@therealsilvermane

On 2/24/2023 at 7:33 AM, TupennyConan said:

What a catastrophe. The MCU didn't kill Thanos, it killed itself - on purpose.

Carol Danvers put Thanos vers. 616 in a killer choke hold and Thor lopped his head off with Stormbreaker. Teamwork makes the dream work.

I just realized that Friday November 10th is Veterans Day Observed. The Marvels’ opening day is a federal and school holiday. Smart.

On 2/23/2023 at 9:40 PM, Artboy99 said:

They desperately need to focus on quality over quantity and if Iger thought Antman 3 was quality 

And GoTG 3 isn't going to be quality either. Just look at the movie poster: the characters barely resemble themselves and appear androgynous. 

And be honest, are any of you actually excited for The Marvels?

Here is the supposed upcoming lineup, and I am not excited for any of it now:

• Secret Invasion (Spring 2023, Disney Plus)
• Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (May 5, 2023, movie)
• Echo (Summer 2023, Disney Plus)
• Loki season 2 (Summer 2023, Disney Plus)
• The Marvels (July 28, 2023, movie)
• Ironheart (Fall 2023, Disney Plus)

 

Echo and Ironheart have been delayed to 2024 at least. That leaves only Secret Invasion and Loki2 as the only Disney+ series locked in for 2023. Im sure they’re a casualty of the new quality over quantity mantra.

Quantumania was most likely locked and in the can, post production wise, by the time Bob Iger returned as CEO. Some of the Guardians actors said they cried after reading the GOTG 3 -script. Im sure it will be as good as anything Gunn puts out. The Marvels is probably the first MCU movie affected by the new “quality not quantity” philosophy as we’re told the three months delay is to give more time for the VFX artistes.

On 2/23/2023 at 11:37 AM, media_junkie said:

No, he wasn't in every movie, however over the course of the "ten year plan" for the Infinity Saga he got top billing in 8 of them, Iron Man, IM2, IM3, Avengers, Avengers 2, Avengers 3, Avengers 4, Captain America 3 (and those 8 pretty much encompass the infinity stone saga).  So again, if Captain Marvel is the "Forefront" of the MCU where the heck has she been?

First, I’m not really trying to compare RDJ’s Tony Stark to Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers. I only brought him up because you did. I realize RDJ is the Mac daddy George Washington of the MCU and can’t ever really be replaced and that the MCU’s new leaders can only hope to hold their own in the future.

From the current storylines of Phase Four, it seems there is no stable leadership in the MCU as the universe recovers in the aftermath of the Snap and that the world of the MCU is in a strange in-between transition period. Sam Wilson is just getting used to wielding the shield and Carol is off world. As the new Avengers level threat makes itself known, the MCU’s leaders will rise because the story demands it. 

You ask that if Carol is to be at the forefront, then where has she been in Phase Four? I’m saying that as stories and character arcs,  like Loki Wanda and Sam Wilson,  left over from Phase Three got resolved and a new world order established, the one character whose influence kept popping up in different pockets of the MCU was Carol Danvers: the rise of Carol’s niece Monica Rambeau, Carol’s connection to SWORD, the introduction of Kamala Khan as a Danvers super-fan, Captain Marvel’s multiverse roles in What If? and Doctor Strange 2, the consulting scene from Shang Chi. These subtly point to Carol Danvers having a future as a larger influence on the MCU’s narrative as the MCU moves from the scattered in-between time of Phase Four towards the telling  of the the next big super  narrative. So far, only Doctor Strange comes close in seeming to have an influence in so many different parts of the MCU in Phase Four.

On 2/23/2023 at 10:18 AM, media_junkie said:

Ok, granted this wasn't a review, but it was a good statement on the situation.  I think we can all agree that Iron Man was the face/center of the MCU from the moment he was introduced.  Iron Man 1 (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), Iron Man 3 (2013), along with the Avengers movies (where he was an actually player, not some glorified cameo).

So along comes Captain Marvel in 2019 and Feige says "she is the brand going forward", well here it is 4 years later and still nothing but one movie, some crappy cameos in TV shows that have bombed on streaming, and a sequel that has now been split from 1 "star" to 3.  Push all you want, Captain Marvel cannot, and will not be able to carry the MCU forward like Iron Man did.  It started with him and ended with him.  Everything that has come out since Avengers Endgame (Iron Man dead and Captain America retired) has been "ehh" at best and spoon at worst (I don't count Spiderman because that is a Sony Movie, we are talking Marvel Studios here).

Captain Marvel has always been important to the company brand because of the “Marvel” name, why publisher Martin Goodman copyrighted the name in 1967 when it became public domain due to DC’s legal shenanigans.

As far as being the face of the MCU, what Mr Feige said in 2019 is “she will soon be at the forefront of the MCU.” That’s a little different from “she will be the brand going forward.” “Soon” in feature film time is a relative term, and Marvel Studios is obviously playing the long game with its characters, taking ten years alone to map out the Infinity Stones saga. And even though RDJ’s Iron Man was the face of the MCU, he wasn’t in every MCU movie. And characters like Steve Rogers and Doctor Strange weren’t immediate fan favorites. I argue Mr Rogers didn’t become a true favorite until his elevator scene in Winter Soldier. I argue Doctor Strange didn’t become a true favorite until he took on Thanos mano a mano in Infinity War. I argue that Carol Danvers is still a work in progress as Marvel Studios is slowly building out her world. With “The Marvels”, she will finally get a present-day circle of friends like other major MCU heroes have. I think she’ll also finally get the emotional gut punch story that defines other MCU heroes, because admittedly her first movie lacked that emotional gut punch narrative being a more lighthearted origin story, by design,  sandwiched between the movies with the biggest one-two emotional gut punch in MCU history. The Marvels needs to be a good movie, and delaying it a few months will help ensure that.  Marvel Studios  has also slowly shown Carol’s growing  influence in Phase Four, ie her best friend Maria Rambeau is the founder of SWORD, or consulting newbie Shang Chi in his mid credit scene. Carol Danvers will also finally finally be the leader of The Avengers in the comic books this spring.

While not necessarily looking to be the ONLY face of the MCU, signs point to Carol Danvers definitely headed towards being at its forefront in the stories and on the lunchbox, just as Kevin Feige foretold.

On 2/22/2023 at 6:29 PM, Bosco685 said:

That’s the spirit! 

On 2/22/2023 at 4:40 PM, media_junkie said:

Most of his reviews I agree with, some I don't.  This is one I do.

How the Hades do you review a movie that hasn’t even come out yet? Oh right, hater trolls do it all the time with Captain Marvel while making YouTube views aka money at the same time because Captain Marvel is that much of an attention magnet to the tune of a billion plus dollars and hundreds of YouTube videos fruitlessly trying to bring her down. Higher further faster, babay!

Maybe making Aquaman an Eskimo and giving him an ice cream loving seal buddy would’ve been better.

On 2/20/2023 at 11:23 AM, drotto said:

I also strongly feel the general audiences do not like Multiverse stories.  They find them confusing and convoluted, and they clearly lower the over stakes.  The general audience (IMO) has not clue what they were watching with Kang in the end credit scene. So they are immediately disconnected from those scenes. I can not think of a multiverse story that have wide spread and sustained appeal, and all we get now is multiverse.  People do not like it in the DCU, they did not like it in Star Trek, they do not like it here.

It seems the point of the Infinity Saga and the Multiverse Saga is, and will be, how do these things, Infinity Stones and the Multiverse, create a headache for our 616 Universe which our heroes must solve?

With the Infinity Saga, general audiences didn't really know the true threat the Infinity Stones posed to our universe until Avengers Infinity War. Before that, Infinity Stones were either MacGuffins or a transformational power source.

Similarly, with the Multiverse, as far as what we've been told, we don't yet know enough about it. So far, it's either been a source of power (i.e. Chaos energy), a source of monsters, or a way to explore parallel universes, parallel selves, or periods of time. So far the Multiverse isn't so much of a MacGuffin as it is a story setting.

However, some comics readers know that the Multiverse in Marvel Comics leads to a multiversal war (like the 2015 Secret Wars event), where some universes threatened the entire existence of other universes, like our 616 universe. This has already been hinted at in Loki and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness where the concept of incursions is introduced. Right now, the Multiverse is more of a concept still being explored or a story setting, with its true threat still to be revealed. This is kind of how it was during the Infinity Saga. I'm thinking the Multiverse Saga is no different.

On 2/20/2023 at 9:20 AM, drotto said:

I think an issue the MCU has now is everything looks kinda the same, and all revolves around the multiverse.  We used to have more variety in phases 1 to 3.  We had some cosmic, a little touch of multiverse, some Astral plane/mystical, mech type stuff, more grounded espionage and war base.  It was fairly diverse thematically,  in looks, and somewhat in genre. 

In phase 4 movies, it has been basically all multiverse/mystical and somewhat cosmic.  All the other genres are gone, in addition the MCU's cosmic, multiverse, and Astral plane stuff look visually and feel very similar.  I can see how average audiences can't tell the difference.  Furthermore, the plots are leaning so heavily into the multiverse idea, again leading to less variety.  So, it feels even more formulaic.  You could argue that BP2, was thematically different and much more grounded (it was to a degree), but the look and design of Namore and his people drifted back into that same "multiverse" look.

Audiences are already getting tired of the multiverse, it is confusing at times, but more importantly it all feels like the same movie, with small changes in characters and plot.

?

IMO, Phase One movies definitely all felt like the same movie in cinematic style, with bright flat comedy style lighting to fit stories that never got too dark thematically. It wasn't until Phase Two that the MCU stretched its style with Captain America Winter Soldier which looked and felt like a political action thriller, and got a little darker thematically. The remaining MCU Russo Bros movies followed this style. Every other movie through Phase Three (with the slight exception of Black Panther) has followed the basic style of Iron Man, that is, brightly-lit comedy-drama adventures. There wasn't a lot of deviation from that in Phases 1-3. Even GOTG was a funnier version of a movie shot in the style of Iron Man.

I think Phase Four is where we saw actual experimentation in style and theme, and part of that is due to the Disney+ shows, where Marvel was able to tell smaller stories and better explore the inner world of these characters. Black Widow and Falcon Winter Soldier were political action thrillers in the style of Captain America Winter Soldier. A lot of Shang-Chi was shot and told in the style of a Wuxia movie, like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon meets Pokemon. Each episode of WandaVision experimented with different shooting style that mirrored different generations of TV shows and modern film. Ms. Marvel was the MCU's true stab at a coming of age story, moreso than Spider-Man Homecoming IMO, and also the first American TV show to highlight a Muslim-American family. Eternals was an even bigger stretch for Marvel, experimenting with a brooding dark story that spanned different epochs of history. Multiverse of Madness was a Sam Raimi movie, a genre unto itself. Werewolf By Night was shot like an old school horror movie/show. She-Hulk was a straight up 4th wall breaking half hour legal comedy. The Phase Four MCU films and Disney+ shows probably couldn't have been further apart in theme and style. 

At the same time, a homogenous style has been the M.O. of Marvel Comics since 1962. They've basically told one story since Fantastic Four #1 and the emphasis has always been on the characters. This means there hasn't been much experimentation with storytelling style or character development in the pages of Marvel Comics. It's DC Comics where we saw more experimentation with character and storytelling style, with DC not afraid to completely reboot major characters in order to stay fresh. In some ways, Marvel Studios is following the M.O. of Marvel Comics for the past 60 years, which is one reason Marvel is so good at the continuous expanded universe thing, its part of its DNA. A slightly homogenous cinematic style is a symptom of that M.O., for better or worse. 

On 2/19/2023 at 3:51 PM, Jaydogrules said:

Those aren't actuals.  The actuals are about 223M right now.  I stand by my 575-600M.  This movie is not doing well either.  

-J.

I guess it actually made $225 million WW this weekend. My bad for following the one website whose one job is to report box office numbers.

On 2/19/2023 at 3:32 PM, paperheart said:

Wrong, $230M thru Sunday does not result in $360M 4 day. Cope harder. $100M typo 

Okay

On 2/19/2023 at 1:27 PM, Jaydogrules said:

Nah that US is weak and unlike Flop-anda this doesn't have a 5 week cakewalk with no other releases.   I'm saying 575-600M.

-J.

Quantumania has 360 million WW for the holiday weekend. Word of mouth seems to be in the positive all over social media. It’ll clear 575-600 million easily. 

On 2/18/2023 at 4:07 AM, Bosco685 said:

3.2K audience members gave this a 10/10.0 rating

As I see it, if you can get past MODOK, Quantumania is a decent movie. The Quantum peoples revolution is kind of useless other than adding to the Mania, but the hero and villain  stories are good. Yes, Scott Lang is out of his league, but that’s been his M.O. since the first movie, a regular guy thrown amongst gods. Hope, Janet, and Hank finally get real hero moments. Hank Pym himself, and this is kind of a SPOILER, finally gets to be an Ant-Man. New-comer Cassie Lang isn’t bad. The tension created by Kang is both compelling and chilling. Even MODOK’s story makes sense. Most importantly, the movie concludes well. I’m seeing it again next week, and maybe MODOK won’t bother me as much a second time around, because he kind of made me a little ill whenever he was onscreen. 

Saw it in 3D IMAX last night. Some things I didn’t like, but more that I liked.

As I said, MODOK was weird and very very distracting. I could have done with less of the Quantum people and revolutionaries. I’m not sure why Bill Murray’s character was in the movie. 

However, I liked that Hank and Janet actually did something action hero wise. Hope was also a better hero in this movie. Kang was charismatic  and terrifying when it counted. He reminds me a little of Khan from Star Trek. I loved the ants, who hardly had a role in the last movie, I mean the name of the franchise is Ant-Man. 

I still prefer the first Ant-Man, but the villain and better roles for Janet, Hank, and Hope elevated Quantumania over Ant-Man and the Wasp for me. I still can’t say enough how much MODOK nearly ruined the film for me. I did end up kinda liking him at the end tho’.

MODOK was so freakin’ weird that I can see how that might have actually ruined the movie for a lot of people and critics. For me, the character redeemed his presence in the movie at the end. 

On 2/17/2023 at 4:38 AM, Lpgk said:

I give it a solid B. It was fun, the effects were well done and I loved MODOK.
 

Mid credits spoiler

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Mid credits scene has victor timely (Jonathan majors)  in the past and Loki and mobius are in the audience. 

 

Mid credits scene correction spoiler 

On 2/15/2023 at 6:54 AM, Gatsby77 said:

For the 50th time, Fast 9 came out months before Shang-Chi - and grossed nearly $300 million more worldwide.

It was also (gasp!) a better movie.

Well, Shang-Chi got waaay higher scores than F9 with Metacritic, IMDb, and RT critic and audience, so I’m not sure what your better movie metric is other than your personal opinion. 

Yes, F9 came out in June 2021, months before Shang-Chi. F9 made $179 million domestic, not bad for a pandemic release. But what needs to be considered is that movie theaters still had an awful box office the rest of the summer while streaming got more and more popular over the summer..  It was expected Black Widow might be the end of summer spike the box office needed, but instead made it worse with its rapid diminishing  box office compared to its record streaming premiere numbers. Black Widow was almost like a seeming nail in the coffin for movie theaters because of its streaming success. F9 wasn’t up against that doom and gloom sentiment, Shang-Chi was. And after Shang-Chi’s two record box office weekends, all talk of streaming as the new future of big movies was dead. F9 didn’t do that. Shang-Chi did that.

Also, what the North American movie theater industry was worried about during the pandemic was North American theater chains: AMC, Cinemark, IMAX etc. F9’s $300 million overseas had no bearing on AMC or Cinemark’s profits. 

On 2/14/2023 at 8:04 PM, Bosco685 said:

Spielberg pronounced 'Shang-Chi' incorrectly

What Steven Spielberg really meant was “You saved Hollywood’s arse and theatrical distribution from all those awful superhero movies that have taken the box office dollars from the rest of us for a decade!” 

Because even though he praised Iron Man and GOTG, Spielberg doesn’t really care for superhero movies and hasn’t since 1989 Batman. Where is Spielberg’s public praise for Spider-Man No Way Home which made more domestic and international than Maverick? 

When I say Shang-Chi saved movie theaters, I’m not only repeating the sentiment of actual movie theater chain owners at the time, I’m saying it in the context of a time when everybody thought the pandemic not only hastened the death of the movie theater, but also hastened  the rise of home streaming as the preferred way to watch big movies, and Shang-Chi proving that sentiment wrong with two highly unexpected record box office weekends, and practically creating a domino effect regarding confidence in the power of the box office going forward.

On 2/12/2023 at 12:11 PM, crassus said:

I will watch this movie, although I'm way behind in the Marvel movies, and I'm too lazy too watch things in the proper order... just saw the 1st Ant-Man last night (do I need to see the 2nd one before the latest?) If so I'll watch it too, as I really enjoyed the movie. I was surprised. I never cared about the character, ever, so I was starting from zero on this one, maybe that helped, at any rate thought it was really well executed, the characters worked for me, and I would get in line to see more of the Wasp...(kind of a comic book crush, liked the actress in the role) so count me in on this one...I tend to be optimistic about the movies right now, I realize I am probably in the minority on that, and yes some recent attempts have been bad, but so many are made that there are bound to be peaks and troughs...I try to give each new one the benefit of the doubt at least...

Oh I’d say you definitely need to watch Ant-Man and the Wasp before Ant-Man Quantumania, otherwise you might be wondering how Michele Pfeiffer got here. IMO, it’s not as good as the first movie, but it is more action packed.

On 2/11/2023 at 9:02 AM, Bosco685 said:

Wow. I did not know this.

Behind Disney’s Activist Investor Battle: A Marvel Mogul’s Revenge Play

 

Mark Ruffalo also leaked this story three years ago.

When we did the first Avengers, Kevin Feige told me, ‘Listen, I might not be here tomorrow.’ And he’s like, ‘Ike does not believe that anyone will go to a female-starring super movie.’ So if I am still here tomorrow you will know that I won that battle.’

https://www.comicsbeat.com/kevin-feige-mcu-diversity-ike-perlmutter/

On 2/9/2023 at 1:13 PM, drotto said:

The cinematography in this film is groundbreaking.   It may be limited in impact, because how many films would demand these types of sequences,  but it is a massive snub. Just another indication the Oscar's are out of touch and becoming irrelevant. Yes, the film got other nominations, but I see those as pandering and not real.

Because what was amazing about Top Gun Maverick’s cinematography was really that the filmmakers were able to fit so many cameras on one fighter jet. For each of those camera setups, there was no inventive angle setup or lighting setup to create emotional impact. It was just getting as many cameras onto the jet to cover all the visual bases. The real “magic” was done in the editing, compiling all those camera angles into a single action, and Top Gun Maverick deservedly received a nomination for Best Editing. The real art of cinematography comes in the creative angle setups and lighting, not how many cameras you can cram onto a moving vehicle.

On 2/8/2023 at 9:18 AM, theCapraAegagrus said:

The fact that no one can ever die, now thanks to the multiverse, is really a big factor for why these movies are so boring to me.

Well, the two MCU movies/series where this very thing came into play were Avengers Endgame and Loki, where Thanos, Gamora, and Loki were “replaced” by their multiverse variants. In all three cases, the variants were able to see how their 616 counterparts lived and died. Thanos and Loki literally saw their deaths, resulting in a profound change in their character’s decision making. With the variant Loki, seeing his other life and death on film at the TVA changed his entire life’s view. I didn’t find that boring in the least.