I think people overestimate how many movies you need to see. I didn't bother watching Iron Man 2/3, Black Panther, Captain America, Strange, Ant Man, or a few others. I think the movies are pretty good at summarizing the important context.

 

I like superhero movies. I liked the first two Sam Raimi Spiderman movies. I liked Iron Man, GotG, Dr Strange. And Black Widow, and the new tv shows look cool. I just haven't been as interested in the main Avengers movies.

 

Well of you've watched GoTG, then it shows you like ensemble movies.

Also, when did you watch Black Widow, lol.(I know what you meant by that).

If you haven't been interested in Avengers, then just don't watch them?

Get highlights on youtube and go watch the tv shows you think you like.

Won't be as fun though.

 

I thought Marvel had fully embraced the crazy...but now they really are.

That Loki Mid Credits was....something.

Spoiler

Gator Loki!

 

The mid-credits scene raised an important question.

Spoiler

So everyone who was ever pruned didn't actually die? This means all of them were transported into various places.

 

It's unclear if that applies to everyone or just Loki.

 

Man, Hiddleston is just incredible. I mean the show is really good, but I think I’d watch just about anything with him as Loki. Super compelling performance.

 

Fuck this show is good, spot on brilliant.

 

My only complaint about the latest episodes is that some of the costumes looked super low budget, like they forget to assign any budget for them and some intern had to do the zero cost cosplay thing to put the actors in costume. Other than that, it was great.

 

Wasn’t that the point? They were supposed to be janky.

 

Did I miss something that gave an actual explanation for it? To me it literally just looked like ultra cheap and shitty costumes and didn't feel like it was adding anything to what was going on.

 

The old guy had gone kinda loopy from living alone for.... thousands of years. Our Loki is around 1500 at least, that guy is at least twice as old, and his time line diverged with Thanos, so he lived alone on a planet (and space) for at least a thousand years. So he generated his own shitty costume. (Also its a thrown back to the original Loki costume from the comics, which like all old costumes, looks trash).

The others are similar, outcasts, pruned, on the run, and making their own costumes for their own self aggrandisement , its a reflection of their "lost" nature. The glorious purpose of Loki reflected in ridiculous costumes.

 

It's a callback to the original comics costume of Loki. There's no need to overthink it. It looks shitty because the original comics costumes look shitty outside of drawings.

Also, I loved the easter eggs of ThanosCopter and Throg.

And, of course, GLORIOUS PURPOSE!

 

New What If Trailer

 

I wouldn’t be surprised if Classic Loki was offered to Richard E. Grant as “compensation” for his criminal underuse in TRoS.

Probably had more screentime in a 40 minute episode than in a 142 minute movie and got to display about 5x the acting chops.

Glorious purpose.

 

Decent episode, but overall Loki is trailing a bit behind Falcon etc, and far behind Wandavision.

In other news, Black Widow is a perfectly respectable superhero take on one of the Bourne trilogy films. I didn't love it, but it's certainly an enjoyable enough way to spend an hour or two. Florence Pugh was the highlight, along with some intriguing hints for the future.

Spoiler

The main villain, played by Ray Winstone, left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, while he's certainly despicable enough on a personal level, his actual plan is far too vague to be satisfying in a spy thriller context - he seems to be seeding Widows all over the world in an attempt to seize power, I guess? On the other hand, that almost doesn't matter, because what that leaves you with is a cruel, implicitly misogynistic, borderline explicitly (sexually) predatory old man who's all too believable.

Taskmaster is an imposing physical threat, but little more. There's a twist I didn't see coming, but that felt like I should have caught it when revealed.

Rachel Weisz was wasted - she's in like three, four scenes tops. Given that she was one of the main draws of the film for me, very disappointing. This had the knock-on effect of having the much hyped Black Widow family reunion feel a bit rushed; while Natasha and her sister Yelena spend a lot of the film partnered up, dad only shows up about halfway through, and it isn't really until the last few minutes that the sisters actually like him, and mum doesn't show up until about two thirds of the way through, and is her own distinct flavour of awful.

The stinger was probably the highlight for me - Julia Dreyfuss's Valentina, in what should have been her first appearance had it not been for COVID delays, recruiting Yelena, post-Endgame, for a mission to avenge her sister's death...by going after Clint Barton.

Spoilers above for specific elements, many of which are negative; the positives are mostly in the traditional elements - decent performances, fun setpieces and script. David Harbour was clearly having a lot of fun, despite the fact that his character is actually kind of a jerk.

 

Wow that's an interesting take on the three series.

For me Loki has been amping up from a strong start to a great finish. I have been enraptured this whole time with very few complaints. A hugely solid 9/10.

Wandavision took me three attempts to even get into. While I get what they were doing with the very slow open, it totally put me off. The first half sits at maybe a 3/10. Then finishes on a... 6.8/10.

Flacon and WS, was interesting but suffered from a poor villain and the fights were average, a 6/10 for me.

 

Yeah, Loki is way better than WV and FaWS.

I like all three but Loki is clearly better to me.

 

Loki > WV for me, but I did enjoy WV a lot.

I did not even bother with FWS (I didn't bother with any of the Captain America films either -- their whole style/army/realism stuff is not something I'm interested at all.

 

FWS lacked a lot of the banter and... spirit that MCU is famous for, it could almost be DCU. Sure it is post snap and is not supposed to be... but then its not what made the MCU great. Its a shame as those actors and characters have had great chemistry in the past, and hardly got to show it here.