@therealsilvermane

So you think character progression of Bruce Banner/Hulk would be the Hulk getting dumber and more savage, as opposed to Banner actually finding a cure for the monster within?

Sarcasm noted. I guess you never saw Wakanda Forever. The entire starting point of the movie’s plot is how the “enlightened nations” are trying to get their greedy hands on Vibranium for obviously nefarious purposes, and it appears to be the Countess DeFontaine’s sole purpose in life and all she dreams about. The spirit of Cecil Rhodes is alive and well in the MCU. America’s strength does lie in its diversity. Wakanda’s strength, on the other hand, lies with the Black Panther and the nation’s semi-exclusive hold on vibranium. In the fictional world of the MCU, and past the colonization excuse, Wakanda continues to remain isolated for good reason. If V. DeFontaine is in charge, I wouldn’t be surprised if vibranium is the driving plot point of the Thunderbolts movie. Maybe it’s discovered somewhere else besides Wakanda and Talokan, such as the Savage Land where Antarctic Vibranium is located according to the comics.

Well let’s take a few steps back in discussing Atlantis and Talocan. Stan Lee’s 1962 Marvel Comics revolution was creating a superhero world based in reality, where the heroes had real lives and real world problems. Part of that was making the heroes live in the real city of New York. While Doom’s Latveria and T’Challa’s Wakanda were fictional, they were still based on the real Earth areas of Eastern Europe and Africa. The “real” Atlantis is just Greek mythology’s version of Sodom and Gomorrah, a city sunk by the gods for its immorality. That’s it. It’s not a place of mermaids neither is it Neptune’s kingdom. In the past 150 years, there have been dozens and dozens of different versions of the lost city of Atlantis in popular fiction. There are no rules to Atlantis and authors can do whatever they want with it. It’s the height of fantasy. What made Namor and his underwater kingdom unique in Marvel is it was a place threatened by the doings of the surface world and he was a super-powered mutant king ready to defend it. Atlantis was just a name. Ryan Coogler stuck to that character essence in Wakanda Forever. Switching Namor’s kingdom to the Aztec mythology place Talocan changed absolutely nothing in that regard. At the same time, it made Namor more complex by tying his origins to the real history of Spanish colonialism. It made Namor more relatable to Wakanda. It freed the character from the pulp fiction cliche of Atlantis. And yes, it increased Marvel Studios’ global market reach by putting part of the MCU in Mexico.

Skin color exists, it’s part of our real world, and it can be important to a story, especially if history or current events are involved. You can’t cast Orlando Bloom in the lead in a movie about Rodney King because King’s skin color and ethnicity are important to his story. The same with T’Challa, his African heritage as leader of a country cut off from European colonialism is important to the story, so T’Challa has to be black. Therefore you can’t cast Orlando Bloom as T’Challa. MJ on the other hand has no specific ethnic background which makes her special. The only thing that makes her character special is her beauty, personality, and courage. MJ could be portrayed by any actor, black white or brown. Her skin color isn’t important because it’s not important to MJ’s story.

Disney was the #1 movie company in the world in 2022 at 4.9 billion, with Avatar its biggest film at 2.3 billion. Universal was a distant 2nd at 3.9 billion with Jurassic World Dominion its biggest film at 1 billion. Paramount was a more distant 3rd at 2 billion with Top Gun Maverick its biggest film at 1.5 billion. Disney has been the #1 movie company in the world for seven consecutive years.

Dude, we saw the version you speak of in Ang Lee’s Hulk movie, Incredible Hulk, The Avengers, Avengers Age of Ultron, Thor Ragnarok, and for a few minutes in Avengers Infinity War. And you saw him actually fight and throw things as Smart Hulk in the She-Hulk show. You saw him pose for photos and serve tacos and have an arm in a sling in one movie and one movie only, Endgame.

Smart Hulk is 100% true to the character’s comic book story.

Ha ha funny, except FOTG confirms the name is Shazam. It’s a losing battle for DC to try to hold on to the Marvel name by any degree. Marvel Comics owns it. It’s confusing to fans, especially newer ones, to try to switch back and forth. If the branding is Shazam, if it says Shazam on the comic cover or movie poster, it’s a better business and creative decision to wholly embrace that name for the character. Polling says comic book culture audiences like their content simple.

The hero is officially Shazam. Which begs the question, will Mary Marvel have to change her name to SHE-Zam?

Victoria Alonso is also a credited producer on Avengers Endgame, Infinity War, Black Panther, Thor Ragnarok, Captain America Winter Soldier, Iron Man, and every other Marvel Studios project.

Spoiler Alert!! Saw a matinee showing of Fury of the Goddesses. Ive been so desperate to hear “Captain Marvel” uttered in a movie theater I decided to go see the off brand version today. Interesting who says it, but munch your popcorn too loud and you’ll miss it. If anyone is curious, our main hero’s official name is confirmed to be Shazam. I’ll say in this movie, the Billy Batson Shazam finally gets to shine, since he couldn’t really in the first movie because his surprise Shazam Family steals his thunder. In this movie they can’t, so Billy gets to show us what he can do. FOTG is definitely a sequel to the first, similar in tone and theme, which was a slight problem for me as the sequel again was this weird awkward mix of cute family dynamics and extreme horror. Even though the movie is about a family with young kids, I’m not sure this movie is for families with young kids. The story was run of the mill, spotlighting Freddy Freeman over any of the other kids. I think the movie could’ve taken a lesson from a good kids ensemble movie like Goonies and given our hero kids something to fight for collectively as a family, like the house or something. As it is, the movie’s main stories are Freddy’s awkward high school romance and the superhero mission, both which were a little uninteresting to me. The movie does pick up in the end when Billy’s Shazam takes over, which is who we paid to see, so whatever. It was a little hard for me to get invested with the rest of the Shazam Family because even as heroes they acted so juvenile, Mary excepted. There are definite laughs in the movie, like Helen Mirren’s letter reading. The Shazam Family goofiness gets a little redundant, though. I mean, these actors aren’t Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Mark Ruffalo, and Taika Waititi. Just get with the story. I can’t think of any plot holes that bothered me, though there were a few story elements that come out of nowhere and are unexplained, like a collapsing Philadelphia bridge or Pedro’s magical utensil. In the end, I thought the movie was okay in a “it is what it is” kind of way. Sometimes I did have a thought that Jack Dylan Grazer might’ve made a better Billy Batson than Asher Angel, as Grazer just looks and acts more like an underdog.

All you need do is look at the views numbers of these YouTube videos to understand why they do it. Views means money for the YouTuber, and riling up the mob is one sure way to get those views.

The Jason Aaron run on Thor is one of the best eras of Thor ever, up there with Lee-Kirby and Walt Simonson’s. As far as Love and Thunder goes, any perceived weaknesses of the movie were not the fault of Thor’s circa 2015 comics stories. Maybe movie Gorr should’ve been handled differently.

Nice to post it in this thread as if this is another battle in an imagined war of the superhero sexes. If folks think this means the MCU goes back to being a sausage party, well Kevin Feige is probably as much of a champion of women superheroes as Alonso is. Maybe it just has more to do with Disney and Marvel’s own statements about quality over quantity and the public issue that VFX studios have had with Marvel Studios lately. And it so happens that Victoria Alonso is the head of Marvel’s VFX. Yeah it’s a shock but it’s not really a shock. Here’s a story clipping about the VFX studios issue with Alonso that may or may not be legit:

And unfortunately, a zero sum game is exactly how many who cry “M-SHE-U” see it, when it really isn’t. This all or nothing, us or them mentality has reared its ugly head through history, when those who are part of a status quo feel threatened by change. Yes, Marvel Studios has said their plan was to make the MCU 50/50 guy/girl superheroes, and in elevating women heroes in Phase Four, that’s been obvious. But has it been at the cost of tearing down its men heroes? I don’t think it has. I don’t see this Phase Four man emasculation thing y’all are talking about. Neither Bucky nor Sam Wilson were torn down in FWS. Sam Wilson became Captain America for chrissakes. Clint Barton isn’t torn down in the Hawkeye show, either. In fact, Hawkeye is probably the best we’ve ever seen of Clint Barton. He was actually elevated in the show to the point that I’m a fan of the character now. I never cared two bits about Clint Barton before. Loki has been a humorous villain/anti-hero ever since Hulk took him out by beating him like a rag doll in The Avengers. At least in Loki he gets a girlfriend and finally gets to express romantic love. How is that emasculation? Is getting a girlfriend or wife your idea of emasculation? In She -Hulk, Bruce is just continuing the Smart Hulk character we were introduced to in Endgame. Except this time, we get to see him actually do some fighting. And we learn he got busy on Sakaar and had a son! How is that emasculation? And before you say he was relegated to a supporting character, I’ll remind you that this was She-Hulk’s show. And the Thor of Love and Thunder is a progression of the character who went through devastating loss after loss from Dark World through Infinity War and who shut down physically and mentally in Endgame. Taika described it as Thor going through a mid-life crisis. Chris Hemsworth described it as Thor a bit out of his mind since Endgame. But the character was still a bada*s in L&T. He takes out an army of bird aliens. He takes down warriors of Olympus and Zeus himself. He takes down Gorr with Jane Foster’s help. Thor even powers up to Odin levels when he endows the Asgardian children with the power of Thor. And he also becomes more Odin-like when he adopts Gorr’s daughter, just as Odin adopted Loki. At the same time, we were actually shown the relationship of Thor and Jane rather than hearing about it. In L&T, we got to see a more complex superhero as we witnessed Thor in mid-life crisis transition from someone who acted like a college kid into an actual adult. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe y’all would rather see Thor act like a college kid. Maybe James Cameron has something to say about that matter. Yes, Marvel did elevate its women heroes in Phase Four, but that doesn’t mean they tore down their men heroes, too. It is not a zero sum game as many are trying to label it as.

3. Picking on She-Hulk is kind of low hanging fruit given that She-Hulk with its 4th wall breaking format picked on trolling YouTube sites just like nerdrotic. Talk about life imitating art imitating life. Of course, this video itself is low hanging fruit. Anyway, yet again this video nitpicks things that really don’t have much to do with diversity equity and inclusion besides its troll bashing. And some nitpicks are just plain wrong. Jennifer Walters is not perfect by any means. In fact she’s a lonely work obsessed nerd. As She-Hulk, she may look perfect, but she’s far from the perfect superhero even though she thinks she has nothing to learn. She doesn’t even want to be a superhero, suffering from the great power great responsibility issue that other would-be heroes deal with. Clearly she has things to learn and Matt Murdock even kind of shows her the way, how to balance her career and being a superhero And can She-Hulk be considered a failure? It got strong viewership ratings and good reviews. Yes it pissed off some fans, but mission accomplished. Granted, in the future, I think the MCU should no longer pick on certain parts of the fan base like that.

4. Loki is one of the highest critically rated MCU Disney+ shows and it’s most watched. The show had lots of winning moments: Loki and Moebius’s relationship, the intro of the TVA, the Loki-Sylvie romance, Loki’s variants like Classic Loki and Alligator Loki, the introduction of Kang’s variants, to name some highlights. By most accounts, Loki was a huge success. Yet this nerdrotic YouTube video is trying to tell us it’s a “M-SHE-U” failure? What?

5. I didn’t like Black Widow, but it wasn’t bad because of its womanness, as this video tries to say. Its plot holes and poor story development undermined the movie’s tension, to me. Really the movie was doomed for me from the start. Why would Russia, who is trying to groom and brainwash two little girls for its Black Widow program, allow those two little girls to live for years in the warm comfort and freedom of an “American” family? Even though young Natasha knows it’s fake, Yelena later says that for her it was real. Makes no sense. And the spy family is running from SHIELD who would have saved the two little girls, undermining real story tension there. Why would Russia put a maximum security prison in an area prone to avalanches? The movie wants us to believe that Natasha is terrified of Taskmaster towards the end of the movie, but gives us no real reason to believe that she would be scared of Taskmaster from prior interactions in the movie. Why is Red Guardian such a lummox in the movie when he seemed so intelligent in the America flashback? Why undermine Melina’s likability by having her choke out her pet pig? Am I supposed to really believe that Fury or Natasha wouldn’t have heard about women assassins running around Europe dressed like Black Widows or of a crazy floating city in the sky? I didn’t believe that for a second. These story development issues have nothing to do with diversity equity or inclusion but the nerdrotic YouTubers still cry “M-SHE-U!”

Although Maria tells Carol she was strong and a best friend before her accident, nobody says Carol is perfect. If you’d actually watch the movie and not automatically see the character as a Mary Sue, you’d see that. Also, even though Stark, Stephen Strange, and Thor were a**holes, not every hero has to start off as such. Carol just needs to remember that she’s human, not a Kree weapon. Carol absolutely goes on a hero’s journey in the classic sense. She starts in her normal Kree world with her Kree outlook on life and a Kree mentor.. She crosses the threshold of a strange new world when she is kidnapped by the Skrulls and crashes on Earth. She meets a guide through this new world with Nick Fury. As this is also a voyage of her memory, she picks up pieces of her past through her journey and also picks up a new mentor in Talos. Armed with her newfound knowledge of her past and that her Kree outlook was wrong, she returns to the cave or world she left behind to face the big Kree villain and reclaim her humanity and memories, visually represented by her powering up, which is also the ultimate goal of every MCU film, powering up. With a new mastery of her powers, the hero rejects the new world to further confront her former masters with her new powers. Captain Marvel absolutely follows a classic hero’s journey.

The Supreme Intelligence and Yonn-Rogg were actively working to keep Carol brainwashed through the movie to keep her under their control. Vers actually did display emotions through the movie. She expressed humor, anger, sadness etc. The movie itself wasn’t a highly dramatic movie by design, as it was sandwiched between the two biggest dramatic stories of the MCU.

Look y’all, if you have any questions about the meanings in Capitan Marvel, just ask me. My DM is open. A big story element of Captain Marvel is memory. That’s appropriate because memory (or loss of) defined a lot of the comic book Carol Danvers complicated story. The story of the Captain Marvel movie on the surface is an alien warrior woman Vers searching for Skrulls on Earth. But beneath that, the warrior woman is inadvertently searching for her past and her memories, which she lost six years ago. The two searches are connected. So during the warrior woman’s big confrontation with the Supreme Intelligence towards the end of the movie, Vers’ memories come rushing back, helped by meeting the people of her past earlier, like Maria and Monica. So when we see the different versions of the warrior woman standing up during her showdown with the SI, that represents Vers reclaiming her memories and who she really is, culminating in her line “My name is Carol.” Get it?

Riri Williams and Cassie Lang were still just supporting characters of a larger ensemble. Although Cassie had a small hero arc (learning how to be a better fighter), they didn’t really need strong character arcs. They were there to help serve the main character’s mission. Wakanda Forever was still Shuri and Namor’s movie, and Quantumania was Scott Lang and Kang’s movie. If you want a strong character arc for Riri, I suppose she’ll get one in the Ironheart series, coming soon to Disney+.

According to Cinemascore, Quantumania did better than Cocaine Bear (B-) and the same as M3GAN (B), both generally considered fun movies and minor hits. QM's Cinemascore was almost as good as Black Adam's B+, which I believe a lot of forum members here said was also fun. I just did an unofficial head count of CGC forum reaction posts over in the Quantumania thread. These included people the poster said saw the movie with them and their reactions, and my math might be off by 1 or 2. 11 people did not like it. 4 people were "meh" about it. 29 people liked it or at least had a good time with it. That's a majority of people here (with family and friends) who viewed the movie as fun. That's pretty much been what I've seen on social media, Facebook groups, etc. The RT audience score is at 83%. The IMDB user rating is at 6.5/10. More of the audience who saw the movie liked it rather than disliked it.

Well that was Marvel’s lampoon name for itself 50 years ago in Not Brand Echh! Ya should finish the job and call Carol Danvers “Clairol Dandruff.”

KC Walsh merely confirmed that his Quantumania plot scoop was accurate (because he’s a reliable scooper), and only said the movie SOUNDS fun. Sounds like Regular Cinema Guy doesn’t get syntax. But ya know Quantumania was fun. Just because a bunch of critics didn’t like it and didn’t bring in the usual big movie crowd doesn’t mean a movie wasn’t fun. The movie still had generally positive audience reactions. Heck, do a head count over in the Quantumania thread and I bet the amount of posters who enjoyed the movie will be a strong majority. According to KC Walsh, the movie sounded fun, and it was fun.