[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 28 November 2022 - 02:54 PM, said:

Abyss, on 28 November 2022 - 02:45 PM, said:

... do we get clever but humourously alien Drax from the first movie, or dumb heehee i make poo jokes Drax from the second movie?

100% Drax from the first movie. He's on point and hilarious here.

Great!
GotG2 really did very little good for most of the cast.

[QuickTidal]

Fuck, we are going to lose Rocket and Drax aren't we?




This looks amazing. Love that they are in the proper GOTG uniform now.

[Tsundoku]

So ... Hugh Jackman says he's going to just spend the next 6 months getting ripped AF to play Wolverine again, hmmmmmm?

https://www.news.com...da7e7612dd53ef7

"Jackman has donned the famous claws nine times and is set to return for a tenth time in Deadpool 3."

--------------------------------

I salute the sacrifice of so many chickens, for a higher purpose.

[QuickTidal]

Tsundoku, on 11 January 2023 - 02:12 PM, said:

So ... Hugh Jackman says he's going to just spend the next 6 months getting ripped AF to play Wolverine again, hmmmmmm?

https://www.news.com...da7e7612dd53ef7

"Jackman has donned the famous claws nine times and is set to return for a tenth time in Deadpool 3."

--------------------------------

I salute the sacrifice of so many chickens, for a higher purpose.

I'm sad that Jackman, it turns out, is longtime friends with not only the Kushners, but also with Rupert Fucking Murdoch....and claims to "not talk politics" with them...I mean, the fact that all three are CARTOONISHLY evil doesn't lead you to dump them as friends Hugh?

Consider me disappointed.

[Tsundoku]

Are Hugh really disappointed?

Hugh're allowed to make mistakes, Hugh know.

I'm sure he does it more to make sure his career stays all happy-like. X-Men WAS in the Fox stable, after all. Not sure about the Tarkins Kushners.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 11 January 2023 - 03:21 PM

[QuickTidal]

Tsundoku, on 11 January 2023 - 03:21 PM, said:

Are Hugh really disappointed?

Hugh're allowed to make mistakes, Hugh know.

I'm sure he does it more to make sure his career stays all happy-like. X-Men WAS in the Fox stable, after all. Not sure about the Tarkins Kushners.

This was all gold.

I need you to know that the Dad in me, loves great puns.

[Tiste Simeon]

If you think those are great pubs, you don't know jack, man...

[Maark Abbott]

We finally got to see Venom 2 recently. Was it objectively particularly good? Nah. Was it entertaining as all heck almost purely because of Tom Hardy's dialogue as Venom? Yes. I couldn't stop laughing. Very good fun.

[QuickTidal]

ANT-MAN 3 Post Credit Scenes have leaked:

MAJOR spoilers

Spoiler

First Post Credit scene is the Council of Kangs, led by Rama-Tut....the context of that scene spoils the end of the ANT-MAN movie so I won't note it here.

Second Post Credit scene: Sets up LOKI S2, Loki and Mobius are walking down the street in the 1940's and come across Victor Timely (another Kang variant) giving a speech....Mobius looks confused, and Loki looks terrified.

[Tsundoku]

Let's see how this goes:

[QuickTidal]

Sounds like ANT-MAN 3 is a dumpster fire...the only Rotten MCU movie besides ETERNALS....the individual reviews are being negative about it pretty mercilessly. Yikes.

EDIT: “But if this is what Phase 5 looks like, God save us from Phases 6, 7 and 8” - Variety

Jeezus. And the writer of ANT-MAN 3 is the writer of the ENDGAME of this arc of the MCU AVENGERS: KANG'S DYNASTY....double yikes.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 15 February 2023 - 04:12 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

Probably still watch it when it comes on Disney+ though!

[QuickTidal]

Tiste Simeon, on 15 February 2023 - 04:18 PM, said:

Probably still watch it when it comes on Disney+ though!

Oh for sure, but these reviews (I read a bunch of individual ones from reviewers I trust, never take that overall RT score at face value) have basically made me not want to spend the money to see it in theatres, and I had planned to see it on Friday. I'll save the money and wait for D+ streaming.

[Gorefest]

Still haven't seen Eternals or Wakanda Forever. I am getting MCU burnout.

[QuickTidal]

Gorefest, on 15 February 2023 - 04:39 PM, said:

Still haven't seen Eternals or Wakanda Forever. I am getting MCU burnout.

I didn't like either, but BP:WF is at least serviceable in portions...Eternals was a dumpster fire and the first (but not the last) MCU movie I outright hated...not to be outdone by THOR 4 which made both the wife and I angry after seeing it for how bad it was.

The MCU is getting MCU burnout.

The problem is that they had some leftover stuff from Phase 1-3 and thought that would be enough to keep people engaged in Phase 4-5....so you get ETERNALS, DOCTOR STRANGE 2, BLACK PANTHER 2, ANT-MAN 3, THOR 4, BLACK WIDOW....a bunch of leftover heroes and plot threads who JUST finished being part of the biggest cinematic event in decades...it's simply not as exciting to the general audiences as Phase 1-3 was.

The success of Phase 1-3 was introducing all the new characters and giving them solid standalone movies that were entertaining all by themselves. Were they formulaic? Sure, but they were enthralling enough with these new heroes to be fun.

As such, Phase 4/5 SHOULD have been introducing NEW characters (MCU X-MEN, FANTASTIC FOUR, BLADE, ect.) so they could have them in great standalone movies that have some tentative building links to the big arc stories for Phase 4-6...put your leftover Phase 1-3 heroes in supporting roles in those films if need be...and start your slow burn all over with fresh heroes.

So with these leftover heroes in Phase 4, the push to TV/Disney+ (I understand this mandate came from people like Bob Chapek and the shareholders, not Feige, but still) and long form storytelling was ABSOLUTELY a mistake....Much of the Phase 4 TV slate should have been 2hour movies....WANDA/VISION? Movie, and even better it leads RIGHT into DOCTOR STRANGE 2, MOON KNIGHT? Movie, the long form TV format made it suffer. MS MARVEL should have been saved to be introduced in THE MARVELS on the big screen, FATWS? Movie. LOKI? Movie. All of this projects would have been better as tight 2hour movies....but on TV they languish in multi-hour formats to come up with content and avoid filler.

So yeah, combine the leftover heroes from Phase 1 sort of cleaning up or being aimless, the clear lack of push to get fresh big heroes in the Marvel stable (X-men, FF, ect) into this Phase, and the decision to put so much on long form TV shows has killed any and all momentum in the MCU as a whole....and ANT-MAN 3 is not about to change that fact it sounds like.

The anomaly in all this that SHOULD have guided their hand? SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME. That film is exceptional because it's very much it's own thing, and is first and foremost about the hero whose name is in the title... while also tying directly into the multiverses shennanigans without feeling overwrought, even Strange smartly disappeared for a long part of the running time. For whatever reason they didn't take that success for what it was, and doubled down on weird MCU decisions.

[amphibian]

If you hire Chloe Zhao to make a movie, you gotta put her in a place to succeed and support the sensibilities you're hiring her directly to impose on the story. Marvel was a collective didn't do that, edited something over the movie, lame ducked it, and likely did something similar with Ant Man etc.

There's not a monolith in terms of what's getting made, the quality of support, and the freedom of vision. The fuck ups are happening because the formula isn't working that well and going outside the formula isn't an easy thing.

I hate the formula by the way. It caused me to generally abandon ship before the Thanos snap.

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 15 February 2023 - 05:22 PM, said:

If you hire Chloe Zhao to make a movie, you gotta put her in a place to succeed and support the sensibilities you're hiring her directly to impose on the story. Marvel was a collective didn't do that, edited something over the movie, lame ducked it

Nah, ETERNALS felt EXACTLY like NOMADLAND with superheroes....I think that's a failure of Chloe Zhao to reach a broader audience with her work, VS Marvel's mismanagement of it. She's literally the head name on the screenwriting credits...so she effectively wrote it too.

This isn't to say she's a bad writer/director, but casual movie-goers simply didn't resonate with her work, myself included.

amphibian, on 15 February 2023 - 05:22 PM, said:

There's not a monolith in terms of what's getting made, the quality of support, and the freedom of vision. The fuck ups are happening because the formula isn't working that well and going outside the formula isn't an easy thing.

I hate the formula by the way. It caused me to generally abandon ship before the Thanos snap.

These are fair statements. The "Formula" has been on display since at least AVENGERS 1, and whenever anyone wavered (pre-GOTG anyways) from it, they got turfed....but after letting Gunn do his own thing in GOTG that avoided most of that formula they thought they could let out the leash a bit...but got ETERNALS, and THOR 4, so they reigned back in now.

[worry]

Just finished Wakanda Forever: the best of the Phase 4 movies, which is faint praise since Shang Chi was the only other good one and most were outright bad, but I did like it.

[QuickTidal]

Now that we've launched into Phase 5, I wanted to do a final tally/ranking for how I felt Phase 4 was for me.

Films

7. THOR: LOVE & THUNDER: I Haaaaaaaaaaated this movie. Like not even Taika's direction could save this for me. Juxtaposing a cancer storyline against dick and fart jokes, with a baseline of a father seeking revenge against capricious gods was just such a fail. Nothing worked in this film.
6. ETERNALS - has some decent scenes, but overall was NOMADLAND in Superhero movie form and bored the ever-loving shit out of me. The good news is that it was as bad as THOR 4.
5. BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER - This was such a disappointment to me. I LOVED the first film, but this one felt like it was 2.5 hours of mourning Chadwick over and over. I didn't sign up to see a movie about grief for the whole runtime. Black Panther the character shows up for a mere 15min of that runtime...and the underwater sequences were ATROCIOUSLY shot. Chadwick deserved a better dedication movie than this.
4. BLACK WIDOW - middle of the film pack, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either. It serves as a nice intro to Florence Pugh's character, and Rachel Weisz and David Harbour elevated it.
3. DOCTOR STRANGE & THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS - This is a weird one, as if it was JUST a Sam Raimi movie without the MCU attached to it, I might rank it higher, and the MCU stuff is what actively brings this lower than it should have been. It's still a good time at the movies and I enjoyed most of it.
2. SHANG-CHI & THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS - This is the first movie of Phase 4 that excited me like the previous phases did. This was a WONDERFUL movie start to finish and I enjoyed the shit out of it even on re-watches, and I cannot wait for SHANG-CHI & THE WRECKAGE OF TIME (yes, this is the title). If it were not for SPIDER-MAN, this would easily easily be my top film of Phase 4.
1. SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME - Easy winner as the nostalgia coupled with Tom Holland/Zendaya/Jacob Batalon performances alongside many former actors in the various universes, this was chambering, action packed, and just emotional as hell. Loved it.

TV

5. WANDAVISION - Yeah this was fine, and the touchstones to old TV I grew up with worked fine...but it's stretched out over too many eps, and was hampered by the week-to-week release schedule as I think a binge block would have served better. It had some other stumbles too. It was fine.
4. THE FALCON & THE WINTER SOLDIER - Again, fine. I get that it served to set up the Cap mantle shifting and whatnot, but the villain was lacklustre, and the only saving grace for me was the banter and relationship between the leads. I liked it, but didn't love it.
3. WHAT IF? - I liked this too, but it didn't blow me away either.
2. HAWKEYE - I liked this WAYYYYYY more than I expected to. The relationship between the leads was really rewarding, and Kate is a great addition to the MCU. Echo was fine, but I don't think she deserved her own show...not sure why she was given one.
1. LOKI - Exquisite. No idea if that was down to Hiddelston once again NAILING his performance, or an affinity to the character but I loved every episode.

Never watched MOON KNIGHT, MS. MARVEL or SHE-HULK.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 28 February 2023 - 03:34 PM, said:

Now that we've launched into Phase 5, I wanted to do a final tally/ranking for how I felt Phase 4 was for me.

Films

7. THOR: LOVE & THUNDER: I Haaaaaaaaaaated this movie. Like not even Taika's direction could save this for me. Juxtaposing a cancer storyline against dick and fart jokes, with a baseline of a father seeking revenge against capricious gods was just such a fail. Nothing worked in this film.

I don't share the hate for this movie. Dislike elements, sure, but sheer hatey hate HATE... nah, i didn't think it was as bad as that. I genuinely enjoyed most of Thor's storyline and while his goofball turns went further than i would have liked, he was still Thor, just less angry/desperate than previous movies. But hey, i LOVED the bit with the kids at the end and it seems like the entire world despised that scene. Gor could have been less sympathetic, but i put that down to cinematic overkill. Jane's cancer storyline... more or less in line w the comic version. There's an argument to be made that dealing w something as serious as terminal cancer has no place in a superhero comic movie, but if they're going to go there, toning it down to make it more palatable is almost worse.

Quote

6. ETERNALS - has some decent scenes, but overall was NOMADLAND in Superhero movie form and bored the ever-loving shit out of me. The good news is that it was as bad as THOR 4.
5. BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER - This was such a disappointment to me. I LOVED the first film, but this one felt like it was 2.5 hours of mourning Chadwick over and over. I didn't sign up to see a movie about grief for the whole runtime. Black Panther the character shows up for a mere 15min of that runtime...and the underwater sequences were ATROCIOUSLY shot. Chadwick deserved a better dedication movie than this.
4. BLACK WIDOW - middle of the film pack, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either. It serves as a nice intro to Florence Pugh's character, and Rachel Weisz and David Harbour elevated it.

Agreed. ETERNALS was especially egregious... so much glorious source material to draw on, a decent to great cast, ample budget.... and we got... that.
WAKANDA had a few fun moments but i'm just left meh at the overall product. ....and i still think they should have re-cast the Panther and mourned Chadwick by dedication.
WIDOW was fine.

Quote

3. DOCTOR STRANGE & THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS - This is a weird one, as if it was JUST a Sam Raimi movie without the MCU attached to it, I might rank it higher, and the MCU stuff is what actively brings this lower than it should have been. It's still a good time at the movies and I enjoyed most of it.
2. SHANG-CHI & THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS - This is the first movie of Phase 4 that excited me like the previous phases did. This was a WONDERFUL movie start to finish and I enjoyed the shit out of it even on re-watches, and I cannot wait for SHANG-CHI & THE WRECKAGE OF TIME (yes, this is the title). If it were not for SPIDER-MAN, this would easily easily be my top film of Phase 4.

Agreed, and i give MoM extra credit for having the guts to dig right in to alt realities (AND the X-Men cartoon egg i may have rewatched once or ten'ce).

Quote

1. SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME - Easy winner as the nostalgia coupled with Tom Holland/Zendaya/Jacob Batalon performances alongside many former actors in the various universes, this was chambering, action packed, and just emotional as hell. Loved it.

I disliked that this film came down to 'fixing' the baddies from previous iterations and making them all into poor misunderstood victims, but the sheer wonderfulness of the cast, Spideys and supporting, was too good to let that ruin it for me.

Quote

TV

5. WANDAVISION - Yeah this was fine, and the touchstones to old TV I grew up with worked fine...but it's stretched out over too many eps, and was hampered by the week-to-week release schedule as I think a binge block would have served better. It had some other stumbles too. It was fine.
4. THE FALCON & THE WINTER SOLDIER - Again, fine. I get that it served to set up the Cap mantle shifting and whatnot, but the villain was lacklustre, and the only saving grace for me was the banter and relationship between the leads. I liked it, but didn't love it.
3. WHAT IF? - I liked this too, but it didn't blow me away either.
2. HAWKEYE - I liked this WAYYYYYY more than I expected to. The relationship between the leads was really rewarding, and Kate is a great addition to the MCU. Echo was fine, but I don't think she deserved her own show...not sure why she was given one.
1. LOKI - Exquisite. No idea if that was down to Hiddelston once again NAILING his performance, or an affinity to the character but I loved every episode.

Never watched MOON KNIGHT, MS. MARVEL or SHE-HULK.

Haven't watched HAWKEYE yet but otherwise agreed. Overall the TV side has been a pretty enjoyable as a supplement/complement to the films.