Basically, Skyscraper is a variation on the Die Hard template, but there’s not much here that will lead to many declarations of yippee-ki-yay from audience members.

This film is as much a sweet love story as a grueling survival tale, although its realism is tempered with flights of fancy.

While those folks who love all things Star Wars regardless of quality will adore it, those of us who grew up with the franchise since a young age and find it still rooted in our DNA deserved something better

If it doesn’t quite reach the plateau of its predecessor, that says less about the freshness of the film’s irreverent approach and more about the comparative stagnation in the character’s development.

Much of the picture’s appeal rests with the character essayed by McCarthy. Like Rodney Dangerfield’s Thornton Melon in the 80s comedy classic Back to School, McCarthy’s Deanna is immensely likable, meaning viewers have her back as she rebounds from a deserting spouse by heading back to college

It’s the darkest, the grimmest, and the most downbeat of all Marvel movies, with countless websites anticipating its solemnity by laying odds on which characters would meet their maker.

Anderson’s first film since his grandly entertaining gem The Grand Budapest Hotel is a dazzling and heady achievement, employing quirky animation to relate its tale of a futuristic Japan.

The film references come at the audience at warp speed (mostly ‘80s, but also some ‘70s and ‘90s), and if the cultural co-opting was frequently a lazy trigger on the printed page, a way to get easily impressed folks to mistake nostalgia for gravitas (“Wow, Cline mentions both Back to the Future and Knight Rider! This is the bestest book ever!”), there admittedly is some of that taking place on screen as well.

For a character who began life as a video game avatar, she’s quite human – and certainly more so than the protagonists in past video-game adaptations.