One of the best things the MCU managed when it first came out is to tame the mess that is Comic Book plot lines and shape it into something that your average person could follow along. And it was a bit of a miracle that they did.

Like when Avengers where first announced a lot of people said that there is no way they can pull off so many characters and the movie will be a mess. But they managed it and carried the trapeze act all the way to Endgame.

But now I think we have finally reached that point. There are just too many characters in the MCU and the entire continuity is straining underneath the weight.

If they are going to introduce Fantastic Four, X-Men and Inhumans into the main MCU we are going to need a crisis on infinite earths sooner or later to bring it into so semblance of order.

 

I think for me, it’s less the abundance of characters and more the abundance of characters I don’t care about.

Going forward only characters I care about potentially seeing are Spider Man, Thunderbolts (with Doom), Daredevil and blade.
But if in order to keep up with their stories I have to watch she hulk who I could care less about…

yeah. The overwhelming part isn’t the amount of characters but amount of stories I have to watch with protags I don’t care about.

 

I've already started cherry-picking which movies and series I actually want to watch. As long as they keep things accessible to people who aren't "all-in" on the franchise (and they kind of have to, if they want their avengers movies to keep getting $1B+), they should be ok.

 

Really? Personally I think that films inevitably suffer when you have to re-tell so much introductory information (& cut other information) to make each film accessible to everyone in such short runtimes.

It’s the economically correct decision, but at that point it turns into paint-by-numbers/art by committee and stops being enjoyable to watch.

Any sort of artistic vision that’s left is shackled to the weight that is the corporate requirements, & from the outside it looks similar to watching a company try to put out a decent game despite being acquired by EA & being forced to spend their time designing microtransactions.

 

What's stopping Marvel from cutting a few 10 minute videos that succintly summarize all the peripheral shows so a moviegoer can be caught up on the important plot points before seeing the next mainline film entry? Well, money of course. Why spend money on something that lets people skip She-Hulk when you could just reference it, make the moviegoer feel lost and "force" them to watch She-Hulk?

 

Sounds like a potentially popular niche market for some enterprising YouTuber. Rather than joining the endless legions of channels putting up 'deep dives' and 'references you might have missed' videos that only serve to make the MCU even less approachable, they could do a recap of each show/movie in terms of their plot, and where the characters were left at the end.

I'll accept royalties in the form of twiglets.


In other news, we watched the last episode of Ms. Marvel a couple of days ago, and I think my general impression of it was positive. More positive than most of the stuff I've seen from Marvel recently.

Oh, sure, it wasn't perfect. My biggest issue with it was surely the antagonist's arc and conclusion. The arc was rushed and poorly explored, and the way it concluded felt entirely unearned. Fortunately, the Clandestines were actually a pretty small part of the overall show and their weakness as antagonists was not too important.

My second complaint is directed at Damage Control. They're just criminally stupid. It was actually painful to watch. The sooner Marvel can move past this cack-handed 'gub-mint is all-powerful but also completely incompetent' thing and get us some actual legitimate villains again, the better.

The rest of the cast was great. Kamala and her family dynamic felt so natural. I was a little bit thrown when we were told that 'Kamala's the smartest person I know' in the finale, considering that I never really got that impression. It always seemed that she was smart, yes, but that it was Bruno who was the real brains of the outfit. This could have used some additional establishment. The home alone sequence was fun, even if it did also really drive home how utterly ridiculous DoDC is as an antagonist. All in all, I'm actually more interested to see The Marvels after this. Kamala is a really watchable character, with far more charisma than Carol Danvers has ever shown, so if they're able to bring a bit of that to The Marvels, it might be fun.

I am, however, forced to conclude that Kamala's mum possesses some form of super speed. I see no other way for her to home-stitch an entire outfit for Kamala in what feels like less than a day.

 

So how many Disney+ shows are out now?

Bucky and the Birdie
Loki in the Multiverse of Madness
Hailee Steinfeld feat. Hawkeye
Egyptian Batman
Hulk's Cousin (or something)
Not Captain Marvel

Did I miss one?

 

Wandavision...um, Wanda What's Wrong With Her?

Oh, and What If...Disney Printed Even More Money?

 

That one is not out.

What's Wrong With Wanda?

This year we will get two more specials.

Not-Teen Werewolf Halloween Special in October.

A Bunch of A-holes Holiday Special in December.

 

With Docter Strange 2 being the only new Marvel movie I'v

Yeah, but how many average movie goers are going to look up and watch those ten minute clips? I'm sure that Marvel enthusiasts and fans would love em, but they'd be ignored by someone who just goes to a few Marvel movies every year. Also, given some of the little bite sized short films Marvel's been rolling out on Disney Plus, I doubt that money is stopping them.

 

I finished the last of my missing Marvel movies that are on Disney+.

Black Widow had a lot more hearth than I expected it to have, yet I feel that it didn't use its full potential especially after the excellent beginning scene in the past.

The whole pretended family is real to people who played it was really well done in my opinion. The first scene impressed me with going full spy drama and not pulling punches with the horrors of it. Then the dinner scene, even if it attempted to be more Marvel like and humors, still worked. That aspect was done well.

Compared to that the whole Black Widow program didn't allow itself to be as scary as it should be. Which the film itself proves it could be with the short montage, but after that it probably intentionally keeps it less horrible by underplaying it. Like when Yelena mentions how they removed her uterus, but it's to make her father shut up. I feel movie would be better if it allowed itself to be scarier about it and use background Widows for that. It would make people care more about saving them.

Taskmaster should be renamed because it wasn't Taskmaster. Under different name she worked well, but once again compared to family part that aspect was lacking. The fact that Natasha sacrificed her for her own safety added unusual part to her character. And again it was not used to its fullest in the movie.

I was going to say that it was also the Marvel movie with no horrible humors interruption of sad moment, but then I got to the credit scene. Is it really necessary to keep doing it?

 

I’m personally only really looking forward to Blade. But if it’s true that it won’t be rated R, then what’s the point…

https://www.cbr.com/blade-reboot-pg-13-wesley-snipes-mcu/

 

PG-13 Blade? Lmao

 

Well, episode 1 of She-Hulk is out and... well... I really don't see what they were hoping for here.

Firstly, the cgi for She-Hulk is not great. It's so strange to see Hulk and She-Hulk on screen together, when Hulk kinda works. He's obviously not real, but there's a weight to him that feels authentic. She-Hulk on the other hand just seems to move wrong. Rather than having extra weight, it's like her motions are those of an ordinary woman, only overdone. Her hair is also a big sticking point. When she has it tied up, she looks a lot better, but they seem pretty insistent on keeping it down (presumably to match her typical comicbook look).

So, not a great start.

Then there's the structure of the first episode itself. Now, the adverts made it look like Jen was going to be dunking repeatedly on Bruce, but it's not really the case. Yes, she keeps trying to one-up him, but Bruce is quick to demonstrate his own capabilities (He lazily tosses a rock, Jen makes a show of throwing hers a bit further and looks smug. Bruce then picks up a much larger rock and literally throws it into orbit). The end result is that Jen feels rather childish, and her repeated conflicts with Bruce, where he is always presented as the reasonable, calm, and measured one, only serve to reinforce that.

At the same time, though, Jen clearly feels that she really is showing Bruce up through her abilities, and she is constantly belittling the struggles he went through in getting Hulk under control. The language she uses is going to dangle in front of easily enraged twitter manosphere types like a red rag before a bull. Maybe that's intentional, but it feels pretty blunt.

Because it's also clear to me that the core of the show will be around showing her immediate reaction to be not only wrong, but hypocritical. The episode opens with what seems to me to be a direct statement of the show's thesis, which essentially boils down to 'with great power comes great responsibility', delivered by Jen herself and yet the moment Jen is given great power, her reaction is to reject it out of hand and to immediately return to her life as a lawyer. Unless they have made a gigantic misstep, I can't see any coherent plot for this series than one which forces her to confront that hypocrisy.

The problem, I think, is that episode one ends very much on a statement of 'Jen is totally right, and Bruce is wrong' and I'm not sure how well it works as a hook to get people invested in the series. To all appearances, unless you read beneath the surface (and assume the showrunners actually intend the shit I'm reading into it) it looks like being an utterly dull show.

I'll keep an eye on it going forward, as if it goes the way I think they intend, it may be interesting.

Oh, and I think the fourth wall breaks are completely pointless, and only serve to further muddy the water of what the show wants to be about. I know She-Hulk is a fourth-wall-breaking character in the comics, but here I can't see a way for it to serve a narrative purpose, and even after just two instances of it, I'm already bored of it as a gag.

 

It is definitely going to enrage the anti-pc police. Seems like this is going all in on the quirky comedy angle though just judging by first episode. Plot is going to come second to jokes. I'm okay with that when it's actually funny.

So my biggest problem with the 1st episode was basically that it just wasn't very funny. Some of the humor landed. Most of it didn't.

 

I honestly don't know what to think about this show.

I wasn't left angry or disappointed like with the other shows, I didn't have any hopes or great expectations before so nothing was raised or dashed. The fact that the writer apparently wrote the Pickle Rick episode of Rick and Morty was dully noted and not much else and I already made my peace with the fact that Daredevil will probably be simple fanservice and a pale imitation of its previous iteration.

So...

All I can really say is that coming from the final episode of Better Call Saul to this left me with a mild case of whiplash.

 

More and More it's becoming clear Marvel didn't have a consistent plan of what to do post-endgame and, rather than making a coherent story like what came before, are just throwing stories at the wall and seeing what sticks.

 

I think their biggest or most glaring missed opportunity was right after Infinity War.

Why didn't they simply explore the unique world they had created with the Snap?

Half of all people plus the people that died as a consequence are simply gone. We have seen glimpses of a dark world but not much else.
What about infrastructure? Are drones or maybe even Ultron bots rebooted to catch the brunt of the workload? How do you rebalance global food production and supply chains?

This chaotic dark time would have been the perfect opportunity to introduce characters like Blade or the Punisher.
(In my head Blade 1 and 2 are MCU canon) The Snap fucked with vampire infrastructure, too, which forced them to be less subtle, which in turn forces Blade to be even more proactive.

Marvel asked 'What if more than half of all the people disappeared?' and never followed up on that in a truly meaningful way.
Everything is back to normal, which in turn makes everything pointless in my opinion.

 

They’ve decided to go the comic book route of story telling it seems. Worst decision they could’ve made imo.

At least DC execs are trying to get their heads on straight

 

The Infinity Saga has a single overarching throughline and ends on a strong note. Post-Endgame is a soup with every ingredient imaginable thrown into the pot, resulting in a tasteless sludge.