Tamara Wiens

I was quite looking forward to this sequel, having thoroughly enjoyed the original. However, I was left disappointed, for a number of reasons: - the movie is very uneven - Millie Bobby Brown's performance in the first third is almost a parody, highly overacted. Fourth wall breaks are used extensively in the first half, then almost not at all in the second half, leaving one to believe that it was a strategy of desperation, or even that two separate screenwriters wrote the two halves of the script. - the romantic subplot feels forced and rushed - it should either have started earlier and been more present throughout, or left at a much less resolved state (another artifact of having separate screenwriters?). - David Thewliss' performance as the primary villain is a Monty Python-esque caricature which fails to intimidate nor to amuse - the climax is very unsatisfying, making the Holmes' look incompetent, and leaving the victims powerless. The denouement continues to be unsatisfying, with a totally unconvincing labour action, and an arrest of one of the antagonists with no justification. - the movie credits one of the movie characters with historic actions which should have been dealt with quite differently On the plus side, the movie continues with the presentation of a young Victorian woman with agency and a fierce desire for independence, something that was far more common in that time than romantic accounts would have us believe. Henry Cavill, Helena Bonham Carter, Susan Wokoma and Louis Partridge all offer competent, if uninspired, performances, although Carter's chase scene role is a highlight. The tie-in of some of the Holmes canon is cute, although Enola's insistence on making her own way is far more interesting. All in all, it's two hours of my life which could have been more profitably spent, which is a shame, as some relatively straightforward script and directorial changes could have made this a much better offering. 5/10

If you are so filled with hate and insecurity that any inclusiveness in a movie leaves you screaming "wokeness!" in fear of the challenge to your privilege, then this is not for you. This is a funny but somewhat predictable offering in the franchise, and they leave the one "consequences" plot point open for reversal in a future movie. There is a stark reimagining of the relationship between gods and mortals which left me sympathetic with the villain, except for all the gratuitous collateral damage he inflicts (none of it on screen). Not the strongest outing, but it had a lot of feels, and is certainly worth seeing for anyone dedicated to the franchise - not "No Way Home" but at least as good as "Multiverse of Madness". For all the wokephobes, there is one black character with more than 2 lines, there are a handful of visibly alien children, Valkyrie is still king of New Valhalla and her orientation is hinted at a couple of times, female Thor is a thing, and it is revealed that all Kronans (eg Korg, the Thing-esque Aussie accented character) are male, and reproduce by holding hands over lava for months. The only human love story is aggressively heterosexual, and the only nudity features a butt shot of Thor as he is ogled by a bunch of women. To me at least, the < 2 minutes of marginally lgbtq accepting content is more than sufficiently offset by the 5-10 minutes of explicitly hetero backstory/retcon, and the fact that the viewers' expectation of the title is satisfied by the hetero love story which serves as the basis for the secondary McGuffin. But when you are a "one drop" racist, even acknowledging that non-white non cishet humans exist is "too woke".