Marvel Media (Spoiler Thread)

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Big Ups for GotG3 from me, pretty handily in my top 5 of these things. I could feel how jubilant it was to be free of any demands to service some upcoming streaming show or include any cameos willed into existence by the internet. The Guardians remain the only MCU characters I actually care about, in part because they're heavily indebted to Farscape, but also because they get to be characters instead of iconic representations and extensions of Facets of the Brand. Also, nice to have just a straight up hate-able villain rather than one who espouses some manner of progressive ideal only to eat a baby in act 3 to establish, no, they're the bad guy! It was weird, it was silly, it was dark, it was emotional, it was funny, the Guardians movies were the movies I gave a sh*t about, and I think they ended on a high note.

...If they bring Kitty Pryde into this mess as "the Legendary Star Lord," I will be livid. Incandescent in my fury. Turn your nukes against my throne on Asteroid M if it happens, you will need to.

SpacePProtean wrote:

...If they bring Kitty Pryde into this mess as "the Legendary Star Lord," I will be livid. Incandescent in my fury. Turn your nukes against my throne on Asteroid M if it happens, you will need to.

Why? Its the logical step especially with them about to bring the x-men into the MCU

MannishBoy wrote:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

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I read an article a few days ago that was bothered about the bat-family as well. The difference with blowing up Tattooine, was that the Guardians were supposed to protecting those innocent few from this very situation. The article argues that blowing up Counter-Earth is obviously used to drive home how horrible THE is, and the author concludes that some of the heroes should --at the very least-- mention in passing how sad they felt that this happened.

ranalin wrote:
SpacePProtean wrote:

...If they bring Kitty Pryde into this mess as "the Legendary Star Lord," I will be livid. Incandescent in my fury. Turn your nukes against my throne on Asteroid M if it happens, you will need to.

Why? Its the logical step especially with them about to bring the x-men into the MCU

When do THESE movies start because I am all in!

Top_Shelf wrote:
ranalin wrote:
SpacePProtean wrote:

...If they bring Kitty Pryde into this mess as "the Legendary Star Lord," I will be livid. Incandescent in my fury. Turn your nukes against my throne on Asteroid M if it happens, you will need to.

Why? Its the logical step especially with them about to bring the x-men into the MCU

When do THESE movies start because I am all in!

No clue with the WGA strike in play... Hopefully it ends soon

Just to keep opportunities to be told "f*ck off" again, I won't go into all my concerns. I don't think Disney will handle the mutant world or the X-Men well, but when they do show up, I'd like them to be the X-Men, not adjuncts attached to characters they are connected to mostly because Marvel's most odious, pettiest, and most overtly prejudicial executive, the same guy who insisted they make The Inhumans, refused to let anyone write big stories for the X-Men and Fantastic Four since Fox owned the movie rights at the time--the sale of those rights happening under his watch, and saving the company.

You might enjoy the news that Perlmutter was fired recently then. Even if he was still there, he lost control of the film and television divisions awhile back, and they've been reporting directly to Disney for years now.

The recent announcement that they are casting Antonio Banderas as Galactus is a good sign. That will be required for a proper Silver Surfer movie and a possible branch for Fantastic Four. So hopefully they'll keep moving in the right direction.

ranalin wrote:

The recent announcement that they are casting Antonio Banderas as Galactus is a good sign. That will be required for a proper Silver Surfer movie and a possible branch for Fantastic Four. So hopefully they'll keep moving in the right direction.

My hope amongst hopes is that it's 100% comic accurate Galactus design with his standard voice, Puss in Boots at least.
"Pray for mercy from... The Devourer of Worlds!"

Stengah wrote:

You might enjoy the news that Perlmutter was fired recently then. Even if he was still there, he lost control of the film and television divisions awhile back, and they've been reporting directly to Disney for years now.

I was aware. My concern wasn't that he'd actively muck things up--it's that the Kitty as Star-Lord story feels irrevocably tainted by the edict to minimize and (with some grim irony) marginalize the mutants, which I do not want.

Saw Guardians 3 yesterday. It was good, but I won't be watching it again. The movie has all of the feels and I cried several times during.

Just caught up on Quantumania via Disney+ and as a standalone film it was..... OK? Not Bad? Not particularly great either but it stands - to me - OK alongside the first 2 Ant-Man films, even if it misses the subversive elements on the first film.

I think - and I say this in full knowledge of the current domestic violence allegations against him, for which if found guilty they'll need to find another Kang - Johnathan Majors was a little wasted as the main enemy in this film. He's just too good for the more goofy fair that Ant-Man offers, and was infinitely more menacing in Loki even though he was only on screen for half an episode at the end of the series. I'm not sure it helped that they brought back the villian from the first film either in a very odd little role that's clearly meant to mean more than it did.

The final issue, and I think this is where MCU Phase whatever it is now is really starting to fall down, is that I don't have the background Marvel knowledge to really understand Kang or the threat he poses, and so far in everything I've seen where he's involved it hasn't really been explained why. To the non-marvel layperson there doesn't seem to be any reason for him to be more threatening than, say Thanos apart from the fact there appears to be quite a lot of him, and Johnathan Majors is so good at being threatening by being normal he brings that to life. But that's it - it's just coming from the actor who plays him and for all the series he's been in Marvel haven't - in my opinion - done the heavy lifting to explain why he's such a threat. From where I sit at the moment, Marvel really need to pick up on that heavy lifting.

Lastly, and I say this not just for this film but about 99% of the shows I've watched recently, every director needs to watch the final cut of their film during daylight hours, in a brightly lit room without having blackout curtains drawn or blinds pulled down. Then maybe they'd stop making everything so bloody dark on screen. It's a first world problem and this film is far from the worst I've seen doing this lately, but oh my god. Just stop it.

I enjoyed GotG3. I'd like to see more of Mantis for sure. She was a great character that had a lot of growth.

I really enjoyed these movies as they embrace the weird aspect of the universe.

I look forward to the Marvels movie.

EDIT: IMO the MCU has always done a good job of making it so the movie and characters are situated so that it is unnecessary to have in depth knowledge of comics stuff WHILE adding some tidbits for people that do. It has never been a problem for me to search and read to gain some lore knowledge of something I found interesting. Having ALL the info about stuff in these movies would make it much more tedious for the "general action" audience I'm sure.

Oh this popped into my head while I was looking at the Groot Lego at our house lol.

At the end there was a brief moment where it seems like Groot says "I love you all" or something. That really slapped me in the face and I was thinking what the heck. The other characters did not act like anything was different. I really had to use the restroom at that point so did not stop to think about it.

BUT - *film dissertation paper is printing*

Throughout the movie Gamora keeps asking the other members why they think Groot is actually saying stuff or if they are just making stuff up when he says his signature sentence. Then after they work together and become closer and then friends, before she leaves, Gamora understands Groot even though he has still just said "I am Groot". Then a few scenes later us, the viewers who have gone on this long adventure and cheered the team and Groot on, hear Groot say "I love you all" (or whatever they say).

Pretty cool!

karmajay wrote:

Oh this popped into my head while I was looking at the Groot Lego at our house lol.

At the end there was a brief moment where it seems like Groot says "I love you all" or something. That really slapped me in the face and I was thinking what the heck. The other characters did not act like anything was different. I really had to use the restroom at that point so did not stop to think about it.

BUT - *film dissertation paper is printing*

Throughout the movie Gamora keeps asking the other members why they think Groot is actually saying stuff or if they are just making stuff up when he says his signature sentence. Then after they work together and become closer and then friends, before she leaves, Gamora understands Groot even though he has still just said "I am Groot". Then a few scenes later us, the viewers who have gone on this long adventure and cheered the team and Groot on, hear Groot say "I love you all" (or whatever they say).

Pretty cool!

That's how I took the Groot thing too. It wasn't perfectly done, but it works well enough.
Still doesn't fit with Groot Sr. in the first movie, but whatever.

Sorbicol wrote:

The final issue, and I think this is where MCU Phase whatever it is now is really starting to fall down, is that I don't have the background Marvel knowledge to really understand Kang or the threat he poses, and so far in everything I've seen where he's involved it hasn't really been explained why.

This is how I see big huge narratives going. It feels like every fiction world has to deal with this at some point. The lore gets to be so cumbersome that you eventually require a reset.

Comics in particular have had to do this as the serialized approach gave way to Big Narrative Arcs of the 80's.

DC had to reduce all their stuff with Crisis, Marvel had to eventually cut back after Infinity and Secret Wars and even Civil War.

You can only do something as big as Death of Superman or Broken Bat or MCU Thanos once. Then the audience is like, now what? What could possibly be more compelling than literally watching Spidey blow away in his surrogate dad's arms? (Having his surrogate dad sacrifice himself to bring back half the universe.)

Ultimately they will need some kind of, back-to-basics type of storytelling. In comics this was stuff like Batman: Year One or alt-superhero stuff like Astro City which went super-meta. I don't think meta works very well for genre films that aspire to LOTR/MCU/Avatar receipts.

Maybe X-Men will let them do that. Get back into universal stories about civil rights and mutants and us-against-the world folks that can't just call on Captain Marvel to come smoke Galactus.

Gotta reset people's expectations.

I believe your interpretations are canon according to the filmmakers.

Top_Shelf wrote:
Sorbicol wrote:

The final issue, and I think this is where MCU Phase whatever it is now is really starting to fall down, is that I don't have the background Marvel knowledge to really understand Kang or the threat he poses, and so far in everything I've seen where he's involved it hasn't really been explained why.

This is how I see big huge narratives going. It feels like every fiction world has to deal with this at some point. The lore gets to be so cumbersome that you eventually require a reset.

I think it’s not the complexity of the narrative so much as it is spread over too wide an area and if you miss one important bit it has large effects downstream. The stuff with Kang for instance was explicitly explained in the finale of Loki season 1, nearly half the episode is a monologue explaining who he is and why he’s a big threat and anyone who missed that one episode is missing a huge chunk of context for Quantumania and the entire next arc of movies.

ruhk wrote:
Top_Shelf wrote:
Sorbicol wrote:

The final issue, and I think this is where MCU Phase whatever it is now is really starting to fall down, is that I don't have the background Marvel knowledge to really understand Kang or the threat he poses, and so far in everything I've seen where he's involved it hasn't really been explained why.

This is how I see big huge narratives going. It feels like every fiction world has to deal with this at some point. The lore gets to be so cumbersome that you eventually require a reset.

I think it’s not the complexity of the narrative so much as it is spread over too wide an area and if you miss one important bit it has large effects downstream. The stuff with Kang for instance was explicitly explained in the finale of Loki season 1, nearly half the episode is a monologue explaining who he is and why he’s a big threat and anyone who missed that one episode is missing a huge chunk of context for Quantumania and the entire next arc of movies.

Right. Superfans are always going to be good with these nuances. Comic Book Guy knows which issue of Batman kicked off Hush and where The Long Halloween fits into Bat canon and why Barbara runs around in some shows but is Oracle in the comics.

Regular folks don't care about that.

They just need to know the overall arc and why/when they should care.

Hard to keep all that straight now in MCU.

Gonna need a reset.

ruhk wrote:

I think it’s not the complexity of the narrative so much as it is spread over too wide an area and if you miss one important bit it has large effects downstream. The stuff with Kang for instance was explicitly explained in the finale of Loki season 1, nearly half the episode is a monologue explaining who he is and why he’s a big threat and anyone who missed that one episode is missing a huge chunk of context for Quantumania and the entire next arc of movies.

To be fair, after I posted that i did think about it more and yes you are correct - it's the final 20 minutes of a Loki episode after a 6 Episode / maybe 4.5 - 5 hour story arc where they explain what Kang is all about. I was sort of semi remembering that while watching and maybe should have been able to recall it a bit better.

Problem is that was in a TV Show that I very much enjoyed but don't remember that much, and haven't rewatched since I saw it originally.

My wife fell asleep during that Kang speech.

Twice.

So she's never quite finished Loki season one. But I don't think she cares at this point.

And she has done a complete MCU phase 1-3 rewatch with me before.

Watched Quantumania, I enjoyed it, but not as much as the first two Ant Man movies. I think most of that is down to never being a fan of Kang as a villain. This iteration wasn't bad because he didn't have the stupid use of time travel problem (if you can time travel to any point in history, why not launch your invasion during a decade when there's not a bunch of superheroes running around), but as has been mentioned, he inconsistently used his powers & does the typical villain thing of gloating at his enemies rather than kill them. I liked where they were going with Cassie feeling disappointed in Scott for sort of coasting on his fame and not actively helping everyday people more with non-superhero problems (and his very valid reason of wanting to make up for lost time with his family), but it got resolved a little too quickly by her seeing him actively helping people with superhero problems and her getting a taste of what superheroing feels like too. All in all it's a fun ride, but Kang never really felt like the threat they seem to want him to be. He had the powers, but he wasn't as clever or smart as he's supposed to be. I suppose that's why the other Kangs were able to defeat and exile him.

It's kind of a recurring failure with Marvel villains though: in order to set up a properly intimidating recurring villain, they actually need to win the first few times they fight the heroes. Not just surprise and capture them, or have a back & forth battle where it looks like they'll win until the good guys rally or get reinforcements, but actually and soundly defeat the heroes in a fight they thought they were ready for. If Kang is going to be the next Thanos, I hope they start doing a better job of setting him up.

Kang is one of my favorite Marvel villains. Mostly because there are so many versions of him. Some of good some are bad but all are grey in some way or another. But I was worried on how exactly you can bring such a character to the movies. Nihilistic villains like Thanos are far easier even with something as wacky as infinity stones. They just want to destroy. But Kang’s motivations are simply not feasible in a movie format even if it spans multiple movies.

Some standalone movies wrapping up the events of the Infinity saga should have probably given way to the House of M saga as not only a multi film spanning story but as a catalyst to suddenly introduce mutants to the MCU. You could have slowly used the semi standalone to introduce the multiple realities and different versions of existing characters and new ones. Set up Wanda to be the next “antagonist”.

Mind reading Chidi was the best part of the movie.

In the middle of finally watching Love and Thunder.

The "humor". It's not . . . particularly humorous.

Edit: Finished it, and I cringed so repeatedly I'm going to have muscle spasms for weeks. I'm going to go read the Jane Foster Thor comic run to try to cleanse myself.

Stengah wrote:

Watched Quantumania, I enjoyed it, but not as much as the first two Ant Man movies. I think most of that is down to never being a fan of Kang as a villain. This iteration wasn't bad because he didn't have the stupid use of time travel problem (if you can time travel to any point in history, why not launch your invasion during a decade when there's not a bunch of superheroes running around), but as has been mentioned, he inconsistently used his powers & does the typical villain thing of gloating at his enemies rather than kill them. I liked where they were going with Cassie feeling disappointed in Scott for sort of coasting on his fame and not actively helping everyday people more with non-superhero problems (and his very valid reason of wanting to make up for lost time with his family), but it got resolved a little too quickly by her seeing him actively helping people with superhero problems and her getting a taste of what superheroing feels like too. All in all it's a fun ride, but Kang never really felt like the threat they seem to want him to be. He had the powers, but he wasn't as clever or smart as he's supposed to be. I suppose that's why the other Kangs were able to defeat and exile him.

It's kind of a recurring failure with Marvel villains though: in order to set up a properly intimidating recurring villain, they actually need to win the first few times they fight the heroes. Not just surprise and capture them, or have a back & forth battle where it looks like they'll win until the good guys rally or get reinforcements, but actually and soundly defeat the heroes in a fight they thought they were ready for. If Kang is going to be the next Thanos, I hope they start doing a better job of setting him up.

You’re applying logic and common sense there to a story with Time Travel as a central element - that pretty much never works (outside of Primer, which I only understand about 1% of) because there is either always a Deus Ex Machina solution anyone with half a brain can come up with in about 5 seconds, or because the story will tie itself in knots trying to explain why that can’t happen in this instance (because the author sure isn’t going to make that solution unavailable in the future)

It almost never works.

So my wife and I watched Quantumania. My expectations were subterranean so I enjoyed the movie more than expected.

Majors' performance as Kang was very uncomfortable though. My wife even observed that Kang's language sounded like an abuser talking so it was an unsettling reflection of Majors himself.

Sorbicol wrote:

You’re applying logic and common sense there to a story with Time Travel as a central element - that pretty much never works (outside of Primer, which I only understand about 1% of) because there is either always a Deus Ex Machina solution anyone with half a brain can come up with in about 5 seconds, or because the story will tie itself in knots trying to explain why that can’t happen in this instance (because the author sure isn’t going to make that solution unavailable in the future)

It almost never works.

Yeah, time travel makes no sense on any level. Luckily even though I'm not an avid watcher Doctor Who gives me the language to cope with how nonsense it is.

I shrug, say it's 'wibbly wobbly timey wimey' and then accept it as what it presents as.

Time travel is simple. Make the story good enough to ignore it. Otherwise, the nitpicking begins.

I feel a bit out of the loop. Are Skrulls bad or not? In Captain Marvel they were clearly not but this Secret Invasion series seems to say they are.

So which is it?