fantastic_four

By the way...my first impression was that I generally enjoyed the film, but there were enough unresolved ideas in it for me to think I could reverse that later. All movies have flaws, even masterpieces, so just because there are problems doesn't rule out a film being great. I left the theater under the impression that they wanted the story to be that humans are special because their audience is all humans, but I wasn't sure of it--and even if that's why they did it I don't see that it's necessarily a fatal flaw, I'm just trying to determine if that was indeed their thinking. It took me months to think through the more complex story elements of Prometheus after I saw it before I ultimately decided if I liked it, which I ultimately did. The whole Engineer story is far more complex and stimulating than that of the xenomorphs, although certainly the xenomorphs are far more emotionally visceral and satisfying in their own way in their better films, particularly Cameron's "Aliens." So I anticipate it'll be a few months before I ultimately decide how much I enjoyed Eternals, too.

They're referring there to how they assign a Fresh or Rotten to the aggregate of all reviews, not how they determine whether each individual review is a positive or a negative.

I read that twice before I posted. Where in there does it say that scores ranging from 50% to 60% get counted as negative? As ever, I've always had to assume they count scores in that range as positive, but I've never been sure of it because I've never seen specific language from RT defining precisely what they count as a "positive" review.

Humanity being worthy of saving as a story idea just because it appeals to narcissism in the MCU audience is a sheet idea. I hope that's not really it, but it certainly is my first guess as well that I haven't been able to rule out. The screenwriters certainly did offer a bit more than that, though. Ajak referred to how Tony Stark was able to re-assemble the Infinity Stones and reverse what Thanos did as the beginning of her belief that humanity shouldn't be destroyed. Is there something to that, or is that, too, just more pandering to the audience? Infinity War is a near-masterpiece and easily one of the top ten superhero films ever made, but one of the hokier ideas it depends upon is that so many of the stones were on Earth. What? In a universe filled with countless galaxies, and among those countless galaxies filled with billions of stars these six unique stones just happened to be mostly on Earth, or not that far from Earth? And that's what makes humanity unique, because we managed to assemble these stones half of which were already on the planet at some point? It's a too-unlikely idea built on top of another too-unlikely idea, yet it's what makes us unique among sapient life in the universe and worth more than the life of a Celestial? I'm not seeing it...

Why does that example assume for the second film that all of the scores around 50% are considered negative? I'm curious as to how RT assigns positive or negative scores for reviewers who give films something like 2 out of 4 stars, but I've never found clarification for it--yet that example seems to assume anything between 50% and 60% is considered negative by RT. How do they know that? What they say is that a "positive" review gets counted as a positive by RT, and you would assume scoring between 51% and 60% would equate to positive, but I've never seen specific clarification on that from RT. Nor have I heard what they do with the effectively neutral score of 50% which is common among reviewers who use the middle of an even range for their scoring such as 2 out of 4 or 5 out of 10. The example also ignores the fact that Rotten Tomatoes DOES calculate average scores, it just doesn't highlight them as much as it does its own Tomatometer score.

I'm also pretty confused about Thanos and Starfox to begin with. I've seen the comics and now the film state that Eternals were explicitly created by the Celestials as fully-formed adults. The comics further state that the Eternals can't have kids. Yet somehow Starfox and Thanos are an exception to that born on Titan to Eternal parents. Did the comics ret-con the Eternals not having kids thing at some point? Googling it you can find alternate versions of this story idea saying both that Eternals can't have kids and Eternals can have one kid every 1000 years or so, so I'm guessing this is a story point various authors have altered over the last few decades of Marvel canon. Which begs the question of Phastos's son in the film. Adopted, I presume? Or is that kid actually the son of an Eternal?

In the comics the Eternals help to develop sapient life on every planet that contains it, not just ones serving as a Celestial egg. So I presume that's what it is and Starfox is an Eternal of that type, but who knows since this film mixes the alternate Earth X universe with this one. Eternals presumably serve some role during those million-year gaps between Celestial births, so the odds seem good Starfox was created for whatever that reason is whether it matches the role of the Eternals from the comics or not. Another question coupled with a complaint--at one point during the film we see this large army of Eternal constructs from which Earth's Eternals were created. Why the hell were they all humanoid? In the comics the Celestials evolve life as it exists on that planet, so sometimes they might be humanoid, but mostly they wouldn't be. I hope they're not inadvertently perpetuating the same human-centric vision of life on all planets that sci-fi movies tend to do...Kirby didn't do that, so I don't know why the MCU writers would.

So many other open questions from the film that need answering. I'll start with a simple one--Eros (Starfox) explicitly referred to himself as an Eternal, correct? And Pip announced him as the brother of Thanos, so there's the obvious open question--is Thanos also an Eternal, or is he an Eternal/Deviant mix as he was in the comics? I imagine they will leave us hanging on that one for a while. Kro eventually became an Eternal/Deviant mix before Thena summarily executed him, so I'm left wondering if the development of Kro is a template for how Thanos would have come about if he is an Eternal/Deviant mix.

I also wonder what Arishem could possibly find in Sersi's mind that's so special about humanity. Are we really that unique? The MCU is clearly already full of sapient life like the Kree, Skrulls, Asgardians, Xandarians, Zen-Whoberisians (Gamora's species), Titans, Luphomoids (Nebula's species), etc. Aren't humans just another sapient species like all the others the Celestials have seen for billions of years, only we're far behind some of the more evolved species with far more advanced civilizations than ours? The idea that we're special somehow seems like an oddly narcissistic story idea.

I’m hardly an expert on this and it’s been a long time since I read the series, but I’m pretty sure Earth X covers that point and that the gestating Celestial is what Galacticus is actually consuming. There may be something prior to Earth X but again I’m not that up on the subject. It appears you're right that Earth X is the origin of the idea of the Celestials using planets as eggs to gestate Celestial embryos, although that was a dystopian different universe than the 616. I can't say I'm a fan yet of them choosing to start delving into the Celestials with that particular story because it makes the idea of what their goals are VERY confusing. I listened to some critics discussing the film after I saw it, and they were confused in a completely understandable way by thinking that the entire goal of the Celestials was to just use planets to create new Celestials, but I think the film hinted at--but never really explained in any amount of depth to understand--that usually Celestials didn't do that at all on planets but instead helped to develop new sapient life on them. The Eternals kept repeating that by killing the Celestial embryo they would be dooming countless billions of potential new life forms, but really it would be QUADRILLIONS of sapient life forms, wouldn't it, spread across dozens, hundreds, thousands, or possibly millions of worlds? Arishem noted that once every million or so years a new Celestial would be born that apparently takes a few thousand years to gestate, but that still leaves a million years where the Celestials do what they do and aren't destroying planets to create new Celestials. The film implied that between-births time period must exist yet didn't delve into what happens in that vast expanse of time, but that SHOULD have been the film's focus. Because they focused on Celestial births we're now all left thinking they don't care about life at all beyond how it serves them in creating new Celestials. Instead of the Celestials being as nurturing gods for life in the universe they appear more in the MCU at this point as conquerors who exploit worlds and their life for their own ends with no regard for that life. And also because they didn't focus on what Celestials typically do it didn't really serve as the back story for mutants on Earth as it did in the comics. The film did end with Arishem taking Sersi with him presumably to search her mind looking for whatever value she and Ajak saw in humans, so it's possible he or other Celestials return and do what Celestials usually did in the comics with helping to advance sapient life on Earth, but in the comics that happened millions of years in our past so I don't see how they'd ret-con those past events in now that didn't happen since they intended Earth to be an egg. It's possible to still have them guide life on Earth in a similar way that they do in the comics, but it would have to be via ENTIRELY different methods that don't tie into evolution as well as the comics do, and that just seems nuts given how well Kirby wove evolution into what the Celestials did on planets.

Saw the film yesterday. Lots of questions that need to bubble up. First one that's rather broad and my primary one I'm pondering--how close is this story to the comics? I don't recall this idea of Celestials gestating in the womb of inhabited planets before this film.

First shot of one of my three big guys. Seems defect-free so far! There's a design flaw with these where Hasbro did put ratchets in the two joints in the double-jointed knees and in the hips, but the ratchets mostly don't work. A lot of people have floppy knee joints, and one of my two legs had that. However, there are screws in the joints, and if you either tighten those--or do what I did and add vinyl washers to the screws in the knees prior to tightening--the knees become solidly tight and can hold up the weight of the figure just fine, which is around 9 pounds. You can see the screwdrivers and small bag of vinyl washers I used behind him by his right foot in the pic below. If anyone gets one of these I can give you more details about doing this. I bought 200 of those washers for $7 on Amazon, and I used two per knee, so 8 total for one Sentinel. Really happy with this guy, and looking forward to giving him some companions in the coming days or weeks.

If this one was any indication they're a warning with few to no lasting consequences. Take precautions and you'll be fine for a while. Opening a Sentinel now...love it so far.

Finally have my three Haslab Sentinels in hand after a week of about ten FedEx shipping shenanigans/flubs. Then my father-in-law has a mini-stroke and everyone's schedule goes insane for a few days, so haven't had time to look at them yet. Hoping to get time tonight after the kids go to bed. Gonna open one and go from there in seeing where I'll put these guys before I open more.

HBO will stop doing it very soon, right? It's mostly a pandemic thing. Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and Peacock are all streaming-first platforms so theater releases are an afterthought for them. I don't recall any blockbuster-style films from those streaming-first companies I would even typically want to see on the big screen.

What film are you referring to? All I see from him this year is Macbeth, and that doesn't come out until around Christmas.

I'm greatly looking forward to this film, yet even I'm now considering just waiting for it to show up on Disney Plus due to the reviews. But we don't yet know when it release there, do we? Maybe it's about two months after release like Shang-Chi was, or maybe it isn't--Disney hasn't said as far as I know. I believe they did announce the Shang-Chi Disney Plus release date prior to that film hitting theaters, but I haven't been able to find that they did that for Eternals. So maybe it his by Christmas, or maybe in January--or maybe long after that as films traditionally have.

The second post-credit scene has now leaked. I won't say what either of the two of them have in them, but I will say in a spoiler who isn't in either of them:

I bought two of the Snake Eyes/Timber sets just to have two Timbers. Best articulated dog I've ever seen. If anyone knows of better please do share.

As an aside here, my significant other detests superhero films, but she LOVED the Joker film for the reasons you guys outlined--she sees it as a fascinating look into insanity. But when I showed her Todd Phillips's quote about Killing Joke, Arthur preferring to remember his past as "multiple choice," and the idea that much or perhaps even ALL of what we're seeing in the film is some indeterminate mix of truth, delusion, bad memory, and intentional lying by Arthur, she repeatedly maintains that can't be right--despite seeing quotes from Phillips explicitly saying that was his intent. She had no real explanation for what Phillips may have meant, she just seems to think that makes the whole thing dumb, as many people now feel after experiencing too many "it was all a dream" stories, so she prefers the film as presented on-screen. I think she's in the majority there, and that most people don't realize the mix of truth and fiction that the film is. And that they'd be let down if they knew. I'm not let down because I read Killing Joke long ago and enjoyed it, so the idea of being wrapped up in a Joker delusion was intellectually fun, although so dreary that I ultimately didn't enjoy it.

Oh, and I realize this is a tangent so I won't go to deep on whether or not Joker is Oscar-worthy. But Chloe Zhao's involvement and the question of whether Eternals could ever be Oscar-worthy makes it directly related.

Maybe Joker is a worthy analysis of what leads a human to deviance. Or is it, given that Phillips intentionally built in enough contradictions to make it clear that the film is told from Arthur's perspective and he's shown to be lying repeatedly in what he shows us? If I slog through a re-watch of this fascinating but dreary film, how do I know what to trust and what not to--anyone have a guide? Phillips explicitly referenced these panels below from Moore's Killing Joke as an inspiration for the film, so I can't tell how much of what we're seeing is message and how much is selfish delusion. But given that he's an unreliable narrator I have to default to not trusting anything I'm seeing. Factoring this in I have to assume Phillips's Joker is the same rando-killing force of nature with no real origin that he's always been.

Interesting. That contradicts what I had heard about the navigators using it to look forward in time to determine where objects in the path of a starship would be, but it's more in line with how warp or hyperspace works in other fictional works and it's what I was assuming when I first heard it enabled interstellar travel. Did they say in the film how it works and I missed it? The film seems to use the books as canon, so just clarifying how the spice works in the books probably explains the film as well.

Half of what's great about TDK Joker comes from David S. Goyer. Every Joker before the one he wrote was a caricature of a madman, whereas Goyer's is the first that's a semi-believable madman. I can't picture any actual human being acting like or looking like Burton and Nicholson's Joker, but wow, the Goyer/Ledger version is just as believable as other great villains like Hannibal Lector or Anton Chigurh. Exaggerated, yes, all great villains are. Impossible? For the first time in the history of Joker, no, not impossible. That's also the strength of the Todd Phillips/Joaquain Phoenix Joker as well, not so over-the-top insane that you're taken out of the story and into constantly being reminded it's just a movie. Nicholson brings it closer to reality than his predecessors, but there's only so much grounding he could do with the material he was given. I watched Batman at least ten times, and every time was to let Nicholson's performance sink in because I love him and his presence in that film, but it's still too over the top due to the writing/directing. Beyond Ledger's performance the TDK screenplay is still a masterpiece, and Nolan's directing craft in it is as well. I rank The Dark Knight first among all superhero films, and third is Batman Begins. Without Ledger TDK is still better than Begins, and that's a high bar since the first hour of Begins is a masterpiece. Goyer and Nolan are simply the finest duo of creators in the superhero film genre, bar none.

Best Picture is the category sci-fi and fantasy rarely has a shot at due to the nature of the genre. They usually have a leg up on the visual, audio, and tech categories because the budget allows for far more flexibility.