Gatsby77

Solid list - and (not having seen Black Widow) largely mirrors mine. The only edits I'd make is flipping GOTG 2 to the "Fun, might watch if it's on cable" column, and transposing "Ant-Man and the Wasp" and "Captain Marvel." While not as big a booster as another character on these boards, I've now seen Captain Marvel 3 x, and think it's got some really interesting things to say about agency, identity and growth/coming-of-age. I can't decide whether the worst Marvel film is Thor 2 or Incredible Hulk - although the worst Marvel Studios film is solidly Punisher War Zone.

1) *Every* movie studio tries to positively influence the critics. See the sudden ridiculous proliferation of Vin Diesel memes that came out-of-nowhere the past two weeks to help promote F9. 2) Your 4-year-old article was clearly on-point, since it specifically cites Disney blacklisting the LA Times after a negative review. Oh wait - apparently not, since the LA Times review of Black Widow from (checks notes) - last week - is far from positive.

Sure, Jan - which is why the LA Times' review of Black Widow is mediocre-to-negative: "Review: Scarlett Johansson finally gets her Marvel closeup, but ‘Black Widow’ is too little, too late"

Have you seen it? Genuinely curious, because it's currently sitting at 82% on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviews noting it's definitely a passing of the torch from ScarJo's Natasha' to Florence Pugh's Yelena. Even discounting Bosco's "Disney pays off the critics" conspiracy theory, it looks like a decent spy thriller a la a minor Bourne or Jack Ryan film. I've also seen the articles that note while Taskmaster is, in fact, a woman, it's not their "mom" (Rachel Weitz) - so my long-standing theory was wrong.

I remember when Disney limited the windows during which they'd sell new VHS copies of their classic animated films - both to create perceived scarcity and to not cannibalize the box office take on theatrical re-release...but I seriously doubt they'd stop releasing *new* content totally on DVD, That's simply leaving money on the table for those who don't subscribe to Disney+. DVD may be dying, but it's far from dead. Hell - I subscribe to most of the streaming services and still rent ~1 new movie a month from Red Box.

If this movie does remotely well (and I think it will), why wouldn't Scarlett Johansson sign on to do more? There could be a 3-4 more movies that are all set as prequels taking place in the 1980s - 2005 or so - with or without Yelena (and whoever else survives this film). Nothing wrong with setting this up as a period spy franchise - a la "The Americans" - or even "Agent Carter," but set in the 1990s. I'm just confused by the amount of "I'm not excited for this movie because she's dead in present day" I see on this thread.

I stand by my previous assessment that a 9.0's not worth $30k. And 9.0s aren't 9.4s. Let's assume that 9.4 that sold for $27,000 has tripled in price since 2018, which makes it now worth $81,000. 9.2s are typically worth 1/2 the 9.4s, and 9.0s are typically worth 1/2 the 9.2s. So the 9.0 would be worth 1/4 the 9.4 price. $81,000 / 4 = $20,250, still a far cry from $30,000+. But wait! We don't have to guess. GPA shows a CGC 9.0 sold a year ago for $9,600 and again in November for $10,750. I could buy that it's doubled in the 8 months since - to $21,500 - but not nearly tripled, which would (again) put it at that $30,000 mark. More importantly, that $30,000 valuation itself was back in January-just two months after the sub-$11,000 sale. I haven't checked the SEC filings, but I wouldn't be surprised if RallyRd. itself was the November buyer at $10,750.

There's no comparison between the Ultimate version of Nick Fury (20 years and 82 total appearances) and the canonical 616 version (58 years and 1,100+ appearances). Ultimates characters are like "What If?" fantasy versions. And comics fans would have pitched a fit if the movies went whole hog with the Ultimates versions of the characters vs. the traditional ones, like: Black Panther being mute Venom being made by Peter Parker's dad rather than being a symbiote Hulk being grey and eating people Monica Chang being Black Widow (not Natasha Romanov) etc.

This too. Who cares what color the actress who plays Gamora is under the make-up?

Ummm...You know that Deadshot, Valkyrie, Heimdall and Nick Fury are all white in the comics, right? Doesn't matter - and if I recall correctly, Kang's Egyptian anyway - could easily go white or black on-screen and fit his (ethnic) backstory.

First film sucked; second one will be better - but do worse at the box office - and Carnage speculators will have moved on by January. Signed, Somebody who bought 4 copies of ASM off the shelf and paid a whopping $6-8 each for my additional 4 copies back in 1992.

Just pointing out the title of the book is "D.P. 7" - as in, it's a misprinted copy of D.P. 7 # 16, not "DD Teens."

Counterpoint - it can be both. I happen to love Nolan because I've really liked every one of his movies I've seen (i.e., all of them but "Following") - although I'll concede that Insomnia was merely mediocre. And it's hard to overstate how much Batman Begins and The Dark Knight elevated superhero films as a genre among both critics and society at large. The result? Nolan gets the benefit of the doubt - and he's one of the few directors where I'll watch any project he directs. Snyder gets the exact opposite reaction. 300, Watchmen, and Man of Steel were all great. Yay! But he so thoroughly sh*t the bed with films like Sucker Punch, BvS and Justice League (including the Snyder cut) that it's perfectly legit to hold him to the same level of disdain as Michael Bay - hell - even Brett Ratner's overall output is more defensible. Fool me once and all -- but I've been burned (repeatedly) by Snyder films that should have been easy slam dunks but instead turned out to be hot steaming pieces of garbage. I'll admit - he's an artist - It takes extraordinary skill to produce such execrable films that the entire DCEU has to be largely scrapped and restarted from scratch.

This. The top was never his totem; it was Mal's. But without that - if viewed on its face, the ambiguity makes sense - the point is, at that point Cobb *didn't care* whether he was still dreaming - it didn't matter. After all he'd been through, all he cared about was seeing his kids again, whether it was reality or not.

My copy's got 9.8 potential - sadly, it's the Italian language version, and is square-bound. Totally different animal!

More specifically, here's Starlin's 2017 Facebook post on the subject, in which he notes he was paid "more" for KGBeast's minor role in BvS than he was for his creating Thanos, Drax and Gamora combined (at least to that point). https://www.facebook.com/jim.starlin.94/posts/1558674220814277?pnref=story I spoke to him at a convention in late 2018 and he mentioned the lack of (financial) appreciation re. Thanos in particular.

I'm sure they'll get paid by Warner Bros., however. Even if you take the Bleeding Cool article from last month with a massive grain of salt, it seems Warner Bros. pays creators orders of magnitude more than Disney for using their characters. The article cites Todd McFarlane stating he got paid "twice as much" for the appearance of Artemis Crock (a minor character from his Infinity. Inc. run) in the Stargirl TV show than he did for Venom appearing in his own titular film. Ditto with Jim Starlin saying he got paid more for the KGBeast's cameo appearance in BvS than he did for all of Thanos's appearances in the MCU.

Or that Batman (1989) had a larger influence on making comic books - and superheroes - mainstream than literally any comic book film from 2000 to present (yes - that includes X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Batman Begins, The Avengers, et. al.).

Ditto. In fact, I think Predators - across the board - was a better film than Predator 2. And Topher Grace's character clinched it.

Yeah - I'm aware. But think at least some of the timeline's been fudged for PR purposes. You *really* think we're 8 weeks into principal photography and still have so little information about the confirmed cast, especially with two major roles unfilled (or at least unconfirmed)? Or did I miss an announcement, esp. re. Eobard Thawne?

Due respect, but define "in production." This supposedly started filming in April. Really? With only 9 actors listed on IMDB, and no one identified as either Henry Allen (after Billy Crudup dropped out) or Reverse Flash (after it was rumored Mads Mikkelsen replaced Johnny Depp)? "In production" I'd buy, but I certainly taking "filming" with a hefty grain of salt.

I don't believe it. This project's been in development for so long they might as well call it "The Flash."

Ditto. My top 5 - in order: 1) The Queen's Gambit 2) Mare of Easttown 3) The Queen - Season 4 4) WandaVision 5) Riverdale, Season 1 (played catch up during quarantine, but that show was *far* better than it had any right to be)

That was my question too. Apparently principal photography took 7 months, which is a *long* time. Dr. Strange, for example, was only 5 months, and Guardians of the Galaxy was just over 3 months.

This. Shooting outside of a studio with all natural light is virtually unheard of. Another high-profile example of this: The Revenant, which is why it took 9+ months to shoot.