The Marvel Thread (Spoilers, and language!)

Honestly, I'm more excited for Marvel right now than I was in the run up to Infinity War / Endgame. The new story sets are really fascinating - among my favourite comic stuff - and they have the financial ground to do lots of wacky weird shit. I really hope we get some deep cut stuff coming, let's get weird and wild. I haven't watched What If for a few weeks - gonna binge a couple episodes, maybe tonight.
 
Honestly, I'm more excited for Marvel right now than I was in the run up to Infinity War / Endgame. The new story sets are really fascinating - among my favourite comic stuff - and they have the financial ground to do lots of wacky weird shit. I really hope we get some deep cut stuff coming, let's get weird and wild. I haven't watched What If for a few weeks - gonna binge a couple episodes, maybe tonight.
Wandavision and Loki definitely fit into the werid and wild.... They're good, I just... It was all ramping up to this ONE thing for the longest time and now.... Oh it's just a show. No different from watching How I Met Your Mother or Seinfeld. Just, because you enjoy it. Feels weird to do that with a Marvel property at this point.
 
What If... Zombies?! was pretty good.
This episode suffered a lot from its short length, even the characters seemed to be rushing through their lines. Speaking of which, while it's great that many of the live-action actors returned to voice their respective characters, a few of their performances felt phoned-in, Hulk and the Winter Soldier especially. I don't know if the overly fast-pace is a factor or it's because they weren't as comfortable in a voice role, but it took me out of the moment a few times.

Anyway, plot-wise it was solid. I will say that I thought the Avengers + Black Panther dropping themselves right in the middle of a zombie horde to fight them was pretty ridiculous, but that was just skimmed over during the quick opening explanation. Didn't really care for Spiderman's home-made "how to survive the zombie apocalypse" bit either, but again it was short so whatever. Aside from a few slightly out of place comedic moments the rest of the episode had the horror tone I was hoping for, particularly the part with Zombie Wanda and there were some surprisingly graphic moments. Zombies get head-shotted, exploded from within and bisected both ways, and I'm amazed they got away with showing what Vision was doing with Black Panther. That's one of the moments where the runtime could've benefitted from being a bit longer actually, Vision's change of heart was very sudden and not properly explained, I think. It then ended on a great cliffhanger, which I really hope gets resolved in a future series.

Overall, I'd rate the episodes as such:
  1. Avengers Murdered
  2. Zombies
  3. Dark Doctor Strange
  4. Star-Black Panther
  5. Captain Carter
 
I am somewhere between Onhell and LC on this. I lost all interest in Marvel after Endgame came out, save for the Spider-Man movies and maybe some of the other sequels (Ant Man, GOTG etc). It doesn’t help that a lot of the trailers for the newer movies just look really bland to me. It was a good 10ish year run, but I feel like I’ve had enough.

At the same time, if you’re a fan of the comic books now is probably the most exciting time for the movies. The multiverse, Marvel having a grip on pretty much all the properties, and being successful enough that they can take a lot more risks with their movies means that you’re going to get a lot of on screen adaptations that 10 years ago would’ve been seen as pure fantasy. And 10 years ago I probably would’ve been more interested in it.
 
I'm quite excited about Love and Thunder. Ragnarök was great, Taika Waititi knows what he's doing and gives some very welcome deviation from the overly clinical and Disney-saturated trend. Of course, it's not like his MCU projects are completely free from that, but they're still visually a lot more interesting than most of the MCU stuff.

Overall, as generally good as these films and series are, they sometimes lack some edge.
 
The new Doctor Strange movie was pretty solid, but not great. Interesting that it went down an almost "horror lite" path, though that makes sense with Raimi as the director. And the choice of villain was also interesting, though Wanda already seemed to get some closure at the end of WandaVision, and I don't see how you could possibly redeem the character after her actions in this film, just straight-up murdering people left and right.

Marvel doesn't seem to have a coherent through line for phase 4 yet, other than repeatedly touching on the multiverse concept. There are a number of hints through various movies and TV shows that Kang The Conqueror may be the next big bad, and the little asides with Contessa Valentina Allegra De Fontaine suggest that some incarnation of the Thunderbolts may be on the horizon, and it looks like the Netflix Marvel shows are being officially pulled into MCU canon, but this all feels a bit scattershot. Pandemic delays certainly haven't helped the situation either, since the MCU has felt mostly adrift since Avengers: Endgame, and that's lasted longer than intended.

We'll see how this Black Panther sequel turns out, but I wonder if they made a mistake in not recasting T'Challa. He was clearly poised to be the heart and wallet of the post-Cap, post-Iron Man Avengers, and Shuri just doesn't have the same emotional currency (yet). Honestly, if they brought back Killmonger and let him be the Black Panther going forward, that could make for some very interesting stories, but that would probably be a little too bold for the MCU.
 
Saw The Marvels yesterday. Most fun I had watching a Marvel film since Thor Ragnarok.
I like Kamala's family and am glad Carol's long absence from Earth was addressed.

That mid credits scene!
 
It'll be interesting to see how much panic this creates over at Marvel Studios and whether it causes them to make big changes to their current plans for Phase 6 (everything through the end of Phase 5 is already underway).


it's so weird because it's getting mostly positive reviews. I'm behind on my movie watching, but I'll rent it eventually
 
I really think it's just franchise exhaustion. No movie franchise had ever carried people through 28 movies or whatever it was before, and the post-Endgame planning has been pretty lackluster in a lot of ways. Even when the movies are good, it's tough to pay attention. And a lot of the post-Endgame movies haven't been nearly as good. I haven't caught up and I'm not feeling the pressure.
 
Ok, the REAL question here. Mr. Fantastic, John Krasinski or Pedro Pascal?
Krasinski. Let Pedro do more "serious" roles.

Last week I took a nice trip through memory lane and watched those Avengers movies: Avengers (2012), Civil War (2016), Infinity War (2018) and Endgame (2019) and they're still really fun to watch movies (except first Avengers who, by today's standards, looks a bit dated).

I wasn't invested in Marvel that much after Infinity War (I think I even saw Capt. Marvel and Ant-man after Endgame) so I didn't know what they were about, but I know it was a shitload of it. In a last year I managed to see a bit of it and I must admit I wasn't impressed much with what I saw:

Spider-man: Far From Home - After the first one, this one seemed a bit forced, doubt I'll watch it again.
WandaVision - Friend explained the gist (or the gimmick) of it and it doesn't interest me at all.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier - These two are fine as side roles, I don't think they are interesting enough to carry the whole show.
Loki S01 - Now first part of the series were GREAT. I loved this David Fincher/Portal 2 atmosphere they built. Second part is more mainstream-ish and kinds dampened the whole opinion of the show.
Black Widow - Classic Marvel flick which could've been much better if it was released way earlier than it actually was.
What If... S01 - Some episodes were so-so, but most of them are great. I would have liked it more if they kept the formula 1 episode=1 story instead of tying all those in the end.
Shang-Chi - Fell asleep half-way through.
Eternals - Still haven't watched. Doubt I will.
Hawkeye - See "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier"
Spider-man: No Way Home - This was fun but my major gripe (as with most movies today) is - does it really have to be three hours long?
MoonKnight - I just found out about this one a month ago when I got Disney+. Still haven't got a clue what this is about.
Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness - Sam Raimi writing script for Dr. Strange being played by Benedict Cumberbatch - what can go wrong? A lot. I think this is one of the rare movies that had the potential to be everything and managed to be nothing.
Ms. Marvel - This is a teen show, right? Or at least looks like it. (will not watch)
Thor: Love and Thunder - This one seemed like Waititi took everything people loved in Ragnarok, amped it up to 11 and in the process lost any coherent thought about what Thor (or this movie) should be.
Wakanda Forever - This doesn't have the same appeal now that Chadwick is gone. Might watch it someday.
She/Hulk - I'm not investing myself in another series with Tatiany Maslany after that 3rd or 4th season of Orphan Black.
Ant-Man: Quantumania - I liked the idea of Quantum Realm but this looked like a 3-hour long Winamp Visualiser.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 - From the Marvel movies that you know should be wacky, this one took a different approach. Still not sure if I can give it a thumb up or a thumb down.

From these movies/shows that I watched there were more misses than hits. Then again, thinking back - I didn't like those Marvel movies to begin with. I'd give any movie from the first phase (Iron Man 1&2, Captain America and Thor) a thumb down, yet, Avengers were fun. Same as Phase 2 (Guardians of the Galaxy being the exception). Phase 3 is league of its own and I'd say this where they hit their peak. So, by that same rule anything that happens in phase 4 or 5 shouldn't bother me much because whatever they have planned at the end might also be fun.

The only problem being is that I don't see where it's all leading to and there aren't that many characters that got my attention. Kang was so-so in last Ant-man and whatever was happening in last episodes of Loki S02 didn't make me appreciate him more. And the ending of the show killed every "stake" there might be in future movies. I've heard there's a talk about re-casting some of the retired roles (RDJ for example) and I must admit my interest might peek a little but I doubt it will happen. If they do go that road they might raise their number by a bit but I believe that would be the end of the whole franchise. So far, I don't see anything I could like except Deadpool 3 (still, I'm probably gonna give some movies/shows a chance)
 
My thoughts regarding Marvel and DC films.... It's basically the same story over and over again. Oh, look we have this super new Villain! He's super powerful, Universe is at stake. And when films of this kind is hitting cinemas too often... people get disenchanted. Nah, I won't go, it's more of the same.
I like Guardians of the Galaxy films, first two Ant Mans. Overall Thor franchize is good. First Doctor Strange was very good. First season of Loki was good. Newest Suicide Squad was fun.
Black Adam was horrendously bad. Bad script, bad acting etc. Overall I find DC films more cringey.
I enjoy those super heroes movies, where things is not so overly serious. Good humor is a big plus.
 
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