Marvel has done it yet again. This time by telling a compelling origin story with the added benefit of having more than enough hints to the larger “it’s all connected” universe, that it almost requires more than one viewing.
Destination Wedding is an interesting and superbly written film. Written and directed by Victor Levin, this film is more than the sum of its main title Destination Wedding, but it’s “unofficial title” says a lot more about where it’s at, “Destination Wedding or A Narcissist Can’t Die Because Then the Entire World Would End.”
It stars Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves who are both fantastic, but it’s the script that speaks to me in the most incredible way.
I’ve read First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong by James R. Hansen, the main source material for First Man the film starring Ryan Gosling. I’ve also recently read books by the two other astronauts of Apollo 11; Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, and I’ve always been fascinated with the history of space flight from every documentary and film I could get my hands on including the seminal The Right Stuff and PBS’s Moonshot.
All of this is a long way to go to explain that my opinion, while not expert within the field of astronautics, is kind of refined when it comes to the history of NASA within both the written word and moving pictures.
While this movie is definitely set up to be the middle part of the Jurassic World Trilogy, it has elements of homage to the larger Jurassic Park series and feels more like a culmination of everything that came before it.
Red Sparrow is a great addition to the world of cinematic spy fiction. And yet, because the film is so good and so close to the origins of Marvel’s Black Widow, it’s hard to see this as anything more than Marvel being painted into a corner.
But before I get too far into the weeds on that, let me first talk about the film on its own, based upon a novel of the same name by Jason Matthews which I haven’t yet read.