@therealsilvermane

@SkyJuice Not joking

Marvel's Santa Claus.

Correction on my part: U.S. movie theaters in 2019 generated $10 billion in ticket sales revenue and $6 billion in concession sales. The numbers I posted above were global. Every company and every industry and every government has its debts, operating costs etc. and that varies with the company or government. I'm not talking about how good or bad AMC's CEO has handled the finances and expenditures of the company. I'm talking about movie theater attendance here. I'm talking about the American public's overall interest in going to the movies and spending money there.The fact remains that the U.S. movie theater industry saw steady revenue growth over the past decade until the economy fell off a cliff in 2020. Naysayers can talk about Netflix and Disney+ taking over our lives all they want, but people still want to go out to the movies. The past month has shown that. Nobody, generally speaking, wants to see Spider-Man debut on a TV screen this Christmas. We want to go see it at the movies.

Just saw Venom vs Carnage. For background, I've never been a big Venom fan though I root for my ASM 300's market value. I never saw the 1st Venom movie. This movie was okay. Not a real compelling plot IMO, but I was expecting that. Maybe the strongest element of the story is the Eddie-Venom symbiotic relationship. The main reason to see the movie, the Venom Carnage battle, was fine. The mid-credits scene was interesting to say the least. I wonder where the powers that be are going with that one.

I'd say it's the coronavirus pandemic that's been bad economics for Applebee's, Aetna (with all the life insurance payouts it's had to dole out), the Disneys of the world, and yes AMC. U.S. movie theater revenue in 2019 was $43 billion. In 2020 it was $12 billion. Not from lack of interest, but because of a global deadly pandemic. Once we're past this thing, and the news two days ago was that the delta surge is finally on a downturn, then things will go back to normal, including movie theater business.

What the heck. I'll go check it out in 3D today at the brand new multiplex down the street.

What's also uneconomic is a $100/mo phone bill or twice that if you have a family, a $800 new iphone every 2 years, eating at a fine dining restaurant, health insurance, and going to Disney World or going on any kind of vacation. But people still do it. People want to go to the movies and filmmakers want to make movies that will be seen specifically by a crowd in a dark place on a large screen.

America's Movie Theater Industry -----> SAVED

I didn't realize there actually was a James Bond Jr. thing. In that case, they should fast forward continuity to a movie about James Bond in retirement, and call it James Bond: Forget About Forever or something more clever. It could be a 70+ year old Bond off the steroids and trying to hold onto his past but facing the future and his own mortality from natural causes. Maybe he's in hiding (from his enemies) in Glen Coe woods after being outed on Twitter. It's a retirement life of his own making: alone and broken down. At least his bullet proof cabin has a mini-martini bar, even though his primary physician (who Bond calls D) told him to lay off the alchohol. And maybe our adventure begins when somebody is mysteriously murdering Bond's fellow retirees from MI6, forcing Bond out of retirement between bathroom breaks. I actually kind of like this idea...

Of course, Sylvie is a Loki. And Sylvie doesn’t figure out the Time soldiers are variants through intellectual deduction, she figured it out because she saw their mind and past life as she possessed them. Loki is no All-Father, but he’s smart enough to know when an Infinity Stone has no power and to find another way.

Now that's adding a lot to the narrative. I actually learned from WandaVision not to assume too much with these shows and just take them at face value. If Loki says the Infinity Stone is useless in the TVA, then it's useless. Kang will have no use for them, and the story will be all the better for it.

I'm not adding a lot to the narrative. And I'm not trying to convince myself of some phantom assumption. I'm taking what the narrative from Loki Episode 1 gave me. The characters said the above things. Loki, in the MCU, is established as an intelligent enough character to know the difference. The Tesseract is useless in the TVA. Otherwise, he would have used it.

Casey says they get them all the time, then follows it by saying "some of the guys use them as paperweights", implying they have no power in this place. They are no better than paperweights. Loki ponders, "Is this[the TVA] the greatest power in the universe?" Later, Loki tells Mobius "Even an Infinity Stone is useless here.The TVA is formidable." It is shown and said indirectly that the Infinity Stones have no power in this place where Kang established the TVA. The future implication of that is Infinity Stones can't be used to defeat Kang in his domain. It also implies, from a storytelling sense, that the MCU is moving on from the Infinity Stones story.

In the MCU, nothing has been said that Stones only work in one’s own universe. They totally work across the Multiverse, just ask Stephen Strange. It’s only said the Stones don’t work in the TVA, which exists outside the Multiverse.

It’s not a flattering word but an ugly word?

Are you saying James Bond is a simp?

re: Episode 8. Also, I'm really getting my Captain Marvel fix with What If? Unexpected and pleasantly surprised as she wasn't in a lot of the marketing.

They should just scrap Bond continuity and make the next movie about Bond's adventures as a kid and call it something like Bond Jr., Agent .007 or something more creative. We can meet his parents, other family members. He could have a dog called K or something. Maybe we see his early penchant for spying on people and sneaking around as he solves some high school conspiracy. We can see his early relationships with girls as in he was always rejected which explains his disregard for the feelings of females later in life. Oh, I know...Bond Begins. Duh.

I don't think the Celestials origin story pages from What If? imply that Oneg's experimentation on apes meant a latent mutant gene was implanted in them. I think it just means these apes would evolve into the humans of today and even evolve(not mutate) into a more advanced human race. I think the pages really were just a re-telling of Jack Kirby's writing who wasn't thinking of the X-Men's origins when he wrote the Eternals. Kirby was a nut for 2001 A Space Odyssey and the debunked 70's bestselling Van Daniken book, Chariots of the Gods, so that's really the inspiration for the Eternals back story. Instead of a black monolith, it was giant robot-like Celestials. The writing of the above origin story pages is a little vague, I admit, and I can see how it could have "evolved" into the Celestials story stated in the Official Marvel Handbook which states the Celestials implanted a dormant mutatable DNA complex in early humans. I'm still trying to pinpoint the exact first mention of "X-gene" in the comics. I'm having trouble finding that but I think it was some time in the early 2000's in a X spinoff title.

There's kind of already been two R-rated X-Men movies. The Wolverine and Logan. And if you count Deadpool, that's three.

Jackie Earle Haley was actually quite suited for the role, even looked a little like the comics version, though I preferred Tim Blake Nelson as the de-facto Rorschach in HBO's Watchmen. I like Tom Holland as Peter Parker and am thankful for him in the role, but it does bug me sometimes that he's a Brit. Between him and Cumberbatch, I think that's enough Brits playing fan-favorite American super-heroes, even though Logan is a Canuck.

re: Daniel Radcliffe as Wolverine. I don't know why he keeps coming up in fan castings here and everywhere else. First, Daniel Radcliffe still looks like Harry Potter, just sometimes with a beard. Can't have Harry Potter running around as the toughest meanest gruffest super-hero of all time. Second, Radcliffe is British. No more British actors playing North American super-heroes. Try getting a Canadian to play Logan. I'm also all for somebody with Native American heritage, even a tiny bit of ancestry, playing the role. Thunderbird and Wolverine kind of played the same character in the early days of the new X-Men which is why they killed off John Proudstar. Anyway, Feige and Co. will know better and not cast the little Wizard from the House of Gryffindor as the little Wolverine in the House of X.

Generally speaking, nobody gives a rat's behind about spoilers to Venom 2 enough to create an entire marketing poster about it.