Season 1 is kinda bland. Season 2 is good. Season 3 is great.

 

I’m not the person you were asking, but my thoughts on Loki was that I kept waiting for him to do something especially clever or perhaps even mischievous and never really got it. He was pretty much a passenger reacting to a lot of the events around him and not really what I came to expect from the character. Not to mention the whole “resetting over half the character development he’s been through and then quickly having him go through it again via brief DVD watching session” aspect. He also spent a lot of time getting his ass handed to him by ostensibly normal humans for a god who was just previously fighting Captain America in hand to hand combat.

Can’t say much on the Hawkeye front other than that I’m reserving judgement for now. There’s been a few decent scenes but I can’t say I think it’s really expanded his character that much, he seems to be taking a beat of a backseat really compared to Kate Bishop. Considering they’re using the franchise to back door pilot Echo, and bringing in both

Spoiler

Fisk and Yelena

I’m not sure there will even be much time for a more thorough examination of the titular character.

Tracksuit Mafia is from the Matt Fraction run of Hawkeye comics that was very well received and what the show is largely based on, but that doesn’t mean every aspect is going to translate well into live action. The whole “Bro” joke seems a bit dated to me, and I’m not sure it really translates well to the MCU for some low level thugs to be so cavalier about fighting/taking hostage an Avenger.

 

Watched Spider-Man

Spoiler

I thought the first 20 mins were a bit much, to angsty, but maybe needed that much to pay off rest of the movie.

I loved the plot of redeeming villains, and especially Dr Octo, that might be my fav sub plot of whole MCU.

Garfield and Maguire were fun to see, Garfield really delieverd, total commitment. I thought Maguire was a bit stiff. But was still awesome to see, they all got some payoff.

Dr Strange was interesting, he was kinda the villain, impulsely casting that spell. While it does fit him... kinda, it did seem a bit much. Loved Peter beating him with math.

The ending.... I really didn’t like it. They are leaning hard into friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, not the heir of Tony which I thought was a way better approach.

8.8/10

 

EYOO D'Onofrio is back.

 

Glossing carefully over what I assume is a Hawkeye spoiler to talk about Spidey...not sure what my final opinion is, to be honest. There was an awful lot happening, and it was all pretty good, but I can't quite decide whether the final result is equal to the sum of its parts. I will say, while I didn't indulge myself, the audience was cheering like it was Endgame again.

Spoiler

While Toby and Andrew appearing wasn't exactly a surprise, I'd managed to avoid any sort of definite confirmation that they were in, so the scene still worked - I'm sure it would have done anyway, because it was a fun scene, but it still had that extra thrill. Personally, Charlie Cox's cameo thrilled me more, as that was much less expected (although still not a total shock).

Fanservice aside, the highlight for me was the battle with Strange in the Mirror Dimension - it hadn't occurred to me from the trailers that they were fighting, I figured it was just part of the spell going wrong or something - which was appropriately bonkers. Slightly mixed feelings about Peter beating him with maths; very cool, but also, Strange can literally rewrite reality and has gone one-on-one with Dormammu, so...

I liked the ending in that it's getting Peter closer to a more traditional depiction, although I've never had too much of an issue with Iron Boy Jr as some people call him, but I do kinda think that in some ways it actually exacerbates the issues people have with MCU Spidey? So much of the previous two films was brought about by Iron Man that it left Peter without a solid mythos for himself, and now, after a film devoted to villains who don't know this Peter, none of his actual supporting cast even remember him.

 

I will check the movie next weekend, but as I'm reading spoilers I've one question to people who saw it.

Spoiler

If I get it right in the end everyone not only forgets that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, but also everything about Peter. But do they also forget about Spider-Man and in the next movie it's like he's a new superhero in the NY? Because I'm already not a fan of a reset in his relationships outside of the mask, but doing the same with the mask is a little to much in my opinion.

 

Spoiler

No people still remember Spider-Man. Just not Peter Parker.

So the avengers all know Spider-Man, and that he helped them, but have no idea how to find him supposedly.

Not sure how that works as he had his mask off a lot.

 

Thanks for an explanation.

 

Regarding the credit scenes for Spidey (one mid, one post):

Spoiler

The first, with Eddie Brock getting drunk as he tries to get his head round the MCU, was...fine, I guess. Probably great if you've watched and enjoyed the Venom movies, but eh. Cheeky way to get the symbiote into the MCU though...

The second, the teaser for Dr Strange 2, was awesome - although as much as I liked What If...? on the whole, and evil!Strange, I still wish there were parts of the MCU which weren't required viewing. Ah well.

 

It's not required viewing though
It's more of a prize for the people who have taken the time to consume all the MCU properties.
I am sure all will be explained in a concise and clear way, so that everyone will understand. But the people who saw everything will get more out of it.

Like how you enjoyed seeing Cox because you know the history. But anyone who didn't won't feel left out or feel like they had to see DD Netflix

 

Knock on wood that the last episode doesn't let me down, but I've loved Hawkeye so far. Easily my second favorite of the Disney+ series so far, ahead of Falcon and the Winter Soldier and behind Wandavision. Seeing Clint get some time in the spotlight is fun and Kate Bishop is my favorite new character in a long time. Jack Duquesne hasn't even had his background explained yet and he's still a wonderful bastard.

I do have to say though that I've no idea how they're going to swing a show with Echo as the protagonist. She's not been a bad character but she just seems far too bland to be a lead role.

 

I completely agree.

Everything about Echo is completely bland and boring. She has no personality. No intrigue and the actress is middling.

I would easily prefer a show based on Kate Bishop because, she is immensely entertaining, and the actress is good.

I genuinely love their relationship with Clint now that he's taken her under his wing, and is not a grumpy old dude trying to get rid of dead weight.

I also love the constant joke/plot point of kate using normal problem solving methods like taking an uber or charming a building's tennat.

It just shows how different she is from the super spys.

I love Yelena. But I don't know, sometimes I feel like her accent is laid on too thick, to the point of parody.

But I do adore how she only refers to kate through her full name. Its a nice setup to when there relationship grows and she refers to her with one name.

Hawkeye is vastly superior to Falcon and the winter soldier.

 

Honestly, beyond just being a great film and MCU movie

No Way Home actually enhances and improved the first two MCU spider man movies.

Spoiler

With the way this one ends, it basically reframes these three films as an origin trilogy.

we get this very comic book status quo at the end of the movie.

im beyond excited to see what happens next.

 

Best MCU film in a long minute for me. Spidey plays by different rules than the rest of the MCU (given the number of movies about him pre-MCU that I grew up with), but this is the first MCU movie ever where I felt something other than 'that was cool.' There were genuine emotional moments to it that the rest of the MCU just straight up lacks. The only thing similar was Tony dying in Endgame.

Spoiler

The villain redemption angle was so unexpected I legit sat up straighter in my chair when I realized they turned Strange into an antagonist.

Was genuinely shocked when May died. I'd thought she would, then I thought she wouldn't, then she did. The 'great power, great responsibility' line worked really well from her given we had two solid movies of seeing her, rather than 20-30 minutes of origin. Her death felt real in a way that most MCU deaths don't. Most just feel like somewhat token character development. The combination of writing and Tomei and Holland acting their asses off made it wrenching in the theater.

McGuire and Garfield were fun, and it felt like their individual stories got justice despite them not really being the focus. When Garfield caught MJ it, again, felt like a moment. It wasn't just a callback to a different movie. You could tell it mattered to his character that he saved her when he couldn't save Gwen.

Dafoe was predictably amazing. Loved that he was the big bad and how he leaned into it. Felt Joker-esque with how he taunted Holland's Spiderman. Proper villain shit on top of killing May. Him laughing as Holland clocked him in the hallway gave me Dark Knight vibes, and that final confrontation was damn near perfect.

All in all, Spiderman has always resonated with me more than other heroes largely because there's always an argument that him being Spiderman was kinda the worst thing that ever happened to his loved ones. No Way Home drove that home way way better than Holland's first two films, and in my mind better than pretty much any MCU film. Being a superhero has real consequences for Peter Parker, and they're all awful. Yet, despite all of it, he'll always do the right thing because that's who he is. I hated the ending, but I feel like they nailed it. the dumb, self-sacrificing play of not hopping back into Ned and MJ's lives because he recognizes the pain he inadvertently brings is a Peter Parker move. It fits him.

tl;dr: ton of fun. Interested to see how Spiderman fits into the MCU moving forward.

 

Will write up more of my thoughts regarding No Way Home later, but for those who watched it:

Spoiler

Did anyone else have a sort of feeling where it didn't really feel like an MCU movie? Sure, Doctor Strange did show up for it, but he served more as a catalyst for events rather than a figure in the spotlight, and the story as a whole felt pretty self-contained and more or less disconnected from the broader MCU. Which, strangely, enough I was okay with and appreciated, and I felt the movie was actually better off for going with that approach. Having the casts of the previous two Spiderman series obviously added to that, and I appreciated that Andrew and Tobey's characters played real supporting roles in the story, as opposed to just showing up for the final act or the like.

 

Spoiler

Probably my favorite part of having the Spider-Men show up is that Maguire and Garfield both were written like Spider-Men that had been around the block, that they didn't want to see Tom's Spidey make the same kinds of mistakes that they'd had to learn harsh lessons from, that they helped him Be Better. Also, that they had given time and effort and thought to what they could have done to save the villains who wound up dying against them. Truly excellent.

 

Spoiler

Yes! I totally agree. If I have one criticism of Phase 4, it’s that everything is starting to lose that tight interconnectivity that the previous 3 phases had. It was hands down one of the best superhero movies I’ve seen in recent years, but it didn’t feel too much like an MCU movie, especially after Strange wasn’t really there for half of it

 

So, we got the finale of Hawkeye, and while it was okay, I don't really see why the love.

Spoiler: Adalbert Waffling

The first thing I didn't really like was the weird tone. It seemed to frame itself as a fun Christmas romp thing, with amusing hijinks and comedy villains, only most of the characters didn't get the memo. Clint was dour and joyless, working through the trauma of losing Nat, and the guilt of what he'd done as the Ronin. Kate constantly wore an expression like she'd just watched someone kick her puppy. Maya, the character with the only actual visible development across the series, and with the most relatable motivation for her actions, spent most of her time scowling or punching people.

Oh, they still threw in the standard Marvel quips at a minimum rate of 0.666QPM (quips per minute) as specified in the unspeakable contract written up between the powers that be at Marvel and whichever dark elder god they appealed to for their breakthrough popularity, but it was such a strange tonal combination that I wasn't really sure if I was coming or going.

This didn't rob me of my enjoyment, but it was such a strange feeling that I was often brought out of the show by some element of 'wacky fun'. Don't tell me Clint Fucking Barton, who jumps off buildings, can't climb down off a fucking tree.

Kate was meant to be our pov character, but her arc was just... all over the place.

So, sure, she was saved by Clint in the Chitauri invasion and it made her think that she could be a hero even if she didn't have powers. Lovely. She then meets the damaged person her hero really is, and doesn't really develop at all. She already knew it would take sacrifice to be a hero. She didn't come to that realisation during the show. She just kept trucking on, and told Clint at the end that the lesson he was trying to teach her about the cost of his job was one she already knew about, and was okay with.

She was introduced making some fairly bad choices, for which she suffered almost no tangible consequences. I think she had to go to a party or something? Oh noes! Her decision to don the Ronin costume was an example of her impetuous 'heroic' mindset, needing no encouragement whatsoever to put on a mask and start punching people. Does she come to some realisation that her impetuosity needs to be curbed? No, not really because she tells us at the end that she already knew about the possible costs. It wasn't impetuosity at all. She'd made an informed decision. So far as I can tell she comes out the other end pretty much the same as she went in. She hasn't even really lost faith in her mother, because she didn't have much of it going into the series anyway.

She shared absolutely nothing with her final climactic villain, Kingpin. Kingpin is an amazing villain, but he's not for her. He was so great for Daredevil because they represented two sides of the same coin, as it were. They both thought they were saving 'their' city through their actions. They both thought they were monsters due to their past, or their tendency towards rage and violence, and fought to be better than that (within their own distinct moral systems) in order to improve the world for the people they loved.

Kingpin here was utterly wasted. He could have been replaced by any particularly beefy supermook. Even if they decide to go the comic route of having him survive being shot (blinded), they're going to have to deal with the fact that Kate being able to take him out like she did kinda makes him an irrelevance for pretty much any hero. I'm sure she's good, but she ain't no Spiderman.

Clint himself felt like he was in the wrong show. There he was having quiet, heartfelt conversations with his wife, or poignant talks with his children as they try really hard to not be disappointed that he might not be home for Christmas. There he is suffering from panic attacks just thinking about the Chitauri invasion, or Natasha. There he is struggling with the disability which his chosen life as a hero has left him with. All around him, you have larpers, the trackbro mafia, and Kate's constant needling about his suit. The world doesn't give even the smallest shit about what it has cost him to save it, and it's tragic. But none of that is paid off. Even when he explains to Kate all the things she might lose, she's just like 'yeah, cool, already knew that. Can we go punch people please?' Then he's just like, 'well, alright then. Guess it's not so bad after all! Time for Eggnog!'

Unlike other people here, I felt that Maya, bizarrely, might have been the best realised character in the whole show. Oh, she was boring, with a completely predictable arc and conclusion, but she was unique in actually having one. Her driving motivation was something real and concrete, the murder of her father. What she did because of that motivation was also understandable, and the revelation that it was Kingpin who was responsible had the actual effect of creating a change in her character, which was then contrasted against her childhood friend Kazi, and his inability to make such a change.

I'm not sure Yelena even had a point. I thought she was meant to, in her final 'I'm gonna kill you, but first tell me why' thing, draw Clint to some new acceptance of Nat's fate, but nope. Maybe I need to re-watch it, but it seemed to me that they both just continued to feel sad, Yelena realised he was sad too, and figured well that's fine then.

I thought we were going to have some kind of heartfelt thing from Clint about Natasha always being better than him, about how she'd understood what a hero is better than him, about how he was weakened due to his love for his family, while she was strengthened by her own, something. But no. He's just super sad about it all.

I realise I've written another essay, and folk will probably disagree with me on a bunch of things. Don't get me wrong, we watched it and had some fun with it, but once again, like with all the Disney Marvel shows, I feel like they scratched the surface of something important, and then shied away from it in fear that it would turn away audiences. I feel like they've got the detail of dialogue, scenes, and action down to such a fine art that even while watching you don't really realise that the fundamentals of the actual storytelling have seemingly evaporated. It's only now, looking back, that I find myself wondering what the point of it all was.

Maybe that is the point. Maybe it's meant to be a scathing meta-commentary on the fact that we as watchers don't care about the details, or the people, just so long as the flashy images of our heroes endure. I kinda doubt it, though.

 

Agreed with the broad point of your post, @Steelbadger, but for a couple of specific points:

Spoiler

Kate being able to take him out like she did kinda makes him an irrelevance for pretty much any hero. I'm sure she's good, but she ain't no Spiderman.

In fairness, Kingpin throws her around the room like she's playing Loki to his Hulk in an Avengers reenactment for several minutes, before she blows up a quivers worth of trick arrows more or less in his face, and even that only knocks him down for a couple of minutes (working on the assumption that there isn't some kind of weird time skip between the cops arresting Kate's mother outside the toy store and them going in to find him, of course); I actually came down kind of on the other side of this, wondering why Kingpin seems to have superpowers now - I know he's always been much tougher than he appears to be, but he makes his grand entrance to the showdown by literally ripping a car door off its hinges!

I'm not sure Yelena even had a point. I thought she was meant to, in her final 'I'm gonna kill you, but first tell me why' thing, draw Clint to some new acceptance of Nat's fate, but nope. Maybe I need to re-watch it, but it seemed to me that they both just continued to feel sad, Yelena realised he was sad too, and figured well that's fine then.

I think the idea was they both realised that Natasha had sacrificed herself in no small part for Yelena, thus addressing some of Clint's survivors guilt - Natasha bringing her own family back, not just reuniting Clint with his - and proving to Yelena that Natasha did love her. Whether that works or not is another matter of course.

More general points:

Spoiler

Incredibly generous of the literal army of bros to let Clint and Kate have their big heroic moment before they brought out anymore guns (I know the first wave had them magnetized away, but come on).

The big mystery of the watch turning out to just be...a watch that used to belong to Clint's wife seems a little underwhelming. Why were the bros - and presumably by extension the Kingpin - after it? It identifies her as a SHIELD agent, I guess, but eh. Related, but why exactly was Clint so wary of the Kingpin getting involved? Sure, he's a threat, but MCU!Clint is a SHIELD black-ops agent turned Avenger. Granted, most of that support network is gone, I guess, but it still seems a stretch for him to give a shit about Fisk.

Yelena was the best bit of the show for me. Her conversation with Kate in the last episode was the series highlight.

Agreed with Steelbadger that Maya has the best actual arc, but I can't really get enthused about her spin-off.

Going back to Clint's family, I actually really liked that they were understanding and didn't cause him any drama over his mission, other than his own natural guilt. Would have been really easy to have them guilt trip him, plead with him to come home, so the whole "Yeah, we get it, do your thing and we'll be fine" approach was a nice change of pace.

Inconsequential fun that I'll probably have mostly forgotten about in a few months, overall.

 

After watching the last episode of Hawkeye I'm going to repeat myself in saying that I now really don't want another season of Daredevil.

The way Disney made a mockery of Kingpin was actually painful to watch.

In Daredevil his physical strength made him somewhat intimidating, yes, but his intelligence and his ruthlessness were his main selling point.

That's the guy that pushed Matt Murdock physically and mentally to the brink, threw some fists with the Punisher and made him do his dirty work, popped a guy's head with a car door for ruining a date, took control of a prison and the FBI all the while being dressed in the fanciest suits.

Now he wears a hawaii shirt, rips doors off, gets punted through a store front by a car and doesn't even look worse than the driver, tosses people across rooms no problem (who somehow don't get hurt), gets played by Kate's mother, gives a fuck about some girl for no reason.

I know I sound like a douchebag, but the show somehow annoyed me almost from start to finish.

Best part for me was the very beginning. Clint is watching the musical somewhat disturbed and suddenly it's revealed he has issues with his hearing. He tries to have a good and simple evening with his kids and a dude asks for an autograph or selfie in the men's room.

The guy was a Shield assassin, a ruthless vigilante and a hero that faced killer robots and aliens. Would have been nice to see him try holding back when faced with these seemingly tame track suit guys giving that he actually wanted to leave everything behind, but is actually being forced to get serious more and more by the gradual reveal of the Kingpin, who decided to take a more hands on approach when an Avenger suddenly got involved in one of his numerous opperations.

Would have been a nice reality check for Kate, too. Track suit mafia, they don't seem so bad, she can handle this. Enter Kingpin, shit hits the fan, Clint has to get serious, people are suddenly dying, and she has to rise above and beyond just to stay alive.

I guess that's the difference between Netflix and Disney.