So prescient that its influence circles back on itself until it almost feels derivative of other films in the genre (if that makes sense). 

Yet, because it was released in the months prior to the bombshell revelations of Watergate, The Conversation’s paranoia is altogether different than the worries of Three Days of the Condor or Parallax View. Its paranoia is existential in ways that makes the imminent transgressions of the President of The United States appear as a natural progression…

I’m not looking for the answers to life’s questions in a Marvel movie, but I do want any film to have anything to say. A point of view.

That point of view could be something approximating what the first Deadpool was doing - poking fun at the bloated self seriousness of superhero movies and (minimally) subverting the safe, corporate ecosystem the super genre enjoyed. It provided a (minimally) absurdist ebb to the unstoppable flow of the MCU.

But this is…

In my earlier years, I'd often say "prequels are an inherently doomed enterprise" as a sputtering qualifier to my opinion that the STAR WARS prequels, specifically Episode 1: THE PHANTOM MENACE, were good, actually. I'd say that to acknowledge that ~any~ prequel thrusting characters that would appear in later installments into life-or-death stakes neutered a prequel film's own climax. All to obscure my belief that a prequel CAN stand on its own terms - as long as it satisfies a…