(SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

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Mongrel
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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Mongrel » Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:09 pm

Brentai wrote:Hey!

Best post + avatar combo in a long time.
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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Friday » Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:26 pm

Finally caught Loki.

For a show that had a ton of scenes of just Loki sitting in a chair and talking to another character sitting in a chair, it actually still managed to feel rushed and overfull.

That being said, I still liked it a lot. It was just a ton of stuff to take in all at once. A lot of people I guess felt the "squick" factor of the Loki/Sylvie romantic stuff, but it didn't bother me at all and just felt sort of fitting for his/her characters. Also enjoyed some bisexual rep finally.

Anyway the show basically existed to loredump and set up the next big thing. I read afterward that the director actually had to talk to like three other shows/movies because the ramifications of what happened at the end are so big and effect everyone.

At first I was mad that Sylvie killed He Who Remains because it was pretty obviously the wrong move, but then I remembered "oh wait this is how we get Alfred Molina back, so good job Syl keep up the good work."

Am I correct in assuming that the He Who Remains main bad Variant is going to be Kang the Conqueror?
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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby mharr » Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:47 pm

I could see a certain subset of the population being on board if they knew about his post-blip hobbies. Hawkeye themed squad car livery, you know the kind of thing.

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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Niku » Mon Nov 29, 2021 11:47 pm

Friday wrote:Am I correct in assuming that the He Who Remains main bad Variant is going to be Kang the Conqueror?


Yeah.
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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Thad » Tue Nov 30, 2021 1:00 pm

Brentai wrote:Hey!

I mean Hawkeye is my favorite Avenger*. But not this Hawkeye.

* if you define "favorite Avenger" to mean "favorite character in the context of membership in the Avengers." If you define it as "favorite character who is an Avenger" then it's probably Black Panther, but I like him better as a solo character than a team member.

(ETA and I just realized I said Black Panther because even after 15 years I still don't think of Spider-Man as an Avenger; his name didn't even cross my mind. Same deal, though; better as a solo character than an Avenger.)

Mongrel wrote:
Brentai wrote:Hey!

Best post + avatar combo in a long time.


I wasn't picturing that avatar, I was picturing this one.

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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Thad » Wed Dec 01, 2021 12:15 pm

I like that Bendis gets a "special thanks" credit.

Because after all, if it weren't for Bendis, there'd be no Kate Bishop.

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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Thad » Thu Dec 16, 2021 12:30 am

Gotta admit, I'm excited about the Kingpin reveal at the end there.

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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Thad » Thu Dec 16, 2021 1:35 am

Wait, is that the first time anyone's actually referred to him as "the Kingpin"? Like, I only watched the first season and a half of Daredevil, but I remember one of the things that really stuck out at me was nobody ever referred to him as "Kingpin". It was like one of those goofy self-conscious "would you prefer yellow spandex?" things where somebody decided if you threw around silly comic-book names like "Kingpin" or "Cosmic Cube" people wouldn't take your super-serious TV series about a blind lawyer who lives in a post-alien invasion Hell's Kitchen and fights magical ninjas while dressing like a Satan and then goes to confession to talk about how bad he feels about it seriously.

Like there's a bit in season 1 where everybody's freaking out because someone almost says "Fisk" and they're like "NEVER SAY HIS NAME" and I'm sitting here going "Uh yeah, wouldn't it be convenient if like he had some other name you could use, so you could talk about him without using his real name?" Like if you really don't want people referring to you by your real name, you should maybe have some other suggestion for something they can call you. Like "Ol' Whatsisface" or "the Tumbler" or something.

Anyway, the important thing is, this means maybe Matt Murdock can show up on She-Hulk.

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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Thad » Sat Jan 15, 2022 12:49 am

I didn't want to hate Eternals but I did.

It's got a great cast and a talented director. And the hook's not bad -- aliens learning empathy is a perfectly good premise; it's the Silver Surfer's origin after all -- but I feel like the script just can't carry that progression. It does a good job establishing that the Eternals are a bunch of sociopathic bastards, but it doesn't really put in the work their redemption arc needs.

It feels, simultaneously, like it's an hour longer than it should be *and* doesn't have enough time to tell its story. Maybe it could have worked as a TV series.

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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Thad » Sat Jan 15, 2022 12:58 am

It does make me want to read the original series, which I've never read. I keep trying to find an edition that doesn't have the hideous coloring of the recent reprints.

(I did read the Gaiman/JRJr series in '06; on balance I think it probably would have been a good idea to use that as the basis for the plot of this movie instead of just the costumes.)

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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Thad » Sat Jan 15, 2022 1:29 am

"Uni-mind? That's a stupid name."

You know what? Fuck you. It's not 1966 anymore; you can adapt a comic book without being openly contemptuous of the source material now.

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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby hngkong » Sat Jan 15, 2022 8:44 am

Thad wrote:It does a good job establishing that the Eternals are a bunch of sociopathic bastards, but it doesn't really put in the work their redemption arc needs.

It feels, simultaneously, like it's an hour longer than it should be *and* doesn't have enough time to tell its story. Maybe it could have worked as a TV series.


Weird, that sounds a bit like the Inhumans show. Except the Inhuman royals didn't learn empathy, they really, really liked their "caste" system. Inhumans didn't pull it off even with a show.

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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Thad » Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:19 pm

hngkong wrote:
Thad wrote:It does a good job establishing that the Eternals are a bunch of sociopathic bastards, but it doesn't really put in the work their redemption arc needs.

It feels, simultaneously, like it's an hour longer than it should be *and* doesn't have enough time to tell its story. Maybe it could have worked as a TV series.


Weird, that sounds a bit like the Inhumans show.


Eh, it's not that weird. There's a lot of overlap across Kirby's various cosmic mythologies -- Thor, Inhumans, Fourth World, Eternals.

Honest to God the best movie adaptation of the premise is still Masters of the Universe.

Except the Inhuman royals didn't learn empathy, they really, really liked their "caste" system. Inhumans didn't pull it off even with a show.


Yeah, but it wasn't the format that was the problem. Or the cast (I quoted a review upthread about how Anson Mount developed his own version of sign language for the show, and then the poor guy ends up spending most of it grimacing like he's constipated).

And the Marvel TV series now are being done by a different division of the company than they were when Inhumans was made; Disney pulled the TV division out from under Perlmutter and gave it to Feige. (Perlmutter's main interest in the Inhumans was he thought they could work as a replacement for the X-Men, since this was before Disney bought Fox and got the X-Men movie and TV rights back.) The Disney+ TV series are something of a mixed bag (WandaVision was the most impressive, and Loki has some neat ideas; the others are sort of bland and house style-y and the most exciting part of Hawkeye was a callback to a previous, Perlmutter-era TV series) but they definitely don't want for budget in the way Inhumans did.

I am sort of curious whether Feige might want to give Inhumans another shot sometime. It'd be great to see Mount and Rheon in a show or movie more suited to their talents.

I'm not ready to write off Eternals as a franchise either. The superhero genre's unusual in that it's pretty common for a second movie to be better than the first (probably in large part because convention holds that the first movie has to get the origin story out of the way). X-Men, Spider-Man, Dark Knight, Ant-Man, Suicide Squad. Doctor Strange looks like it's shaping up for a sequel that's more interesting than the first one. Hell, Thor took until the third movie to get it right. (Or so I hear. Thor 2 and Spider-Man: No Way Home are the only MCU movies I haven't seen.) There's still time to right the ship.

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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby beatbandito » Wed Feb 23, 2022 11:09 am

WandaVision was pretty dopey. The concept as a whole is fine, but gets dragged out for a little longer than it should. I knew enough going into it that I thought I was prepared. The first 80% will more dramatic or tragic, but then the end will turn into big dumb Marvel fight. Great! I'm not expecting much from the start since I already know the agreed on best single line is is Charlie Brown's catchphrase, minus the brevity.

Sadly, all the Marvel bullshit is balls, too. The way Vision and Wanda's powers work, the influence of the infinity stones. None of it seems to actually matter, despite the penultimate episode being dedicated to pretending it would. Ralph Bohner was the ultimate Lost / TLJ dumb reveal. "Recasting" Pietro was good because it was an in-universe way to blend the different splinters of the MCU. And with all the Endgame+ multiverse shenanigans seemed like there would be some kind of payoff showing how the worlds bridge together. But nope, it was a joke on you for expecting more of the show. A punchline for people that didn't know there was a joke in the first place.
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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Thad » Wed Feb 23, 2022 12:28 pm

I liked the sitcom conceit, and particularly liked that they were willing to make the first episode an exercise in anti-comedy.

But, as Marvel tends to do, the ending squeezed all the interesting formal experimentation out in favor of generic house-style stuff.

I'm not going to fault the show too much for not going deeper into multiverse stuff; I think it had enough going on without that, and Loki had the multiverse stuff handled.

I'd still say WandaVision was one of the better MCU series to date, though I'll grant I've got a novelty bias and I'm inclined to like things that deviate from the formula more than things that don't. Even if they snap back into the formula by the end, as they always do.

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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Thad » Wed Feb 23, 2022 1:20 pm

Speaking of Weird Marvel, MODOK is a lot of fun. It's a great cast and writers who are Marvel fans and believe there's no such thing as too obscure a reference. (Is that Angar the Screamer? Yes. Yes it is.)

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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Grath » Wed Feb 23, 2022 1:46 pm

beatbandito wrote:"Recasting" Pietro was good because it was an in-universe way to blend the different splinters of the MCU. And with all the Endgame+ multiverse shenanigans seemed like there would be some kind of payoff showing how the worlds bridge together. But nope, it was a joke on you for expecting more of the show. A punchline for people that didn't know there was a joke in the first place.

Wandavision directly sets up Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (trailer spoiler: and also Doctor Strange 2 appears to have Patrick Stewart as Illuminati-member Professor Charles Xavier, so there's a distinct chance that we get Actual Multiverse Pietro down the road.)

Also, the Loki finale/Ant-Man and the Antivaxxer: Quantumania casting spoiler: Wandavision is still pre-Multiverse, depending on precisely when it happens in relation to Loki, since one of Kang the Conqueror's variants was controlling the existence of any branching timelines to prevent the more dangerous Kang the Conqueror variants from existing.

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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby beatbandito » Wed Feb 23, 2022 8:11 pm

Oh right, I also watched Spider-Man: No Way Home. It was entertaining. The main conceit gets dove into very quickly, and in such an 80s Saturday morning cartoon way that it becomes clear there will be no reward for watching with a critical eye. Everyone is jokey and affable, and it gets in as many meme or meme-adjacent references it can get away with. Best bit for me: after it's revealed that Toby naturally produces his webbing, the other 2 spiders-man will act grossed out when they touch it.

Other than one specific aspect it's overall wholesome and friendly, if not always actually funny. Good to have on or for something to watch with kids, I'd imagine.
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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Niku » Wed Feb 23, 2022 9:19 pm

Thad wrote:Speaking of Weird Marvel, MODOK is a lot of fun. It's a great cast and writers who are Marvel fans and believe there's no such thing as too obscure a reference. (Is that Angar the Screamer? Yes. Yes it is.)




my spouse and i say "someone told me you called me a wet bitch?" to each other more than is probably healthy
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Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Postby Thad » Mon Mar 28, 2022 1:10 am

I finally saw No Way Home and there's a lot to like about it, but...okay, so MCU Spider-Man never had an Uncle Ben, and we're six films deep into this and he's just now having his "It's not my problem"/"With great power comes great responsibility" moment? That's...that's pretty weird, right?

That'd be like having a TV series about Superman that runs for 10 seasons and has him fight his entire rogues gallery, join the Justice League, marry Lois, and not actually wear his Superman costume until the last 5 seconds of the final episode.

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