@therealsilvermane

LOL

No, because then Strange would then have to make everyone forget that Jameson also told everyone that Parker was Spider-Man Mysterio said it and then also make people forget every other instance, maybe millions of instances, in which Peter's identity was passed from one person to another. That's why it's much easier to have everyone just forget en masse (although I'm not sure what would have been done about all the video recordings and printings of Peter Parker being Spider-Man or if that's explained), until Peter's constant requests during the spell casting screws it all up.

If anyone tries to complain to you that Aunt May stole Uncle Ben's "Great power" line, you can tell them that the line was never actually Uncle Ben's to begin with. It's the narrator, Stan Lee, who says the line in AF15.

Maybe the MCU can get Venom right. Not a maybe. They will.

Not really fair to compare the Super Bowl of Spider-Man movies (who is also the most popular superhero on the planet) to first timer super-hero MCU films. I think we can enjoy Spider-Man without taking shots at Shang Chi. After all, the two films have comparable Rotten Tomatoes scores and we all know Rotten Tomatoes scores are the final judge of what's worthy or not in life.

Peter Two probably knew what was going to happen by turning his back on Gobby, but perhaps saw saving Peter One's soul as the bigger priority.

So if that's the case, the Contessa must have her hands in several cookie jars. Be interesting to see how this all plays out.

I can say that Amazing Spider-Man is still my favorite of the past Spider-Man movies. Raimi's horror cartoon approach to the character was fun, but I appreciated the indie film approach to the character that ASM took, I dug the way Peter explored his new powers in the film, and I loved the obvious chemistry between Garfield and Stone. Then Sony(or whoever pushed for it) went and ruined a lovely story by trying to be the MCU with ASM2. No Way Home is the Super Bowl of Spider-Man movies and Tom Holland is the MVP. His Peter finally got to experience the tragedy that plagues Peter Parker and Holland really stepped up to the plate.

So when Eleanor Bishop made that cryptic call in Episode 2(?), was she calling the Contessa to sic Yelena on Clint?

I forgot that guy was even in this that's how crazy this movie was. I also only got to hear half his dialogue as all the whooping and hollering from the audience made me deaf for about 30 or 40 seconds.

I suppose all the trailers with villains from past franchises helped fuel speculation to what this movie would be. You're right. But really, it's so hard to keep secrets in movies these days anyway what with all the leaks. Might as well make it part of the marketing. And it was kind of an amazing marketing push, with fan excitement built up with and massive speculation that actually paid off, unlike WandaVision. At least the No Way Home trailers kept the movie's main guest stars out of the trailers.

We all knew this would be a live action Spider-Verse movie, no real surprise there. The movie's direction with Aunt May completely blindsided me. That's a surprise I did not see coming.

I believe this post is spoiler free. I went to one of the very first screenings in my city yesterday. It was a packed theater with some dialogue bits here and there lost to all the whooping and hollering from the audience. (It was neat to hear that, a real pre-pandemic Endgame type of vibe). I kinda lost the details of that first and last plot detail you're referring to (not the crowd's fault I don't think), but in the end, for me, it doesn't matter. With a lot of the MCU films, plot details are kinda like MacGuffins for me, they're just there to move the story along so that our heroes can either power up, be heroes, explore their relationships with other characters, or reveal their inner worlds aka mental/emotional state. That's how Hitchcock's use of the MacGuffin worked in movies like North by Northwest, and the simpler comic booky plot points in MCU films do the same thing. They're really just there to serve the strengthening of our featured hero, in ways other than just powering up. And that really was the strength of Spider-Man No Way Home, all the obvious fan service aside. This movie explored Peter's relationships with those around him moreso than the two previous MCU Spider-films did, like 150x more. And Peter's relationships with those he loves is the core of what Spider-Man is. This movie finally got that.

Box office for ALL movies has been relatively lackluster because of the pandemic. In North America, James Bond would normally bring in between $300-400 million, but it's only made $158 million in North America. For the years 2020 and 2021, with a deadly global pandemic crippling the economy and the world's largest moviegoer market China retooling the way it deals with the rest of the world both socially and economically, you have to throw past traditional metrics out the window.

Just watched Episode 3 a second time. Hawkeye is an excellent series and another great example of the type of storytelling the MCU can explore through the extended television series format. If the show continues on this trajectory, it may end up being the best example so far of that. Slight spoiler here... As the MCU continues to explore the female side of its universe, I really dig Episode 3's symmetry between Maya and Kate. One woman comes from a family who lived on top of the world in a New York City brownstone apartment with a view of Avengers tower. The other woman comes from a family that thrived in the underworld. Both owe their life's path to the actions of Clint Barton. Speaking of Maya's world, I love how the MCU is finally exploring the criminal underworld of its universe and thus the possible characters it can bring forth into this universe, like Kingpin, Daredevil, Bullseye, Luke Cage, Frank Castle, basically the Netflix guys LOL

And Spider-Man would probably tank quality-wise to Raimi Spider-Man 3 or ASM2 levels. Making a cartoon is one thing. Making live action another. Fans want to see Spider-Man play in the MCU and that's all. That's where we are. That's why Amy Pascal just announced there will be another MCU Spider-Man trilogy after this one. Sony isn't completely brain dead, though Disney will eventually outright own Spider-Man anyway without paying a dime once Sony sells off Columbia Pictures due to the fact that the Spider-Man related movies are their only film franchise that brings in real money.

And just so that nobody gets confused, to be more precise, Spider-Man: No Way Home is a Marvel Studios film with Pascal Pictures and Columbia Pictures as co-producers and distributed by Sony Pictures. Disney has financed 25% of the film and will receive 25% of the film's profits. It's a true hybrid movie. More importantly, though, Disney gets all profits from the movie's merchandising and the character in general and pretty much everything else including using Spider-Man in a perhaps more meaningful future Avengers film (when I say meaningful, I mean how much it affects the MCU overall more. The Spider-Man movies so far have had little effect on the greater MCU) Back to my secondary point, though, the individual movie's net profits from the box office means much more to Sony than they do to Disney.

Do you get tired of Star Wars? No. Since the Original Trilogy, all Lucasfilm has done is make bad movies about the same thing and the same characters over and over and over again, but fans still clamor for that creatively dead franchise. Can we get a show about baby Obi Wan next? At least Marvel Studios gives us new heroes and new villains. If Disney has anything to do with it and they do, Marvel is going nowhere. I just don't understand why this is a problem for so many of you here. Did y'all invest in the wrong comic book company keys or something?

My above statement about MCU characters being more important as IPO investments for the future really has nothing to do with my previous statement about Shang Chi saving the U.S. movie theater industry. About that whole Shang Chi movie theater affair, I realize "save" is a strong word and that there are a lot of other factors involved and I do tend to generalize and hyperbolize as I don't have the time to go into detail, but I absolutely stand by that statement. And to bring that up again, I again wasn't just talking about the opening box office which was still huge, but it was about proving points about the viability of the movie theater at a point in time when movie theaters were very much in doubt due to the pandemic and the success of streaming during the pandemic. It was also about creating a domino effect of behavior amongst not only moviegoers but also the studios themselves. As the IMAX CEO tweeted after its opening weekend, Shang Chi's record Labor Day box office showed us that if you make a good movie and only show it in movie theaters, then people will come. The movie's unexpected Labor Day weekend success almost immediately resulted in movie studios moving up some theater exclusive movies release dates or studios publicly committing to a theater exclusive run. The media ran multiple articles singing the praises of Shang Chi and movie theater bosses also tweeted praise of the movie. Goodwill returned to the movie theater experience and all talk of the demise of U.S. movie theaters and streaming being the new succeeding model for movie releases died. If Shang Chi was an "experiment" as Bob Chapek said, then that experiment succeeded with flying colors and fireworks. Though BO numbers are still down relative to what they were two years ago, the box office has only gotten stronger in successive weekends and really hasn't looked back since.

I have a similar situation. My friends that brought me into the collecting side of comics and going to cons are all Asian-American, a few are specifically Chinese-American. They are high end collectors. Their love of comics is for gold and silver age stuff. They have never mentioned Shang-Chi, and show no interest. I went to NYCC this year, you would not know that Shang-Chi even existed, and that was about 1 month after the film came out. I know this is all anecdotal from my experiences. But when BP came out people at cons were talking about it. BP costumes, shirts, and merchandise were everywhere. Shang-Chi was crickets. He keeps saying the love will come, when we see more, when he is used more. The fact is embraced characters have never needed buildup. Look, I realize that Shang-Chi didn't have the same impact with the Asian-American community as Black Panther did with the African-American community. For one thing, there really is no such thing as an Asian American community. Maybe a Chinese American community, or a Japanese American community or Filipino Americans, but these groups don't really commune together as a whole. I believe African-Americans are more hungry for social justice and representation than the many different groups that make up the Asian demographic in America. For my part, I've seen love for the Shang-Chi character from some Asian-American associates of mine who are thrilled to have an Asian hero in the MCU. And yes, I have some who could care less. But it doesn't really matter if my Asian-American friend loved Shang-Chi or your Asian-American friend hated it at the moment. My point is that it's not all about the immediate profit when it comes to a franchise property like a MCU movie. I know it's important, but it's also about laying the foundations for the future. Captain America, Thor, and Doctor Strange didn't necessarily become fan favorites with their first movies. Cap didn't become a favorite until Winter Soldier. If someone did a study of Captain America sales before and after Winter Soldier, I bet they'd find quite a difference. Chris Hemsworth was about to quit Marvel after Thor 2 but Ragnarok resurrected the character for him and for the fans. I'd say Dr Strange truly shined for the first time in Avengers Infinity War. For Marvel Studios, the character itself is actually more important in the long run than one movie. Of course, that does have to pay off in the long run with an interesting use of the character in subsequent appearances the way Marvel has done with Captain America, Dr. Strange, Ant-Man, etc. Let's see what Marvel does with Shang-Chi in the future.

Somewhat interesting chat with Hailee Steinfeld on the Kelly Clarkson Show about the Hawkeye series. What I found particularly interesting is when Kelly asks Hailee if she had a favorite super-hero growing up, to which Hailee says "no." Kelly, answering for herself, notes how she didn't really have a female super-hero to look up to as there weren't really any around except She-Ra (outside of what was in comic books). She says there was Wonder Woman but the character wasn't really a thing when Kelly was growing up. Kelly then notes that today her daughter has all these female super-heroes to look up to now and that Kelly's personal favorite is Captain Marvel . Again, what I think is an interesting perspective on super-heroes from two ladies who don't read comics. Hawkeye chat begins at 7:10.

I can't argue with this gripe. For such a serious film, I thought that was kinda ridiculous plot point for its importance to the outcome of the movie. But I also had a lot of gripes with the creative choices taken in Black Widow, like why would the Russians build their super max prison in a valley that's apparently prone to devastating avalanches and has this prison not experienced any such avalanches in the past? There were a lot of such questions in Black Widow that it hampered my ability to lose myself in the movie. I did love Yelena though and I look forward to her appearance in the so far excellent Hawkeye.

PTA is very good at being pretentious so much that critics and college kids eat his sh*t up. It doesn't get past my sh*t meter though. I figured his cinema out with Boogie Nights, and Magnolia was cinematically just diminishing returns, in my opinion. I don't think the guy has one honest thing to say as a filmmaker but just wants to be the love child of 70's cinema and Martin Scorsese. I'll admit he and his cinematographer have done a fine job of copying Scorsese's camera moves. He must have had his director of photography up all night showing him Goodfellas over and over and over again. "Never mind if I have anything real to say, but it must LOOK like I have something real to say!" My assumption that he was a pretentious art house filmmaker was verified when he said in an interview once that there was this Iranian movie that was about nothing more than a child looking for a lost kitten, and that's what he wants to make. The guy is a total wannabe with nothing important to say in my opinion. Sure you can like his movies all day but I think it's amusing that academics and critics think he's the second coming of Robert Altman or something.

Appealing to the lowest common denominator (which is kind of what comic book action movies do anyway) is also a creative dead end. If Disney were only about money, I'd think they'd have sold everything and just gone into finance. But no, they're an entertainment company and a spearhead of American popular culture. If the MCU just keeps making nothing but Spider-Man movies or reboots Iron Man, what good is that to the world or to them? I love that the MCU is trying out new things with Shang-Chi or Eternals. THAT'S how you grow your audience and thus revenue. At least they're trying and not just spinning their wheels by rebooting Iron Man. Speaking of revenue, it's not just about box office, particularly when it comes to the MCU. It's also about the merchandise, growing the brand, discovering and appealing to new demographics, creating new characters for Disneyland and Disney World, more content for Disney+, etc. It's not just about how much money gets put in the corporate pocket today, but the investment for the future. Sure, the Black Panther movie itself was profitable to the tune of a few hundred million dollars, but the investment really pays off when you consider the fan base that was created who buy the shirts and the merch and who are clamoring for a Wakanda land be built at Disney's Animal Kingdom or some other Disney park. Similarly with Shang Chi, you may not have liked the movie, but the Asian-American community loved the movie and now have a character they can call their own, who will eventually buy the shirts and the merch and want to see the character at Disneyland, especially after Shang-Chi shows up again as an official Avenger in the future and is on screen fighting alongside Captain Marvel and Spider-Man.

Yes! (sarcastically) The only movie franchises that deserve to exist after the economy crushing global pandemic are Fast and the Furious, Venom, and A Quiet Place because they may have managed to be slightly profitable after everybody's been paid. Let's just have more of those movies and sh*tcan the rest! Bring on F10! Let's take down the MCU, the franchise responsible for making our beloved hobby the top thing in pop culture and quadrupling the value of our collections, because it didn't make enough money during a global pandemic or failed to appease the Chinese government censors while making a really good movie that finally features an Asian super-hero. Excelsior! Or not...