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fantastic_four

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Everything posted by fantastic_four

  1. fantastic_four
    I'm not convinced having the showrunners ignore the comics is a problem. It's crystal clear SOMEONE is reading the comics because they put easter eggs and references to the comics the shows are based upon throughout including Secret Invasion. If the elements from the comic stories are coming from Feige and his crew then that may be fine. Except, of course, it hasn't worked yet like it has for the films, so something definitely needs to change.
  2. fantastic_four
    Not as good as either of those. Few of the Disney Plus shows are as good as the films. I agree with those who say it seems like they write a screenplay for what would normally be a 2 to 3 hour film and then just pad it out to last longer. Having said that I generally enjoy all of the shows, some more than others. Just nowhere near as much as the movies, or as much as most of the better television shows on other networks.
  3. fantastic_four
    Directors haven't driven television shows since forever which is why you'll so often see one of the actors in a show serve as director for any given episode. The idea of a writer or showrunner ultimately directing how the series goes is how it has always been for as long as I know of. You can pick almost any show as an example but major ones across the decades include Gene Roddenberry for Star Trek and TNG, Chuck Lorre for Two and a Half Men and Big Bang Theory, Sherwood Schwartz for Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island, Vince Gilligan for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, Chris Carter for X-Files, Greg Berlanti for many of the DC Comics shows, etc. All of this makes sense given that seasons and episodes need to make sense together so the Auteur theory of film doesn't work for directors of individual episodes from serialized fiction. The idea of the Marvel showrunners being too hands-off may have some validity, but historically plenty of showrunners are rarely on set. Many if not most will just watch the daily film footage remotely. Certainly whatever Marvel is doing isn't working as well as their films and needs to change because while I'm biased towards Marvel's content I certainly wouldn't put any of their shows in the top half of television for any of the years they've been making them, and they clearly pale in quality as compared to Marvel Studios films. Whatever HBO and AMC are doing is what Marvel should do because both of those networks usually produce the best premium television.
  4. fantastic_four
    I am a huge fan of BBTS as well. I have ordered from Chosen Prime in the past and have been extremely happy with their packaging. BigBadToyStore is great. So is Entertainment Earth. They both process orders slowly and ship them as cheaply and slowly as possible, but these are toys, not meds I need refilled by tomorrow, so it's all fine. BBTS has the edge over EE due to their Pile of Loot feature where you can stack items up for up to three months to ship them all out together. I liked Dorkside Toys as well, but it went out of business last year.
  5. fantastic_four
    Probably not many, but I could see some others pulling it off such as Oliver Stone, Steven Spielberg, or Ron Howard. Makes sense that Nolan did it instead of them though because specializes in science and science-fiction more than those three.
  6. fantastic_four
    From what I can tell based upon people complaining about it on the Fwoosh and testing it myself Amazon only ships out toys in the manufacturer's packaging with no separate box for their own exclusives. This test will demonstrate it--add a random non-exclusive toy to an Amazon cart, add an Amazon-exclusive toy to the same cart, go to checkout, and look at each line item on the checkout page. The exclusive toy will have the text "Item arrives in packaging that shows what’s inside. To hide it, choose Ship in Amazon packaging" in the item description, but the non-exclusive toy won't. This test should work with almost anything, but I did it with a randomly-selected Marvel Legends for the non-exclusive and the exclusive Marvel Legends Killmonger. It's quite subtle, and I didn't notice it until people on the Fwoosh complained about it. I know for sure a few times I've forgotten to select it yet still received the item in separate Amazon packaging, so it's clear that Amazon employees mostly don't even pay attention to this, but obviously sometimes they do as Cat learned with his ruined Transformers box.
  7. fantastic_four
    I noticed in certain purchases from Amazon, during checkout there is an option to have your item boxed. If you don’t check that you want it boxed, it’ll be shipped out in its original packaging. Not saying this is the case at all. Years ago Amazon was shipping their exclusive Predaking reissue this exact same way. Apparently they never listened to customers complaints. Yea they've had that checkbox for boxing exclusives for a few years now, since at least 2019. It's easy to not know they have it though because when you don't check it they still sometimes put it in a separate box. I didn't start checking it until 2021, but I never got their exclusives without a separate box myself despite ordering 4 or 5 before that. I only knew about it because I saw people in the Fwoosh action figure forums complain about shipping stickers on the original box.
  8. fantastic_four
    I had that Mezco set preordered. But after a year and a half of being late, with no sign of it actually being produced any time soon, I decided I'd had enough and wanted my deposit for other things. BBTS refunded me the deposit as 'a one-time courtesy' as it was a non-refundable deposit. Afaic they broke the contract by being over 18 months late and still being unable to provide any inkling of a set shipping date. But whatever, there was no drama to it, and I got my money back quickly, so all's well that ends well. It should be easy to get once it's out anyway. I had it pre-ordered with Dorkside Toys because they didn't require a deposit, but they went out of business. I'll probably wait for clearance since their recent Wolverine was available for half off a few months after it released. The FF set doesn't look like it will sell well due to the high price point.
  9. fantastic_four
    I saw this article last week that breaks down the powers used with some screenshots from the episode... https://www.ign.com/articles/every-super-skull-power-in-secret-invasion Seems comprehensive, thanks!
  10. fantastic_four
    Fury shoots Gravik after Gravik kills Talos. Fury watches Gravik do Extremis glow healing. So he already had Extremis DNA in addition to Groot's DNA mixed with his own before that final episode. I think I missed it--how did he have some of "the Harvest," but not all of it? Was that addressed at some point?
  11. fantastic_four
    Many pharmaceuticals alter our DNA effectively making us mutates. I took Accutane as a late teen, and it altered the DNA of my skin cells so that they secrete less oil. The skin cells with my old DNA were eventually replaced with new ones with coding that reduced oil production. Do we need to know that for drugs to work? No, but if we're curious we can always dig into it. Same with the X-Men and whatever terminology we want to use to describe them and their origin--we can dig in, or not. If we do want to dig in without knowledge of how DNA and evolution work then we will inevitably be just as confused as we would be digging into the specific function and effects of pharmaceuticals, or perhaps we'll give up and oversimplify it as convoluted, because that's how humans almost always by default deal with too much information for them to want to bother processing, myself included FAR more often than not. Which is normal and healthy because none of us have enough time to dig into everything.
  12. fantastic_four
    Virtually every cell in every organism is mutated due to small numbers of copy errors during mitosis. We're all mutants/mutates, so calling anyone either of those terms seems more consistent with how DNA functions than using Stan Lee's definition of a mutant simply being someone who is born with powers. But whoever wants to cling to those simplistic terms can do so, and within that context Bruce Banner isn't a mutant because he wasn't born with powers. Neither is Kamala Khan who also has no powers of her own. But clinging to Stan's oversimplification becomes convoluted as soon as we dive into how DNA functions, so I wouldn't recommend it.
  13. fantastic_four
    Banner has been a mutant in every MCU film from 2003 Hulk onward. His mutation is that he's highly resistant to gamma, so when he was barraged with it he wasn't killed but instead his DNA mutated in a way that made him the Hulk. There's a scene in the 2003 film where Nick Nolte admits that he altered his own DNA trying to create powers within himself, and that Bruce inherited it. Using the terminology Marvel currently uses that makes Nolte's Absorbing Man a mutate and Eric Bana's Hulk a mutant. They had Banner point that out as well during the first episode of She-Hulk when his radiated blood didn't kill his cousin--that Jennifer must have some of the same gamma resistance that Bruce does for the blood not to kill her. I've heard that this origin came from the comics, but I don't know when it was introduced. I don't see it as convoluted unless we try to make sense of it from Stan Lee's overly-simplistic definition of a mutant as someone who is born with powers and a human as someone who isn't. From a DNA-centric perspective we're all mutants, and we're all mutates. A Cyclops or Professor X would never suddenly result from natural or epigenetic evolution anyway, so it never made any real sense which is what Kirby tried to fix with the Eternals by explaining it as what later authors named "the X-Gene" being deliberately inserted there by the Celestials.
  14. fantastic_four
    If you're born with genetic powers you're a mutant, if your DNA is altered after birth you're a mutate. Banner, She-Hulk, and Kamala Khan in the MCU are all mutants in that they all were born with genetic potential that either gamma or Kamala's bangle unlocked, but I would expect that the gamma-altered forms of Bruce and Jennifer Walters make them both mutants and mutates. I don't think Kamala is a mutate because her DNA is still unaltered, so she would be a mutant, sort of, albeit one with no powers of her own. The distinction between a mutant and a mutate is functionally trivial. Most Marvel heroes are mutates including Hulk, Cap, Spidey, Captain Marvel, etc. In the House of X comics run only mutants are allowed on Krakoa, but they also allow mutates due to the functional triviality of whether your genetic powers were there at birth or induced later on. It's certainly not the same life experience to be born as a mutant versus gaining your powers later and mutants are far more likely to be hated or feared since they have their powers for a larger part of their life and especially their young formative years--and in House of X many mutants refused to acknowledge mutates as equals due to that developmental distinction--but either way both mutants and mutates have genetically-determined powers. Separate from Marvel's fiction every organism on Earth is a mutant strictly speaking if we're counting people like Kamala Khan as "mutants" who have no powers without something enhancing their physiology. Mutation is the altering of DNA, and we all have a less than 1% amount of mutated DNA from birth. Some of that mutation leads to noticeable changes, but the vast majority of it doesn't. Some of us are also mutates from our original DNA due to radiation, viruses, cancer, or other epigenetic alterations to our DNA. Eventually we'll all be mutates as genetic engineering advances and we gain the ability to alter DNA at will.
  15. fantastic_four
    It's WAY past time for Hasbro to do more Mr. Fantastic stretchy pieces in Marvel Legends. Mezco has an FF set with the main four plus HERBIE coming out soon, and Reed definitely has more stretchy parts shown below than any other Reed I've seen. Not a fan of how puffy the cloth goods costumes look, but Thing, Reed's stretchy bits, Sue's power effects, and especially the way they nailed HERBIE will probably make me buy the set. Hasbro did release the stretched-out Reed in the second pic below, but that was back in 2007 and they haven't done another like this again. They did re-release the arms from that one that have bendy-wires in them with their Walgreens exclusive Reed from 2018, but the torso and legs on that one were normal.
  16. fantastic_four
    Here's how the Marvel Legends Thing fits into Marvel Select Reed's wrap effect. The wrap isn't flexible in the slightest so you're mostly limited to fitting things in that happen to be the same size as the opening. Same with the neck--I know Diamond has never used bendy wire in figures so I wasn't expecting it, but I was still hopeful it had it. It doesn't, and it's just rigid plastic, but you can rotate the head at the top of the neck and the bottom of the neck rotates as well, so you're free to have that bend in the elongated neck point in any of the 360 degrees it can rotate at the torso.
  17. fantastic_four
    The placement of eyes that are painted on can be pretty random with Marvel Select, Marvel Legends, or almost any other toy line. I've got plenty of cross-eyed, side-eyed, looking up, or looking down figures across all lines. But it definitely was weird for them to use a cross-eyed version in their prototype pics. Here are how mine turned out as an example, but I'm sure there are plenty of figures with far more extreme placement. Looks to me like mine are looking up very slightly. I'm fine with it as it's extremely subtle.
  18. fantastic_four
    A few panels from the big everyone vs. the super-skrulls issue #7 of the Secret Invasion comic. I had hoped this was how this storyline in the show would end after some build-up across this series and future series or movies, but right now it doesn't appear that's the case. Although there are plenty of skrulls left on Earth so it's not completely out of the question. Stature punching Super Skrull Galactus in the second pic below is fun...
  19. fantastic_four
    Does anyone have an understanding of how skrull shape-shifting works with physical force? It would make some sense that if skrulls can re-shape their flesh to match other beings that they can also take more punishment than a human could since their flesh is malleable, and there were several battles where skrulls seemed to take far more punishment than humans usually could. So when Gravik impales that skrull with a Groot arm or when Emilia Clarke impales Gravik with her ice-arm can they hypothetically re-form their bodies around that damage? Maybe they can brace their flesh in specific locations if they're prepared for it, but not if they're surprised by where the force will land? Either way there would be no bracing yourself for a Captain Marvel plasma blast, so that being the way Gravik died was easy to understand.
  20. fantastic_four
    I thought he was going to shoot the skrull in a non-vital organ so that the president could see his blood color. Ah well, I suppose the head worked as well.
  21. fantastic_four
    Oh, and it was clear Gravik was doing some Ebony Maw. His arm turned into Maw's emaciated, gray-skinned arm, and he appeared to telekinetically hurl Emilia Clarke like Ebony Maw does. Googled this a bit and can't find a comprehensive list, but some other ones I saw mentioned were Mantis when Emilia Clarke puts Gravik to sleep, Groot in previous episodes when Gravik uses his arm like it's made of tree vines or branches to impale someone (why did he have Groot's power back then, and was it the only one he had?), Drax and Abomination in addition to Hulk in some of the super-strength punchy scenes, Ghost when Emilia Clarke phased out of the way of an attack by Gravik, the Iron Man 3 Extremis mutation (I missed this, so if anyone knows when they had an Extremis glow please share), and I saw speculation that Emilia Clarke's Iceman arm was from the Jotunheim Frost Beast, which doesn't make sense to me since I don't recall them having ice powers in Thor or Thor 2. If anyone recalls or reads of more powers please do share.
  22. fantastic_four
    Oh, and it was clear Gravik was doing some Ebony Maw. His arm turned into Maw's emaciated, gray-skinned arm, and he appeared to telekinetically hurl Emilia Clarke like Ebony Maw does.
  23. fantastic_four
    I think that's wrong. Pretty much all of the directors have indicated that there's a limit they know to the ongoing Marvel story, and this director is explicitly indicating he doesn't know in the text you cited and that if his guess is wrong then the real answer will emerge by Armor Wars. Which begs the question of who DOES know what the ongoing story across series is? With Star Wars that was George Lucas, and Kathleen Kennedy has done a VERY poor job of curating the story--or assigning someone else to the task--since Lucas gave it up. That used to be the Marvel Creative Committee back when Marvel Studios was under Ike Perlmutter, but I'm fuzzy on who that is now. Is it Feige himself? One of his main reports? I don't know, but it's clear it's not the directors of the individual works. I've heard too many of them now state they don't know the elements of stories outside of their own specific movie or series. But I really would like to know the names of the people curating the ongoing storyline. Anyone know?
  24. fantastic_four
    Has anyone seen a list of the powers the super skrulls were using during their battle? Saw some Hulk, saw some Korg rocks, saw plenty of Captain Marvel...who else? What was the ice sword hand that Emilia Clarke had, whose power was that?
  25. fantastic_four
    I generally enjoyed it, but I didn't even know the series was over after this last episode until I just heard you all say it in the thread I caught up on this morning. Not a terribly impactful ending. It's not Secret Invasion without super skrull battles, and this one was pretty small compared to the ones I've seen panels for in the comics, so ah well. Pretty underwhelming. I thought the CGI was fine in the super skrull fight. Which television series had better CGI than that battle? The only other ones I recall were the Vision vs. Vision fight or the Wanda vs. Agatha fight, plus everything She-Hulk did. I generally expect television CGI to be inferior due to the low budget, so I was glad we got at least some of it. If it's below the standard of the other shows I'm curious as to why. If the point is that it's worse than the movies then I agree, yes, it is. And it was easy to guess it was going to be from the start giving the lower budget of television series.