels the beginning of Vision and the Scarlet Witch No. 3, when the aggrieved members of Salem’s Seven, Agatha’s coven, successfully burn her alive. (She had previously revealed to the Fantastic Four the location of New Salem, a secretive witch community, in Fantastic Four Annual No. 14.)Beyond that association, Agatha Harkness is otherwise distinct from how she’s depicted in the comics: She casts a spell on and destroys her mother and her fellow witches, a jarring change from the comics’ general narrative that also immediately announces this week’s focus on revisionist history.Wanda’s Parents and the Unexploded BombWanda first revisits the death of her parents, Iryna and Olek, which happens when the American military destroys their Sokovia hometown, Novi Grad, with bombs manufactured by Stark Industries. Wanda’s parents were first mentioned in “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” and in that movie she and her brother, Pietro (played in that movie by Aaron Taylor-Johnson), blame the industrialist turned superhero Tony “Iron Man” Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) for their parents’ death, which leads them to ally with the megalomaniacal robot Ultron (James Spader).Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson in “Avengers: Age of Ultron.”Credit…Jay Maidment/Walt Disney Studios Motion PicturesWanda also relives another moment that is mentioned, but not shown, in “Avengers: Age of Ultron”: During the bombing of Novi Grad, she and her brother were pinned under rubble for two days, waiting for one of Stark’s bombs to detonate. In “Previously On,” we learn that the bomb never exploded because Wanda defused it with her “chaos magic” powers. This unexploded bomb resembles the drone missile that was sent into the Hex by the superhero-regulating government agency S.W.O.R.D. (or, Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Department) in “On a Very Special Episode …,” the fifth episode of “WandaVision.”HYDRA, the Mind Stone and Loki’s ScepterAfter revisiting her childhood Novi Grad home, Wanda remembers when she, as an adult, volunteered to be a test subject for deadly experiments that were conducted by HYDRA, a Nazi-like terrorist organization that served as the main villains in most of Marvel’s recent movies as well as the “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” TV series.Wanda recalls and expands on the post-credits scene from “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” when she and Pietro were imprisoned by the HYDRA leader, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. (Strucker’s name might ring a bell with “WandaVision” fans: There’s an ad for Strücker brand wristwatches in the show’s second episode.)In the comic book tie-in “Avengers: Age of Ultron Prelude — This Scepter’d Isle,” Strucker and his men explain how, just before the “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” post-credits scene, they gave the Maximoff twins superpowers using a magical scepter that they swiped from the Norse trickster god Loki (played in the films by Tom Hiddleston).Loki’s staff also connects Wanda with her android husband, the Vision (Paul Bettany), since the scepter’s reality-altering powers come from the same Mind Stone that Ultron used to give life to the Vision in “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” This week, Agatha suggests that the Mind Stone significantly “amplified” Wanda’s psychic powers, which would have “otherwise died on the vine.”The Snap: S.W.O.R.D. HeadquartersWhen Wanda remembers retrieving the Vision’s body from S.W.O.R.D. headquarters, TV news tickers in the lobby announce “families reunite” and “[celebrations] for the returned.” This alludes to a cataclysmic event from “Avengers: Infinity War” known as “The Snap.” That was when the philosophically inclined alien warlord Thanos (Josh Brolin) halved the world’s population simply by donning his all-powerful Infinity Gauntlet and snapping his fingers.This means Wanda took the Vision’s body some time after “Avengers: Endgame,” which was when Wanda and her teammates undid the Snap’s effects.Paul Bettany as the Vision in “Avengers: Infinity War.”Credit…Marvel/DisneyThe Vision’s Vibranium BodyDuring Wanda’s visit to S.W.O.R.D. headquarters, the S.W.O.R.D. director, Tyler Hayward (Josh Stamberg), explains that the Vision’s body must be destroyed because he is “one of the most sophisticated sentient weapons ever made.” That’s because the Vision’s body is made of Vibranium, an alien element that crash-landed in the African nation Wakanda (the main setting of “Black Panther”) during a meteor shower and was subsequently developed into an indestructible metal — it is used in some of the Marvel world’s most sophisticated and highly sought after technology and weaponry, including Captain America’s shield. Ultron created the Vision’s body in “Avengers: Age of Ultron” using Vibranium stolen by the deranged and questionably accented South African arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis).The Snap: LagosEagle-eyed viewers will also note that Thanos’s fateful snap is subtly referenced twice this week. The first time is on a Westview mural advertising something called “Snap,” which can be seen briefly after Wanda uses her superpowers to transform the town into a sitcom fantasy. That same mural also mentions the Nigerian city Lagos, a reference to a scene from “Captain America: Civil War” when Wanda accidentally destroyed a building full of Wakandan civilians while trying to disarm a bomb.The Vision’s New LookThe real Vision comes back to life during a mid-credits scene this week, but he doesn’t look the way he used to. He was destroyed twice in “Avengers: Infinity War”: first by Wanda, who was trying to stop Thanos from taking the Vision’s Mind Stone, and then by Thanos, who later used the Infinity Gauntlet to travel back in time and steal the stone.Outside of Westview, Hayward reanimates Vision’s body using the chaos magic that rubbed off on the drone missile back in Episode 5. Comics fans might recognize the Vision’s new off-white costume from West Coast Avengers No. 45, when an international team of spies deleted the android’s old personality and redesigned him after he, under the influence of the evil supercomputer I.S.A.A.C., tried to take over the world.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Managing Movie Superheroes Is About to Get a Lot More Complicated

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesDC Films, led by Walter Hamada, plans to release movies featuring DC Comics heroes like Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman at a much faster pace.  Credit…Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexManaging Movie Superheroes Is About to Get a Lot More ComplicatedWalter Hamada, who runs DC Films, is overseeing a dizzying number of projects, part of a swarm of comics-based stories coming from Hollywood.DC Films, led by Walter Hamada, plans to release movies featuring DC Comics heroes like Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman at a much faster pace.  Credit…Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyDec. 27, 2020, 5:05 p.m. ETLOS ANGELES — Walter Hamada is not a typical superhero wrangler.He doesn’t have a booming, fanboy-in-chief personality. His modest home office, at least as it appears on Zoom, is light on the usual cape-and-cowl collectibles. Hollywood was not even his first calling: He set out to be a mechanical engineer.As the president of DC Films, however, Mr. Hamada, 52, manages the movie careers of Wonder Woman, Batman, Cyborg, the Flash, Superman and every other DC Comics superhero. And the new course he has charted for them is dizzying.The most expensive DC movies (up to four a year, starting in 2022) are designed for release in theaters, Mr. Hamada said. Additional superhero films (two annually is the goal, perhaps focused on riskier characters like Batgirl and Static Shock) will arrive exclusively on HBO Max, the fledgling streaming service owned by WarnerMedia.In addition, DC Films, which is part of Warner Bros., will work with filmmakers to develop movie offshoots — TV series that will run on HBO Max and interconnect with their big-screen endeavors.“With every movie that we’re looking at now, we are thinking, ‘What’s the potential Max spinoff?’” Mr. Hamada said.If you thought there was a glut of superheroes before, just wait.To make all the story lines work, DC Films will introduce movie audiences to a comics concept known as the multiverse: parallel worlds where different versions of the same character exist simultaneously. Coming up, for instance, Warner Bros. will have two different film sagas involving Batman — played by two different actors — running at the same time.The complicated plan involves a sharp increase in production. Last year, Warner Bros. made two live-action superhero movies, “Joker” and “Shazam!” In 2018, there was only “Aquaman.” All three were smash hits, underscoring the financial opportunity of making more.For various reasons, including creative misfires and management turnover at DC Films (Mr. Hamada took over in 2018), Warner Bros. has badly trailed Disney-owned Marvel at the box office. Over the last decade, Warner Bros. has generated $8 billion in worldwide superhero ticket sales, including $36 million from “Wonder Woman 1984” over the weekend; Marvel has taken in $20.6 billion.Gal Gadot and Chris Pine in “Wonder Woman 1984,” which arrived to $16.7 million in North American ticket sales over the weekend, the best result for any movie since the pandemic started.Credit…Warner BrosSuffice it to say, Warner Bros., which invented the big-budget superhero movie in 1978 with “Superman,” has been under pressure to get its act together.Disney has succeeded in part because its divisions collaborate in a way that siloed Warner Bros. never has. But that is changing. AT&T mandated greater cross-company synergy when it took over WarnerMedia in 2018.“In the past, we were so secretive,” Mr. Hamada said. “It was shocking to me, for example, how few people at the company were actually allowed to read scripts for the movies we are making.”More than ever, studios are leaning on pre-established characters and brands — especially if their corporate parents are building streaming services. HBO Max has 12.6 million subscriber activations. Netflix has 195 million. How do you delight Wall Street and quickly close the gap? You start by putting your superheroes to work.This month, Disney announced 100 new movies and shows for the next few years, most of them headed directly to its Disney+ streaming service, which has 87 million subscribers. Marvel is chipping in 11 films and 11 television shows, including “WandaVision,” which arrives on Jan. 15 and finds Elizabeth Olsen reprising her Scarlet Witch role from the “Avengers” franchise.Warner Bros. has at least as many comics-based movies in various stages of gestation, including a “Suicide Squad” sequel; “The Batman,” in which Robert Pattinson (“Twilight”) plays the Caped Crusader; and “Black Adam,” starring Dwayne Johnson as the villainous title character.Television spinoffs from “The Batman” and “The Suicide Squad” are headed to HBO Max. WarnerMedia’s traditional television division has roughly 25 additional live-action and animated superhero shows, including “Superman & Lois,” which arrives on the CW network in February.Robert Pattinson in “The Batman,” which is scheduled for release in theaters in 2022.Credit…Warner Bros. Entertainment, via Associated PressSony Pictures Entertainment has its own superhero slate, with at least two more “Spider-Man” movies in the works; “Morbius,” starring Jared Leto as a pseudo-vampire; and a sequel to “Venom,” which cost $100 million to make in 2018 and collected $856 million worldwide. Sony also has a suite of superhero TV shows headed for Amazon Prime Video.And don’t forget Valiant Entertainment, which is turning comics properties such as “Harbinger,” about superpowered teenagers, into movies with partners like Paramount Pictures.Superheroes have long been Hollywood’s most reliable moneymakers, especially when sales of related merchandise are included. (Wonder Woman tiara for cats, on sale for $59.50.) But how much speeding spandex and computer-generated visual effects can audiences take?More than you think, said David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a film consultancy. “If the stories are well written and the production values are strong,” he said, “then there will be little sign of fatigue.”Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Warner Bros. involves the recent prioritization of HBO Max. “The risk is, will watching these movies first on television degrade the entertainment experience, and later the value,” Mr. Gross said. “For an individual movie, there is no more profitable business model than a successful theatrical release — creating the biggest pop culture event possible. It’s the locomotive that pulls the entire train: merchandise, theme park licensing, other income.”On Friday, Warner Bros. released “Wonder Woman 1984” in North America, where it collected $16.7 million. Citing the coronavirus pandemic (only 39 percent of cinemas in the United States are open), the studio simultaneously distributed the film in theaters and on HBO Max. Warner Bros. will release its entire 2021 slate in the same hybrid fashion.WarnerMedia provided only vague information about the sequel’s performance on HBO Max, saying in a news release that “millions” of subscribers watched it on Friday. Andy Forssell, WarnerMedia’s direct-to-consumer general manager, said the movie “exceeded our expectations across all of our key viewing and subscriber metrics.”So far, “Wonder Woman 1984” has collected $85 million worldwide, with $68.3 million coming from cinemas overseas, where HBO Max does not yet exist. The film, starring Gal Gadot and directed by Patty Jenkins, cost at least $200 million to make and an estimated $100 million to market worldwide. It received much weaker reviews than its series predecessor.Toby Emmerich, president of the Warner Bros. Pictures Group, said on Sunday that he had “fast-tracked” a third Wonder Woman movie. “Our real life Wonder Women — Gal and Patty — will return to conclude the long-planned theatrical trilogy,” Mr. Emmerich said.Mr. Hamada rose to power through New Line, a Warner Bros. division that mostly makes midbudget horror films and comedies. Among other achievements, he worked with the filmmaker James Wan and others to build “The Conjuring” (2013) into a six-film “world” with $1.8 billion in global ticket sales. (“The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” arrives in June.)“A lot of times in studio meetings, executives just repeat buzzwords, and it becomes a joke,” Mr. Wan said. “Walt always brings something constructive, useful and important to the table. He talks to me in a language that I understand.”Mr. Hamada and Jason Momoa, the star of “Aquaman,” which was the lone superhero movie from Warner Bros. in 2018.Credit…Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesWhen Mr. Hamada arrived at DC Films in 2018, the division was in urgent need of stability.Two terrifyingly expensive movies, “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” (2016) and “Justice League” (2017), both directed by Zack Snyder, were deemed almost unwatchable by critics. Ben Affleck, who played Batman in the films, wanted to move on, complicating sequel plans. At the same time, filmmakers were developing other DC movies that had nothing to do with the existing story lines — and, in fact, contradicted some of them.Mr. Hamada and Mr. Emmerich had two options: Figure out how to make the various story lines and character incarnations coexist or start over.The answer is the multiverse. Boiled down, it means that some characters (Wonder Woman as portrayed by Ms. Gadot, for instance) will continue their adventures on Earth 1, while new incarnations (Mr. Pattinson as “The Batman”) will populate Earth 2.“The Flash,” a film set for release in theaters in 2022, will link the two universes and feature two Batmans, with Mr. Affleck returning as one and Michael Keaton returning as the other. Mr. Keaton played Batman in 1989 and 1992.To complicate matters further, HBO Max gave Mr. Snyder more than $70 million to recut his “Justice League” and expand it with new footage. Mr. Snyder and Warner Bros. had clashed over his original vision, which the studio deemed overly grim, resulting in reshoots handled by a different director, Joss Whedon. (That didn’t go well, either.) “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” now four hours long, will arrive in segments on HBO Max in March.At least for now, Mr. Snyder is not part of the new DC Films blueprint, with studio executives describing his HBO Max project as a storytelling cul-de-sac — a street that leads nowhere.The multiverse concept has worked on television, but it is a risky strategy for big screens. These movies need to attract the widest audience possible to justify their cost, and too much of a comic nerd sensibility can be a turnoff. New actors can take over a character; James Bond is the best example. But multiple Gothams spinning in theaters?“I don’t think anyone else has ever attempted this,” Mr. Hamada said. “But audiences are sophisticated enough to understand it. If we make good movies, they will go with it.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More