It’s going to be increasingly difficult to find anyone who hasn’t seen at least a snippet of a superhero movie. Marvel and DC dominate not only the cinema halls, but also most of the rest of pop culture. It is all the more surprising that a film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival of all places that gives the topic a new twist. Including fountains of blood, lots of guts and one of the most disgusting kissing scenes in film history.
Smoking Causes Coughing combines the Avengers with entertaining horror
Smoking Causes Coughing starts out like a classic superhero film, albeit on a fraction of the classic MCU budget. A group of five heroes fights a villain who threatens humanity. Except the villain is an oversized turtle and the Tobacco Force (who keep referring to themselves as “Avenger”) Consists of characters named after the harmful ingredients in tobacco that eliminate opponents by causing them cancer. Whereupon they explode with an impressively repulsive mass of fake blood and guts.
© CHI-FOU-MI PRODUCTIONS – GAUMONT
Tobacco Force in all its glory
After a successful mission, their boss, a rat with disgusting green drool on its mouth, congratulates them, but not only. He sends them on some sort of team outing to reunite the group and prepare for their biggest threat yet: one intergalactic lizard man who wants to destroy the earth. But instead of training together or speaking out, the Tobacco Force prefers to tell horror stories. And they have it all.
Sorry Marvel, but: The superhero genre is in dire need of a breath of fresh air
With his film, Quentin Dupieux achieves something that hardly seems possible in times of the beginning oversaturation of superheroes: It is never foreseeable what will happen next. Be it now the horror short stories that would pass as their own miniseries on Netflix. Be it insanely funny dynamics within the dysfunctional Tobacco Force, or the absurd details like the drooling rat boss, who is staged as the ultimate womanizer. (Should there be an award for the most disgusting heavy petting scene of the year, Smoking Causes Coughing would be unrivaled.)
The film has so much fun with its premise, wallowing so passionately in the actually completely silly notion of people putting on horrible-looking costumes to save the world, that you can’t help but wonder a bit more Tabacco Force for MCU and Co. to wish. Smoking Causes Coughing is to Marvel and DC what Jean Dujardin’s OSS117 series is to the James Bond franchise. Let’s hope that this wonderfully different film will soon make it to Germany.
Season 2 or Avengers 5: The possible future of Moon Knight in the podcast
What happens after the nasty cliffhanger of Moon Knight season 1? We watched the finale of the new MCU series on Disney+ and talk about how the story of Oscar Isaac’s Marvel heroes can continue in the future. There are of course some spoilers.
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Season 2 has not yet been officially confirmed. Based on the post-credit scene, however, this one definitely lends itself. Not only the return of Oscar Isaac will be exciting. May El Calamawy could also play a much bigger role in the MCU as Scarlet Scarab.
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Funny or serious: which superhero movies do you prefer?