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fantastic_four

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Everything posted by fantastic_four

  1. fantastic_four
    I can't see much question that they're drawing from the kind of mental breakdown and subsequent warping of reality that made up the House of M storyline. But as you suggest we don't know what led to the breakdown, and it's probably not just Vision's death.
  2. fantastic_four
    Yep, but what I don't know is whether or not Lorenz had read "A Sound of Thunder" himself to inspire him to cite a butterfly flapping its wings as his example of chaotic minor changes having unexpectedly large effects elsewhere in complex systems. The Bradbury story was published in 1952, so it's possible Lorenz read the Bradbury story. I've Googled in the past to find confirmation or denial of that possibility but never found anything. I enjoyed those too when I saw them, but I hadn't read the Bradbury story or looked at chaos theory at the time. Watching the Terminator films after that I had to choose to just ignore the TONS of changes to the past the Terminators were making that would inevitably have DRAMATIC changes on the future and defeat their entire purpose for going back in the first place. I first learned of chaos theory when most people probably did--when Jeff Goldblum mentioned it in Jurassic Park in 1993.
  3. fantastic_four
    Exactly how I feel. When I saw Back to the Future, City on the Edge of Forever, or Star Trek IV I didn't realize yet how incredibly impossible it would be to not completely muck up the future if you could ever travel to the past, so I didn't have much issue with them. It wasn't until I read Ray Bradbury's short story "A Sound of Thunder" that it occurred to me just how impossible it is to NOT screw up the future with just the slightest of changes to the environment. In that story someone steps on a butterfly in the past and completely changes the future into being unrecognizable when they return. I don't think that's entirely where "the butterfly effect" name comes from in chaos theory, but I've often wondered if that story influenced whoever came up with the idea of a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the Earth causing a hurricane on the other side which in turn led to the butterfly effect as a widely-known idea. So after reading Bradbury's story and studying chaos theory a bit I can't enjoy time travel stories to the past anymore. I can hypothesize some I WOULD enjoy, but any where they go back to make some positive change on the present or future without changing ANYTHING else about those times are just ludicrous--and that's the angle taken by Back to the Future, City on the Edge of Forever, Star Trek IV, and now Endgame. Among those stories City on the Edge of Forever came the closest to demonstrating how easy it is to screw with the past--a strength I credit to Harlan Ellison working on that screenplay--but I vehemently disagree that just killing Edith Keeler in a different way would repair the timestream and restore it back to the same universe they left. There are an INFINITE number of ways her dying at a different time could have its own dramatic changes on the future.
  4. fantastic_four
    They both look spectacular, particularly Ahsoka. I'm torn on the 1:18 scale. I just got my first modern 1:18 scale figure a few weeks ago in the Mandalorian/Child 2-pack, and while I'm impressed at the articulation improvements since I was buying the Kenner figures in the 1970s/1980s, the articulation is still WAY behind any 1:12 scale figure. I bought that figure just to stick into Slave I until the Return of the Jedi Boba Fett comes out in a few months, and he works well for that, but posing him is far inferior to any 6" figure. But 1:18 scale fits better with vehicles to allow them to be more manageably small to fit into display space, hence the reason I'm torn.
  5. fantastic_four
    What I haven't heard is where any of these leaks or ideas about the quality of future episodes are coming from. Is Disney releasing future episodes to reviewers? I know they released the first three to reviewers before the first came out, but I haven't heard specifics beyond that.
  6. fantastic_four
    I keep hearing episode 5 is better than 4 and fills in far more info than 4 did. We'll see.
  7. fantastic_four
    I interpreted that the opposite way--there's a town called Eastview that may or may not be where Westview is, so Wanda created Westview and the cops were there to tell us what reality is supposed to be like before Wanda arrived. We've seen the Westview sign in the broadcasted shows, so we know it as Westview from her perspective. And that the name is an allusion to Wanda's view of American life garnered from watching American television shows being broadcast in Sokovia--what we're seeing is Wanda's idealized "view" of the "West." Why would she manipulate the locals into thinking Westview doesn't exist? If they think that, then when they see the town they'd be puzzled and MORE likely to investigate. I would have thought more that if she could manipulate the surrounding population it would be into thinking Westview has ALWAYS existed, and then these cops would have had no reason to call the FBI.
  8. fantastic_four
    My guess is that Monica pulled her out of her illusion by referencing Ultron killing Pietro, which in turn caused her to recall that Vision is actually dead, so we were seeing her perspective on him in that moment. The camera angle reinforces this because when you're seeing zombie Vision the camera was placed exactly where Wanda would be in the room at the same low angle she was to him in the moment--and that intentional camera placement is particularly noticeable given that Olsen is 9 inches shorter than Bettany, plus he's standing on a raised section of their living room making him another 6 to 12 inches higher than she is. The camera is angling up at zombie Vision in the exact same way Wanda would be looking at him. But that also doesn't rule out that there IS a zombie Vision with a big hole in his head being puppeted around by Wanda, and in that moment it dropped the illusion and we were seeing Vision as he currently is. I just doubt that's what's happening for two reasons--mainly that it exaggerates her power that she can animate him fully and convincingly even when she's not near him and can't see him when in the past they've explicitly demonstrated that she can't affect what she can't see unless she changes the nature of reality into a permanent, real thing, but two we SHOULD have seen him with the hole before now, not just in the one moment where Monica pulled Wanda out of her dream and reminded her of the real outside world.
  9. fantastic_four
    True but nothing changed when Vision was talking to the neighbours. Like why have that moment? Wanda was inside realizing that Geraldine was not supposed to be there....why did we see the neighbour and Agnes trying to tell him? He seems too independent to just be a total figment of her imagination.... He said he thinks Vision is a "Wanda created AI," so that means a real android, not a figment. Vision was already AI, so he's saying she re-created him. But when he said "we can go anywhere" in episode 4 she looked sad and said they couldn't, implying that whatever he is only works in her altered reality.
  10. fantastic_four
    Mafex Superman is finally out. Mine's on order from Japan and should be here in a few weeks. The reviews so far are spectacular with multiple people saying exactly what I see in these promo images--that it's the best 6-inch Superman figure ever made. Can't wait for this guy to arrive.
  11. fantastic_four
    She reversed time when he came up through the sewer, and I don't remember if they showed what happened to him in the new timestream. Why were there bees around him? He wore the outfit because he was in the sewer, but the bees seem surrealistically bizarre and suggest that what's happening in Westview isn't entirely real even by whatever new rules for reality Wanda or her captor may have created.
  12. fantastic_four
    Depends on the show. If it's a slow burn or a mystery like this one is I prefer week-to-week. If it's a suspense thriller with a ton of cliffhangers I want it all at once. The worst show I've ever seen to watch week-to-week is 24. LOVED that show, but the only way I ever watched it was full seasons in a binge. No way could I take that show over a year, too annoying.
  13. fantastic_four
    Another of an infinity of problems with traveling back in time. I can only assume the Russos read the wrong time-traveling stories.
  14. fantastic_four
    Hypothesis. Or in this case--wildly unsubstantiated hypothesis.
  15. fantastic_four
    It felt like a flea putting up a brave front against the oncoming blast of a supernova.
  16. fantastic_four
    I just re-watched Infinity War last week. It's one of Marvel's best, although a few rank above it. I've been avoiding ranking Endgame among all superhero films. I'm biased against time-travel stories because I'm well-familiar with the unavoidable problems with them from many I've seen in the past. It's in the top 30 superhero films due to everything in that film that doesn't relate to the time travel idea--probably top 15 or 20--but I'm not sure where. I really, really, REALLY wish the Russos had avoided time travel...that's a hard (read: logically and almost certainly PHYSICALLY impossible) road to go down.
  17. fantastic_four
    Good question...I'm so befuddled with Wanda's powers I just filed this under "another superpower I overlooked or never read in the comics."
  18. fantastic_four
    I'm not following that idea. Why can't Wanda and Pietro be mutants for Wanda to reveal mutantkind in whatever undefined way the Mind stone brought her own powers out? I don't even see why she'd care about whispering "mutants" at all if she wasn't one herself.
  19. fantastic_four
    Arthur C. Clarke said that eloquently as "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Which I vehemently agree with, but please, if you're writing a fictional narrative, PLEASE, leave scientific technology within the understanding of the current age out if you can't explain it scientifically. Otherwise you're breaking everyone's brain in trying to figure out an explanation for something which HAS no explanation.
  20. fantastic_four
    It's not just a challenge, it's absolutely, positively IMPOSSIBLE. You can't do it without plot holes, which is why I rank Endgame significantly lower than Infinity War which left explaining the time shift to bring everyone back to its sequel.
  21. fantastic_four
    If you want to see a movie more along those lines try Ex Machina I saw it, but that relationship is so dysfunctional between a lonely programmer and a captive android that it's hard to translate to free relationships. That love wasn't mutual and doesn't translate to two free individuals.
  22. fantastic_four
    Part of my problem with Wanda and Vision is we BARELY saw anything between them to buy this attachment she has for him. Yes, I know it semi-well from the comics having read them since the 80s, but I never fully understood it there, either. She's a human, he's an android. The movie "Her" kind of introduced us to crossing the organic-technical barrier, but nowhere CLOSE to a full realization for how it would happen with a real, in-person android. I don't fully buy it, and nobody truly does that I've heard from to date. What did they do in the MCU to establish it? Virtually nothing, so I guess we just assume it happened off-screen? I had hoped they might spend some time on it in this series, but nope. It's just a given. It's a flaw, but not a fatal one. But a flaw that keeps coming up every time we think about their love, much less their kids (MAGIC!)
  23. fantastic_four
    I think it's 2023, but it could be 2024.
  24. fantastic_four
    I assume you mean the Mind stone...but she didn't destroy it. Thanos used the Time stone to erase that from having happened. That's how he ended up with all the stones. Even if Thanos hadn't reversed time and Wanda destroyed the Mind stone the idea that she absorbed it is pure magic (i.e. lazy writing). This is my problem with "magic" being mixed with science...it explains EVERYTHING, without bounds. I like stories about magic, but I get queasy when you mix magic and science. I turn my brain off when I think about Kenneth Branagh suggesting in the first Thor movie that Asgardians somehow mixed magic and science together.
  25. fantastic_four
    He can to some unknown extent which may or may not be like Vision was, and that was the entire reason they were protecting Vision in Infinity War for Shuri to do that. But they failed, and Thanos killed Vision. I can't see any viable way to bring him back aside from magic or the idea that Shuri saved his mind off somewhere while she was working on him.