I've not heard of Shang-Chi until pretty recently. Like, he's an extremely peripheral character which seems like it might start being more of a thing now that the MCU's rather blown its entire A-list character load in the last decade. Then again, Iron Man was extremely C list when the movie came out so who knows.
I sort of assumed they made Shang Chi to pick up eleventy billion dollars in the Chinese market, rather than because they're running out of characters?
Ms Marvel is the thing I'm most excited about. I LOVED that comic, and I never capital-letter-love superhero comics.
I sort of assumed they made Shang Chi to pick up eleventy billion dollars in the Chinese market, rather than because they're running out of characters?
Which apparently might not work.
😬
This looks pretty cheap and bad.
Maybe it's the phone I'm watching it on, but it looks fine to me?
Apparently it was filmed back-to-back with Nomadland, using the same crew and equipment, which suggests it might be a rather different sort of MCU movie.
That trailer does have a strong whiff of "Netflix Original" about it though.
There isn't really much in that trailer. We are old, we have powers, we ignored WW2 and Thanos, but now we have to get stuck in.
Watched it on the TV. Still looked fine.
We are old, we have powers, we ignored WW2 and Thanos, but now we have to get stuck in.
I was assuming Thanos/Endgame might have been the thing that prompts the getting-stuck-in.
Yeah, probably.
Gave The Eternals a few days to percolate and rewatched the trailer, and it still looks like a mood-budget streaming service offering to me.
I think it's the locations - all agoraphobic empty desert/coastline, or claustrophobic, dimly-lit interiors. None of which have a whole lot of personality beyond "inoffensively ethnic".
The all-organic hunter-gatherer environments and natural lighting just makes those costumes look ridiculous, too.
The lineup at the end is particularly cringey; the sort of shot designed to sit atop the Blu-ray's back-cover blurb, or in an Amazon Prime Originals carousel.
There isn't really much in that trailer. We are old, we have powers, we ignored WW2 and Thanos, but now we have to get stuck in.
"I mean the holocaust was bad but now iron man is dead"
Same way that you get a sneaking feeling that with Steve reliving from the 1940s to today he knew 9/11 was gonna happen and just kind of let it.
….FUCK.
Just watched Black Widow.
Really enjoyed it. No interest in the bemoaning reviews saying it's not a good start to wave 4 or the movie she deserved. I really liked it.
Then again, I like Thor: Dark World. Fuck everyone. 
It's a superhero movie. You're not meant to analyse it. Just watch it and get on with your life.
It's a superhero movie. You're not meant to analyse it. Just watch it and get on with your life.
Powerful take for the #restorthesnyderverse crowd
It's a superhero movie. You're not meant to analyse it. Just watch it and get on with your life.
On the one hand I get where you're coming from but on the other I very much resent the idea that my emotional or intellectual or critical reaction to a film (not specifically Black Widow, 'cos I've not seen it yet) is ever invalid, just because the movie's part of a mass-market brand push.
"Mindless shooty-bang CGI in another identikit billion-dollar franchise entry" is not a pass from critique. (I would argue that is critique.) Nor is "superhero movie", because Christ knows being about superheroes hasn't stopped comics from having Stuff to say.
I don't think it's bad to want more depth from the media I consume, regardless of its subject matter or studio of origin.
I get that. Nothing's invalid, it's all fine to approach things like that.
Strictly speaking for myself, to be fair, pretty much all films/TV/other media I partake in just goes in and out. I rarely come away with any kind of emotional reaction from anything other than 'Yeah, I enjoyed that' because really, I have many other things to worry about. Anything that isn't reminding me of a multitude of real-life problems is a distraction I welcome with open arms.
Ah, but if you can spend hours parsing and decompressing after watching, then the distraction from reality lasts even longer! I find it's especially distracting and satisfying when the media in question probably doesn't deserve the analysis (see also: the anime thread).
Someone in the TV thread mentioned "the next three Avengers films" or something like that, and it got me thinking that there hasn't actually been another announced. Is Secret Invasion going to be the climax of Phase 4?
I'm looking on Wikipedia and the only films listed for Phase 4 are:
Some fan wikis also include a Fantastic Four movie and a Blade movie as well, but near as I can tell there are no release dates for those.
I think it's pretty widely accepted that No Way Home is going to be multiverse-related, with the confirmed inclusion of various actors from the other Spider-Man movies, and presumably Kang is going to show up in at least a post-credits stinger for Multiverse of Madness as well as being a/the villain in Quantumania, but I'm curious to see if/how the others tie themselves into this stuff.
A crossover between the Loki TV series and Love and Thunder could be on the cards (there's also rumours that Hiddleston will be showing up in Multiverse of Madness), although I guess it's also possible that Jane Foster's Thor is from an alternate reality.
Is Secret Invasion going to be the climax of Phase 4?
It's a TV series, so that would be a ballsy move.
Ah, OK. That wasn't clear in the list I was looking at.
I finally watched the good Thor movie (can't remember what it's called now). It was good though. Amusing, and a good challenge to spot every meme it generated (about 5 per minute).
Thor Ragnarok. And yes it is great.
'Piss off ghost' is easily the hardest I've laughed at anything in the Marvelverse.
My son loved the two Spider-Man movies when we watched through the MCU recently, so we went back to Sam Raimi's original 2002 Spider-Man movie last night. It's surprisingly easy to pitch as a "multiverse movie" so thanks for that, Marvel, the concept of there being different versions of the characters didn't phase him at all.
It's pretty good actually. Tobey Maguire's nowhere near as likeable as Tom Holland - there's something vaguely sneering about him, like he's always on the verge of breaking character. Kirsten Dunst looks far too old for her character (even though she's not). And the movie suffers from the usual "origin story" problem, whereby fully half the film is set up running through plot points you know already, and then the villain doesn't have much time to do anything other than cackle a bit and get defeated. (It's never established what Norman Osborn actually wants - he's desperate to team up with Spider-Man but for what exactly? Generic nefarious villain shit I assume).
But it's nice to have a straightforward superhero movie that isn't tied up in wider plot threads, the effects hold up remarkably well and it's funny/exciting in all the right ways for a Spider-Man movie. 9/10 for an easily pleased junior Spider-fan, 6/10 for a slightly more jaded adult.
I remember the second one being a fair bit better and I've never seen the third one, or either of the Amazing Spider-Mans. Any good?
I've never seen the third one […] Any good?
My memory of Spider-Man 3 is that it was too-embarrassing-to-be-hilarious garbage, though part of me wonders if maybe it would be appraised more generously in hindsight than it was on rele—
Eeh, maybe not.
3 suffers from having too many villains (Sandman, Green Goblin 2, and - briefly - Venom), none of whom are used in particularly interesting ways. It's very much the "contractually-obligated" entry, and nobody really seems to want to be there.
The Amazing movies are a very mixed bag; apparently the director wanted to go in a direction the studio didn't like, so the first film is sort of butchered, though you can see the bones of something halfway decent buried in there. And I like Garfield's take on Parker a lot. Amazing 2 is baggy garbage, and has the same issue as Raimi's 3 - too many villains, not enough story - without any of the cringe that at least made 3 memorable.
The second Maguire one is great fun, largely due to Alfred Molina chewing up every bit of scenery he can find. It has no need for origin stuff and has a pretty straight narrative with a single understandable villain. Like X Men 2, it just delivers a proper superhero story without any nonsense and is therefore the best of the lot I think.
The third is as bad as everyone remembers. It's one of those films where you have no idea how anyone sat there and went "This is it! This is the final cut! Well done everybody!". It just gets worse and worse as it goes one.
I like Garfield in the Amazing duo - he is a significant upgrade on Maguire in terms of performance and characterisation. There's a good supporting cast too. The first suffers from the inevitable originsblahetc which makes it feel pleasantly familiar rather than exciting or interesting as a film, but I think it's very likeable. The second is more muddled with some severely undercooked villains (Jamie Foxx is definitely wasted) and too much crashbangnoise, but the Garfield/Stone relationship is convincing and actually quite moving at times.
The Suicide Squad has hit HBO Max, which means it's falling off the back of servers all over the place, so we watched that the other night.
It's good, if a bit long, extremely funny and extremely violent. It's less juvenile than I was expecting going in, though there is one recurring visual joke about a character's mother than I didn't find as amusing as James Gunn clearly did. It was funny the first time, not so much the third.
It makes vague gestures towards having a point to make about American interventionalism, but doesn't really follow through (and in fact almost makes the case that it's a necessary evil). And I could do with a few of these supervillains actually being evil. So many of them are misunderstood-with-a-heart-of-gold, waiting for the opportunity to Do The Right Thing.
Idris Elba is great (though not testing his range by any means, he does get to do some good shouting); Daniela Melchior will hopefully have a meteoric rise after this; holy shit, John Cena can act!?; and does Taika Waititi just spontaneously show up in everything these days?
I'd say it's less funny and more relentlessly exhausting - similar to a lot of DC output.
Elba is good (he doesn't have any range ever so I'm not sure why you'd hope any film would test it), Cena is good, the rest of the cast battles manfully with the stodgy script. Nathan Fillion really deserves more than what he's got out of all the superhero films (should he have been Ant Man? I'd have taken it). And I can't understand what you're seeing in Melchior. She's… OK? Capaldi really needs to stick to his Scottish accent.
I do think it had memorable moments but the whole thing was trying a little too hard to ever be a cult classic. Guardians 1 really was lightning in a bottle.
Black Widow is odd. It's a far better film than Suicide Squad, for sure. It has a lot more self confidence. Johanssen is great as always, but the first hour or so has so many shots of her arse that I began to feel slightly incredulous that nobody at any stage in the edit thought to tone it down. It also has some weird themes, villains with unclear motives and a fairly po-faced, exhausted sort of humour that runs through it, but just feels a lot more coherent (than Suicide Squad). Some of the cinematography is excellent, and it feels like a less kinetic Bourne in bits with the really close in action shots.
It does generally feel like the superhero thing is starting to run out of steam though. There's only so many ways you can do the same chase/fight sequences.
Yeah, a lot of the action sequences in Black Widow felt like I'd seen them done bigger or better in a Mission Impossible.
First episode of Marvel's What If…? is up today. "What if Peggy Carter took the Super Serum instead of Steve Rogers". It's fun, but feels a bit pointless, if that makes sense, it's a breezy retelling of the first Captain America movie with added giant tentacles.
There appears to be someone called The Watcher overseeing all this multiverse madness though so maybe in time this will all turn out to have some bearing on the overall MCU. Or maybe not.
The Watchers already made a brief MCU appearance in Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2, as part of the Stan Lee cameo.
I've seen it theorised that Stan Lee was playing The Watcher all along.
We went to see Black Widow yesterday - in an actual cinema, and everything! - and… it's good. Solid in that, "mid-tier Marvel solo movie" kind of way.
Specific thoughts:
- I really liked Florence Pugh
She's been brilliant in everything I've seen her in - magnetic in Lady Macbeth and Midsommar, and the clear highlight of a very good ensemble cast in the last version of Little Women.
Looking forward to seeing BW at some point, although we can't really go out at the moment due to small children (and I won't be paying Disney+ 20 quid for their notcinema nonsense) so it won't be for a while.
Looking forward to seeing BW at some point, although we can't really go out at the moment due to small children (and I won't be paying Disney+ 20 quid for their notcinema nonsense) so it won't be for a while.
It goes "free" for Disney+ subscribers on October 6, so you don't have too long to wait.
And since it doesn't (seem to) tie into either Shang-Chi or Eternals, there's no rush to see it "in order".
It goes "free" for Disney+ subscribers on October 6, so you don't have too long to wait.
Ah cool, thanks.
And since it doesn't (seem to) tie into either Shang-Chi or Eternals, there's no rush to see it "in order".
Even better, thanks.
I'm completely lost as to what comes when and what refers to what now in this universe now… Feels more like the way that comics operate as a result, but I do think mass audiences may start to drift away a little given it's not a straight line through "what RDJ did next" any more. They need a figurehead and/or a big bad to give it some shape.
It'll be interesting to see how the assumption that everybody's seen everything in the franchise will pay off now that Phase 3 is over. In the buildup to Infinity War/Endgame, there was a sense of momentum that lent every new piece a weight of potential importance – which probably drove more people to see, for instance, Doctor Strange, than might have without that finish line in sight.
As much as the interconnectedness of the previous Marvel movies was a weakness – nothing was ever really allowed to stand on its own – that sense of a shared purpose definitely feels like it's lacking from the upcoming stuff.
Maybe once the pieces start going on the board the overall direction of the next Phase will become more apparent, but for all the hyping up of multiverses in Loki and the Doctor Strange sequel, it's hard to see how Shang-Chi or The Eternals fit into that based on what's been released so far.
Also there's a new Eternals trailer and I still have no sense of what this thing is or why I should care.
The Eternals are basically immortal space people made by the Celestials (remember the big lad in Guardians of the Galaxy and the floating head that they visit? Those ones). They have baddies who are called Deviants. In the comics, Thanos is one of them, and they show up for a limited run comic because no one really cares about them much every time Thanos does something bad and go 'sorry, he's a dick also we have a non intervention policy so uh we're just kind of here.'
They're extremely dull. Keiron Gillen has a book with them in it at the moment with (I think?) Esad Ribic is doing the art and that's usually a team that would make me stick around but oh my god they're so borinnnnng.
I think it's like…. a sign that Marvel are nervously glancing around and going 'oh no we've used all of our interesting characters does- does anyone give a shit about Stiltman? Can we make Stiltman cool?'
There are a lot more accents, lip filler and Harry Potter monsters in that video than I think it needs.
If the shark isn't being jumped the ramp is, at least, being approached at speed.
Following on from Infinity War and Endgame was always going to be hard. That Eternals trailer just highlights to me how much the Avengers films earned their "group of heroes vs the apocalypse" story. Trying to jump back in to another "front row seats to the end of the world" adventure, this time with a bunch of supers we've only known for twenty minutes sounds like a bad idea. Anyone remember Babylon 5 Legend of the Rangers?
Got to say that looks dull as shit. Earnest and plodding. Also surprisingly cheap-looking. Lots of really ordinary shots with obvious CGI slapped on the top, like an episode of Doctor Who.
I'm not at all convinced they can introduce so many new heroes, in an entirely new setting, and make us give a shit about any of them in the space of a two-hour movie.
In a way they're in the film equivalent of the videogame cycle Ubisoft are in, where they build bigger and bigger, but emptier worlds. I'd say the future success of Marvel is echoing stuff like Homecoming/Ragnarok, where you deal with a smaller cast at a more personal level. World/universe level threats are just getting boring. Widow might spook them on that score though as it hasn't done very well (for a myriad of reasons).
This has the makings of a John Carpenter level flop.
I dunno, I still think it looks better - or, at least, more interesting - than Shang-Chi.
Eye lasers are the naffest superpower. How do you aim them? What do you see while they're "on"? Plus they looks cheap and crap. (Exception: young Cyclops in X Men:whatever, when he just tore the whole building apart. That was pretty cool.)
This has the makings of a John Carpenter level flop.
Carpenter or Carter? I really enjoyed John Carter, despite the floppiness. John Carpenter has made some right old dross in his time though…
John Carter who was also in the Carpenters.
Eye Lasers Man just makes me want to watch The Boys again.