Because of the global movie theater shutdown spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, two MCU movies, a Spiderverse movie and the final X-Men film have all been postponed -- and only two remain on the release schedule for 2020. Well Project Power has filled the superpower movie void left by those release date shuffles in spectacular fashion.
PP is a neo-noir featuring a mysterious loner and a police officer independently investigating the destructive proliferation of a new street-drug in New Orleans. Instead of providing a momentary high, these $500-a-pop capsules imbue the consumer with a unique superpower -- but only for five minutes. Because the pills react differently based on users' genetics, one dose can be lethal. Some of the users who actually survive the ingestion use their newfound abilities for nefarious purposes and the dealers themselves attract the violence that comes with the sale of most hard drugs.
The story cleverly references real-life medical atrocities and conspiracies that I won't specify here because doing so would amount to giving spoilers. But the superpowers angle is enough to put pressure on some of your favorite comic book adaptations. There's even a teen sidekick named Robin and an appearance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who portrayed Robin to Christian Bale's Batman in The Dark Knight Rises.
Project Power is the first movie involving people with superpowers with a Black lead (Jamie Foxx's Art Reilly) since the phenomenally successful Black Panther. And though Panther has been assured a sequel, it's scheduled release date is two years away and more than two years have passed since the first film's debut. 2016's Suicide Squad has been given a quasi-sequel -- set to hit theaters next year -- but Will Smith's Deadshot won't be in it. Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson's Black Adam will debut at the end of 2021. And by the time the next Blade movie arrives, it will have been two decades since the Wesley Snipes-led Blade trilogy ended. So if a Project Power sequel is greenlit -- and PP is certainly good enough to warrant one -- it'll be a welcome and much-needed addition of color to the ever-growing field of superhero movie series.
Project Power is unquestionably the best movie of the summer and if it becomes an actual franchise, the MCU, the DCEU and the Spiderverse may have some competition on their hands.
Streaming on Netflix now.
Originally Posted 8/16/20
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