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Axelrod
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Posts posted by Axelrod
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The Twitter hype is strong with this one.
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I am not sure what casting they could have announced that would have gotten me excited just by virtue of the cast, but, it definitely wasn't this.
I tend to not get excited just from knowing some actor is in a movie. Experience says that means very little in terms of quality.
There may have been times, just can't remember.
Doesn't mean they can't make a great movie. Just have to focus on the story.
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On 2/10/2024 at 12:32 PM, Dr. Balls said:
Character development over messaging. It's really a simple fix, but the wrong people are in charge now.
Ironically enough, Marvels is the newest movie with the least "messaging" in it in the MCU. There is very little (if any, I'm trying to recall) browbeating, lecturing or virtue signaling in it. The downside is that there is very little story and character development in it. IMHO Marvels actually suffers from not having any character development or messaging in it. It's just kind of a mishmash of barely-connected ideas and characters.
But, that's where I prefer it over shows like Quantumania or FAWS, because those had such shoe-horned messaging in them, it was a real turn off.
I made this point in the now defunct thread.
SpoilerWell, I would wager I see more movies than any of you people here. At least, in the theater.
I pretty much see everything. Even lousy movies that I am pretty sure are going to be lousy. Because I enjoy the experience and I still have fun.
This movie was - not especially surprisingly to me - a hot mess. The story/plot, the logic, the character interactions, the emotional beats/payoff it was aiming for. Really not well thought out. It was much like the last Ant Man movie in this regard.
It was also completely inoffensive.
Completely devoid of any "messaging" or attempts to do anything other than entertain. And I can see why some (perhaps less critically inclined) would be entertained.
That is really all there is to see here.
Repost of my more specific likes/dislikes:
SpoilerHere's some stuff I didn't like about this movie:
The "villain" of this film might have been the worst Marvel villain I've seen yet. I cannot, as of this moment, even remember her name, so I will refer to her as "Bad Teeth Lady." Bad Teeth Lady also has one of the dumbest villain plans yet in the Marvel Universe. Her planet is in bad shape (but I guess people are still living there). So she is going to rejuvenate her planet by stealing the atmosphere from one planet (didn't this literally happen in Spaceballs?), the water from another planet, and the sun's energy from a third. This is a cartoon looney toons level ridiculous scheme for a serious film (I am using the term "serious" loosely, but still). She can apparently do this because she found a magic armband and it can open dimensional portholes in space, and, I guess if you open the porthole in just the right spot, the specific thing you are trying to suck up gets sucked up? It also gives her super strength and stuff. I think.
Also, she blames Captain Marvel personally for the misfortunes of her planet, because Captain Marvel destroyed the supreme Kree AI leader, after which the Kree empire apparently descended into civil war, and it was during the civil war that her planet got messed up (i.e. by other Kree), so she targets planets that Captain Marvel personally cares about. At least sort of. How she knows these things? Who cares.
Then there's the central conceit of the film. The plot device everything gets built around. Which is that - completely coincidentally and completely by accident - Captain Marvel, and Monica Rambeau and Ms. Marvel all happen to be either (a) using their powers, or (b) touching a dimensional porthole, at the exact same moment, at which point they get "quantum entangled." And now, whenever they use their powers, they physically swap places with one of the other ones across the universe. Except for the times they don't. It's not especially consistent. Putting aside the ludicrousness of that, it's mostly played for laughs. There aren't any significant ramifications from this incident. There's a montage of them basically learning how to live with it, and then it just goes away at the end when they "win." It's really bad writing.
And other than that, the whole movie is just silly. Like, really silly. Planet of singing people and baby Flerkins eating everyone (temporarily) levels of silly. I understand this was intentional, and I don't mind some humor and silliness in my Marvel films, but this one went way over the deep end, even more so than Thor: Love and Thunder, which was the previous champion of silliness.
If there's retooling to be done in the Marvel Universe, I suspect it's going to be working on the tone of their films, and trying to get back to something resembling a normal balance of humor/seriousness. Because they really lost the thread here.
This is what worked for me:
SpoilerUmm, some of the silliness made me smile? Not all the humor fell completely flat? I liked Ms. Marvel. Out of all of them, she seemed like she was having the most fun.
It was not aggressively disagreeable. Just mostly silly and dumb. A light soufflé, when I prefer my Marvel a little meatier. But that's where other people can have reasonable disagreement about what they like/enjoy.
I thought the call out to the Avengers/Young Avengers at the end was cute.
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I am doing this tomorrow!
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I am almost nostalgic for this movie after some of the more recent superhero offerings I've seen.
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"Trying to be too cute for it's own good" would be my one sentence review.
The lesson here may be that your audience will only follow you so far down the rabbit hole. Feels like the (semi?) success of the Kingsman films may have gone to Vaughn's head just a little.
I still like the way he shoots his actions scenes, and there's some fun stuff here, but I am also about 98% sure the plot of this movie doesn't make any sense at all. I haven't actually tried to work my way back through it yet, but it suggests a kind of disrespect for one's audience. i.e. "they won't care if it doesn't make any sense as long as we make it big and flashy enough. They'll just go with it...."
- ADAMANTIUM and aardvark88
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We are nothing if not consistent. 5 R1; 6 R2; 5 R3.
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On 2/5/2024 at 9:06 PM, ADAMANTIUM said:
Was expecting a second pic. with the caption "this is what it would look like today", and it's just him standing in front of a green screen.
I guess that's implied.
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Slightly infamous?
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That writing in and of itself wouldn't prevent an 8.5 grade, I don't think. I don't think you have to worry about being accused of fraud if you sell it either, given it's right there on the front cover. Presumably, any buyer will see it. You can always point it out to them as well if you're really concerned.
- crazyhips and RockMyAmadeus
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On 2/2/2024 at 8:08 PM, Stefan_W said:
10 for me this round. I did ok with some but I took a complete beating on the first book. The piece out of the bottom right plus other issues made it look far worse to my eyes than a 6.0.
With 15 total after 2 rounds I am out of contention, but I am still looking to have a solid bounce back round some time soon.
First book was a 4. Maybe you did better than you thought!
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Almost a good round, except for a serious overgrade of the Mopsy. 3 pts on that one alone.
As it is, 3 on the other 4 books means we avoid complete disaster and a total of 6.
- Morganmi, Point Five and ADAMANTIUM
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On 2/1/2024 at 6:27 PM, bc said:
There have been pictures of stacks of books on multiple mobile shelving posted before.
-bc
Seems like a security issue. Have they not heard of chain of custody? How do they track who had hands on a missing book if they just get placed on open access shelves?
Yeah, yeah, probably brought up a million times before.
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On 2/1/2024 at 4:44 PM, BlowUpTheMoon said:
To date, Mr. Terrazas has admitted to stealing twenty-three customer-submitted comic books from CGC’s facilities. Id. ¶ 12. As part of his scheme, Mr. Terrazas would take these customer-submitted comic books from a shelf at CGC’s facilities, place them on his desk, and discard the books’ CGC-graded wrapping and barcodes. Id. Mr. Terrazas would then submit for grading each of the stolen comic books and then publicly advertise, consign, or sell the comic books on eBay or at trade shows. Id. In total, Mr. Terrazas received at least $26,895 in aggregate revenue from these fraudulent transactions
Well there's your problem....
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On 1/29/2024 at 8:07 PM, JollyComics said:
Five points with one bullseye.
Ditto
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Well, nothing I've seen since the initial previews has changed my opinion that this movie is going to bomb quite hard. If you thought Morbius and Birds of Prey did poorly, just hold onto your hats.
And I will be there for it!
(possibly I'm a bit starved for movies at the present time....)
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I mean, we all know what the terms are getting at.
"Cameo" meaning a very brief appearance where, yes, the character "appears" but doesn't do much, vs. a more "meaningful" extended appearance.
Which one is/should be more valuable is kind of a matter of opinion. In comics the "market" decides. Stupidly, in some instances, but what can you do? The market can't really be logically reasoned with.
The above is a "cameo" in the standard comic book use of the term, I think.
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Sony's MADAME WEB Spidey spin-off (TBD)
in The Movie Forum
Posted
Man, it's stuff like this that just makes you go, hmmmmmmm.
Like, I have to assume these writers are NOT coming up with the story for these movies. That's got to be some executive/director saying "this is what I want" and then they just go hire some dudes to "write" it. Which probably involves putting it in proper screenplay format and not a lot else. There's no way these people would keep getting hired based on their brilliant ideas or the cleverness of their dialogue, or, basically anything creative they might have to do. They are (probably cheap) hired guns. Maybe they work fast too.