fantastic_four

Time to update this list after another year's worth of movies. Aside from working the new ones from the past year in, I bumped Winter Soldier up two spots because I believe I was overly biased towards First Class due to the Magneto origin, I decided Dark Knight Rises isn't as good as Black Panther and swapped their spots, and I worked the Matrix films in simply because I forgot about them a year ago. I had a really hard time deciding between Civil War and Infinity War, but I ultimately gave the nod to Infinity War due to the scintillating depiction of Thanos and their ability to effectively cast him as a absolutely believable hero of his own tale as savior of the universe. I NEVER liked that character anywhere near as much as I did in that film. "The Mad Titan" always did seem crazy in the comics, but I'm still not sure the film version isn't the true hero of that tale. I'm still surprised I like Iron Man and the Avengers films as much as I do, I never liked the comics as much. I'm guessing "Into the Spider-Verse" may make my list, but I haven't seen it yet. Venom entered my personal list because it's a great depiction of a character I love, but it's definitely not good enough to make any objectively-determined list like this. One thing that jumps out at me is I forget just how many great superhero films there are now. My kids are 3, so by the time they're old enough to actually start seeing these films the number of options we're going to have will be enormous. The Dark Knight Spider-Man 2 Batman Begins Logan Iron Man Avengers Avengers: Infinity War Captain America: Civil War Black Panther The Dark Knight Rises Captain America: The Winter Soldier The Matrix X-Men: First Class Spider-Man: Homecoming Superman Thor: Ragnarok Deadpool The Incredibles Spider-Man Watchmen Captain Marvel Wonder Woman Batman Returns Superman II X-Men: Days of Future Past Guardians of the Galaxy Batman The Matrix Reloaded Deadpool 2 Unbreakable

They never use the name Binary in the film that I noticed, but Hasbro has a Captain Marvel figure with the plasma effects that refer to her as being in "Binary form" on the box. I think the film just blended the Mar-Vell and Binary powers together and gave them to her at the same time.

Also, is there a hint as to the nature of her beam powers shown in the film? In the comics, they describe her Binary powers as being "stellar power" where she's channeling the power of a white hole, and she herself describes them as channeling the power of a star in some of the X-Men panels such as those shown below from X-Men 164. Either way I assume they're plasma since that's what comes off of stars...but plasma is thousands of degrees. It's what George Lucas was thinking when he created lightsabers for Star Wars, and if it hits you, you're not going to just get knocked back, you're going to get a significant part of your anatomy instantly vaporized. So what the heck are those blasts she's shooting supposed to be? It seems like they're more force than heat since she hits multiple people with them and they just get pushed back and brush it off, and that doesn't jibe with the comic version. And late in the film when she starts rocking the Kree fleet it suddenly appears that she's burning right through everything like she's emanating plasma.

I only felt it when she went full Binary on Ronan's fleet (I didn't put that in spoiler tags because it's shown in the trailer). But that's mostly because I was biased towards the character from her 1980s X-Men days, I enjoyed her there when she did the same thing to the Brood, and this was a realization of that same Binary but in full cinematic glory. Someone help me out if they think they understood the origin story:

Saw it, enjoyed it. Wasn't in my superhero top 10, but it might be somewhere towards the bottom of the top 20. Really need to insert the last year's worth of films into my list, haven't done it since before Infinity War. I enjoyed Infinity War more. I wasn't a big Avengers comics fan, so I wasn't all that familiar with the Kree/Skrull conflict details. What I really enjoyed about it in the film was:

Sheesh. Is chauvinism really what's motivating these loons?

You can rationalize it all you like, but nothing about the definition of the word doesn't apply to the situation. I'm also not negatively judging you for it, I don't mind it at all and have bought for investment purposes myself, I just don't get why you were trying to dodge the word scalping when that's exactly what it is.

Yes, that's correct, and the barge situation isn't significantly different than the way concert or sporting event tickets are sold. Either way the Merriam-Webster definition of the word applies to all of these situations. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scalping

The common denominator with scalping is acquiring an item in limited supply and selling it for more than the original price to other people who want the item. Your example of finding a hard-to-find figure at Target doesn't give everyone equal opportunity to get that figure, because if everyone had equal opportunity it wouldn't be hard to find. I went to over 15 Walgreens to find Mystique, and I found it at exactly two stores, and PLENTY of people have never seen it which is why I knew I could scalp if I wanted to. I don't see how the Barge is much different than a concert ticket. Both are sold for a limited time and then are no longer available. Whether you're standing outside of a football stadium yelling "tickets, get tickets here" or slapping it on eBay, either way you're buying at one price and flipping it for more. Either way you're going to generate hard feelings with the sports fan or toy collector who ends up paying more than they originally cost. It's all capitalism to me so I'm fine with it, but I get why people aren't.

But that's exactly what it is, scalping. You might not like the word, but that doesn't mean you can redefine it to not fit the situation just because you're the one doing it. I'm not implying there's anything wrong with it, either, although I'm acutely aware that fans of toys hate it as much as fans of live events do. There's a new Marvel Legends figure out for the X-Men villain Mystique that is only sold at Walgreens, and it's relatively difficult to find in the stores. I could've scalped half a dozen if I wanted to, but I prefer not to get involved with that, and $50 to $100 profit wasn't enough incentive to do it anyway. I may well have done it with the barge if I knew about it at the time, but I probably would've sat on it for a while before selling it just to avoid the negative feelings people have about scalping. Probably better to do that anyway, it'll probably be worth even more in a few years.

Already got tickets for 1 PM Sunday in IMAX. Looking forward to Binary kicking some butt.

I haven't decided which is better between those two yet, but it's close. I can say I personally prefer Civil War because it was the first true superhero battle royale I had ever seen, and that ending battle between Stark and Cap/Bucky was absolutely epic. Note that I separate personal preference from overall quality, so even though I like Civil War better I may ultimately decide that Infinity War is a better film. You seem to be implying that Infinity War is clearly superior to Civil War here...why is that?

Question for the people who have seen it--without being specific as to what the Skrulls morph into, do we get much good Skrull morphing CGI?

Wonder why it's opening in China the same time as here...usually China releases lag by weeks or months.

Nothing from the X-Men movies will be used at all, but I could see Deadpool continuing on more or less like he has been so far. There wasn't much canon established in either film. My biggest question is whether or not they continue to use the same actors. I can't imagine them not using Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool. The bigger question is Fassbender and McAvoy. They're both amazing in their roles, but will Feige prefer a cleaner break from the Fox canon and not use them solely for that reason?

They all look nice but Spidey's face seems like the brightest one in the lot. His looks the most painful, as if Doc Ock has just smashed his head through the wall from the other side.

Which comments?

If she had showed up at the end of Infinity War or Endgame and zapped Thanos in the face with a plasma bolt, then yea, I agree. Given that they just devoted an entire film to answering why they should be jazzed about her, I don't see the issue. Obviously they're going to find ways to introduce their more popular characters into the films, and this is about how it's going to go. 10 years of films is a lot, but it's not relative to the full stable of Marvel characters. Ten years and 20-some films is just a drink of water from a deep well of source material created over the last three-quarters of a century.

I think I missed something. Feige said this about Captain Marvel?

Why Walgreens?

This is long overdue in comics, too. I always hated how Magneto was typically drawn with huge muscles...why would a guy that powerful ever work out? He wouldn't. You don't have to be big or possess many traditionally masculine qualities at all if you can channel the power of a white hole through your body like Binary can, so making her highly feminine by casting Brie Larson seems both entirely appropriate and socially useful to counter the typical unrealistic masculine stereotype that super-powered heroes have often adhered to.

Brie is not only emotionally vulnerable, she has a very soft physical appearance, a somewhat timid demeanor, and a very high-pitched feminine voice. Associating extreme femininity with the extreme power of Binary places femininity itself into a new light of strength we don't often see. It's almost the opposite of Wonder Woman and the Amazons, who were a race of women who were extremely masculine in their size, culture, and demeanor. Brie as Captain Marvel mixes girly-girlness with extraordinary power in a way we haven't seen often, if at all.

What if you don't know if you want to see it? I know very little about Captain Marvel, which is why I've been waiting for the reviews. I don't read any of them, I just use the meta-review scoring to determine if it's generally good or generally bad. If it's generally bad and a film I won't have an existing bias towards, I skip it. That's the formula I use for pretty much every DC film since I'm a Marvel zombie, if it's not great I don't go see it in the theater.

To avoid wasting two hours watching a Catwoman, or an Elektra, or a Green Lantern in the theater. Better to watch those on video, if at all.

I was far more impressed when he dropped into the Wakanda battlefield and was lighting up everything in sight. One of the highlights of the film.