Disney+'s WandaVision (2020) 6 6

[theCapraAegagrus]

13 hours ago, fmaz said:

Oooh good catch on that rescue line. I forgot about that.

I think I'm pretty strongly on the side that Vision is acting with some sort of sentience... as at least once Wanda had to "rewind" things when he was getting close to figuring things out.  If he was merely a puppet, that would never be the case, right? Nor would he ever try to escape as in that clip (although clips can obviously be misleading).  But I can see how people might think otherwise.

Wanda isn't completely delusional. She's somewhat aware of reality. She throws a tizzy when Ultron is mentioned. If she was completely deluded into thinking that Westview was real, then I would agree that Vision has some sort of 'life'. Otherwise, he's just a puppet.

[Bosco685]

39 minutes ago, Angel of Death said:

Wanda isn't completely delusional. She's somewhat aware of reality. She throws a tizzy when Ultron is mentioned. If she was completely deluded into thinking that Westview was real, then I would agree that Vision has some sort of 'life'. Otherwise, he's just a puppet.

Eastview 

[theCapraAegagrus]

Just now, Bosco685 said:

Eastview 

I guess I am so bored that I can't recall which one is real and which one is fake.

Her fake world is called Westview, though.

[Bosco685]

5 minutes ago, Angel of Death said:

I guess I am so bored that I can't recall which one is real and which one is fake.

Her fake world is called Westview, though.

Her fake world is called 'Eastview' as the town is actually Westview, right?

Edited February 2, 2021 by Bosco685

[Bosco685]

 

[theCapraAegagrus]

3 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

Her fake world is called 'Eastview' as the town is actually Westerview, right?

Westview is her fake reality's name.

[Bosco685]

1 minute ago, Angel of Death said:

Westview is her fake reality's name.

The location is definitely Westview. But the police officers even are living in an alternate reality where they live in Eastview.

So you could say both locations exist. Though of course Wanda and her closer residents call it 'Westview'.

[theCapraAegagrus]

Just now, Bosco685 said:

The location is definitely Westview. But the police officers even are living in an alternate reality where they live in Eastview.

So you could say both locations exist. Though of course Wanda and her closer residents call it 'Westview'.

I'm guessing that they're both real, but Wanda has taken over Westview, and manipulated the locals to forget that it's a real place.

[Bosco685]

20 minutes ago, Angel of Death said:

I'm guessing that they're both real, but Wanda has taken over Westview, and manipulated the locals to forget that it's a real place.

It is nutty as imagine altering the minds of so many people to be living in a place yet they see it as something else and experience something different from reality.

I know. Nowadays, life and fiction mix together. But from a fictional story perspective and how this can spread out worldwide, could a wider experience lead to people going insane from the experience?

[theCapraAegagrus]

1 minute ago, Bosco685 said:

It is nutty as imagine altering the minds of so many people to be living in a place yet they see it as something else and experience something different from reality.

I know. Nowadays, life and fiction mix together. But from a fictional story perspective and how this can spread out worldwide, could a wider experience lead to people going insane from the experience?

Honestly, I'm disappointed that her 2-year relationship with Vision appears to have a more dramatic effect on her psyche than the death of her twin brother.

[fantastic_four]

1 hour ago, comicginger1789 said:

But then why does she see his dead face?

My guess is that Monica pulled her out of her illusion by referencing Ultron killing Pietro, which in turn caused her to recall that Vision is actually dead, so we were seeing her perspective on him in that moment.  The camera angle reinforces this because when you're seeing zombie Vision the camera was placed exactly where Wanda would be in the room at the same low angle she was to him in the moment--and that intentional camera placement is particularly noticeable given that Olsen is 9 inches shorter than Bettany, plus he's standing on a raised section of their living room making him another 6 to 12 inches higher than she is.  The camera is angling up at zombie Vision in the exact same way Wanda would be looking at him.

But that also doesn't rule out that there IS a zombie Vision with a big hole in his head being puppeted around by Wanda, and in that moment it dropped the illusion and we were seeing Vision as he currently is.  I just doubt that's what's happening for two reasons--mainly that it exaggerates her power that she can animate him fully and convincingly even when she's not near him and can't see him when in the past they've explicitly demonstrated that she can't affect what she can't see unless she changes the nature of reality into a permanent, real thing, but two we SHOULD have seen him with the hole before now, not just in the one moment where Monica pulled Wanda out of her dream and reminded her of the real outside world.

[Bosco685]

30 minutes ago, Angel of Death said:

Honestly, I'm disappointed that her 2-year relationship with Vision appears to have a more dramatic effect on her psyche than the death of her twin brother.

From rumors it appears as if that portion of her life is going to come up. Time will tell. 

[fantastic_four]

1 hour ago, Bosco685 said:

The location is definitely Westview. But the police officers even are living in an alternate reality where they live in Eastview.

I interpreted that the opposite way--there's a town called Eastview that may or may not be where Westview is, so Wanda created Westview and the cops were there to tell us what reality is supposed to be like before Wanda arrived.  We've seen the Westview sign in the broadcasted shows, so we know it as Westview from her perspective.  And that the name is an allusion to Wanda's view of American life garnered from watching American television shows being broadcast in Sokovia--what we're seeing is Wanda's idealized "view" of the "West."

Why would she manipulate the locals into thinking Westview doesn't exist?  If they think that, then when they see the town they'd be puzzled and MORE likely to investigate.  I would have thought more that if she could manipulate the surrounding population it would be into thinking Westview has ALWAYS existed, and then these cops would have had no reason to call the FBI.

Edited February 2, 2021 by fantastic_four

[1Cool]

We finally got caught up last night and episode 4 was much better - not sure it made up for how terrible 1 - 3 were but I'll keep watching to see where it goes.

[fantastic_four]

12 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

We finally got caught up last night and episode 4 was much better - not sure it made up for how terrible 1 - 3 were but I'll keep watching to see where it goes.

I keep hearing episode 5 is better than 4 and fills in far more info than 4 did.  We'll see.

[fantastic_four]

What I haven't heard is where any of these leaks or ideas about the quality of future episodes are coming from.  Is Disney releasing future episodes to reviewers?  I know they released the first three to reviewers before the first came out, but I haven't heard specifics beyond that.

[Number 6]

18 hours ago, @therealsilvermane said:

Yeah, but I liked how our heroes tackled the "science" from a fresh perspective, using the Quantum Realm as opposed to traveling really fast or using a time machine. Science-fiction science aside, time travel stories have historically been some of the best science fiction stories. I believe the two best Star Trek stories happen to be time travel stories, The City on the Edge of Forever and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Back to the Future is an all-time sci-fi classic. And Die Hard also still ranks among the best.

The only thing that piqued my interest about the Quantum Realm explanation is the possibility of Marvel Micronauts in the MCU.  But since we know that’s not going to happen then the Quantum Realm is, in my opinion, just the MCU’s version of time-travel baffle-gab, no more interesting or better than any other “explanation” given in any other time-travel story. 
 

Yes, there have been some good time-travel science fiction stories. I like the ones you mentioned. But personally, I don’t include Endgame as one of them for a reason:

With Star Trek: City on the Edge of Forever,  Star Trek IV, and Back to the Future the audience knows going in that time-travel is going to be the plot device to get the characters to where the story is.  I think it could argued that time-travel isn’t the real story nor the solution, it just creates the circumstances for the real story, but regardless, audiences know what they’re getting into at the outset and can decide whether they want to go down the time-travel rabbit-hole. 
 

Conversely, one of the things the MCU has been lauded for is how all the different films are interconnected to make one larger story...a story that culminates in Infinity War/Endgame.  So it’s like all those films are one story narrative with the last two Avengers movies as the conclusion. 
 

So, from my perspective, the writers trotting out time-travel in Endgame is the equivalent of watching a regular 2 hour movie only to have the climactic resolution to the story be time-travel, sprung in the last 20 minutes of the film. That’s weak-sauce. 
 

At the end of the Infinity War they had my attention. I knew most, if not all, the characters who were snapped would come back, but I was genuinely interested in how they were going to do it. But when it was revealed that they were going to do it through time-travel...that this is what a dozen Marvel movies had been building to?  Sorry, but I just found it to be a let-down. 

[fantastic_four]

38 minutes ago, Number 6 said:

At the end of the Infinity War they had my attention. I knew most, if not all, the characters who were snapped would come back, but I was genuinely interested in how they were going to do it. But when it was revealed that they were going to do it through time-travel...that this is what a dozen Marvel movies had been building to?  Sorry, but I just found it to be a let-down. 

Exactly how I feel.

When I saw Back to the Future, City on the Edge of Forever, or Star Trek IV I didn't realize yet how incredibly impossible it would be to not completely muck up the future if you could ever travel to the past, so I didn't have much issue with them.  It wasn't until I read Ray Bradbury's short story "A Sound of Thunder" that it occurred to me just how impossible it is to NOT screw up the future with just the slightest of changes to the environment.  In that story someone steps on a butterfly in the past and completely changes the future into being unrecognizable when they return.  I don't think that's entirely where "the butterfly effect" name comes from in chaos theory, but I've often wondered if that story influenced whoever came up with the idea of a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the Earth causing a hurricane on the other side which in turn led to the butterfly effect as a widely-known idea.

So after reading Bradbury's story and studying chaos theory a bit I can't enjoy time travel stories to the past anymore.  I can hypothesize some I WOULD enjoy, but any where they go back to make some positive change on the present or future without changing ANYTHING else about those times are just ludicrous--and that's the angle taken by Back to the Future, City on the Edge of Forever, Star Trek IV, and now Endgame.  Among those stories City on the Edge of Forever came the closest to demonstrating how easy it is to screw with the past--a strength I credit to Harlan Ellison working on that screenplay--but I vehemently disagree that just killing Edith Keeler in a different way would repair the timestream and restore it back to the same universe they left.  There are an INFINITE number of ways her dying at a different time could have its own dramatic changes on the future.

Edited February 2, 2021 by fantastic_four

[HighVoltage]

15 minutes ago, fantastic_four said:

Exactly how I feel.

When I saw Back to the Future, City on the Edge of Forever, or Star Trek IV I didn't realize yet how incredibly impossible it would be to not completely muck up the future if you could ever travel to the past, so I didn't have much issue with them.  It wasn't until I read Ray Bradbury's short story "A Sound of Thunder" that it occurred to me just how impossible it is to NOT screw up the future with just the slightest of changes to the environment.  In that story someone steps on a butterfly in the past and completely changes the future into being unrecognizable when they return.  I don't think that's entirely where "the butterfly effect" name comes from in chaos theory, but I've often wondered if that story influenced whoever came up with the idea of a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the Earth causing a hurricane on the other side which in turn led to the butterfly effect as a widely-known idea.

So after reading Bradbury's story and studying chaos theory a bit I can't enjoy time travel stories to the past anymore.  I can hypothesize some I WOULD enjoy, but any where they go back to make some positive change on the present or future without changing ANYTHING else about those times are just ludicrous--and that's the angle taken by Back to the Future, City on the Edge of Forever, Star Trek IV, and now Endgame.  Among those stories City on the Edge of Forever came the closest to demonstrating how easy it is to screw with the past--a strength I credit to Harlan Ellison working on that screenplay--but I vehemently disagree that just killing Edith Keeler in a different way would repair the timestream and restore it back to the same universe they left.  There are an INFINITE number of ways her dying at a different time could have its own dramatic changes on the future.

"The term "butterfly effect" was coined by meteorologist Edward Lorenz, who discovered in the 1960's that tiny, butterfly—scale changes to the starting point of his computer weather models resulted in anything from sunny skies to violent storms—with no way to predict in advance what the outcome might be."

 

Thanks for mentioning Bradbury - he was such a good writer!

And mentioning Ellison, leads me to Terminator 1 & 2. More time travel. I enjoyed both quite a bit.

[fantastic_four]

9 minutes ago, HighVoltage said:

"The term "butterfly effect" was coined by meteorologist Edward Lorenz, who discovered in the 1960's that tiny, butterfly—scale changes to the starting point of his computer weather models resulted in anything from sunny skies to violent storms—with no way to predict in advance what the outcome might be."

Yep, but what I don't know is whether or not Lorenz had read "A Sound of Thunder" himself to inspire him to cite a butterfly flapping its wings as his example of chaotic minor changes having unexpectedly large effects elsewhere in complex systems.  The Bradbury story was published in 1952, so it's possible Lorenz read the Bradbury story.  I've Googled in the past to find confirmation or denial of that possibility but never found anything.

9 minutes ago, HighVoltage said:

And mentioning Ellison, leads me to Terminator 1 & 2. More time travel. I enjoyed both quite a bit.

I enjoyed those too when I saw them, but I hadn't read the Bradbury story or looked at chaos theory at the time.  Watching the Terminator films after that I had to choose to just ignore the TONS of changes to the past the Terminators were making that would inevitably have DRAMATIC changes on the future and defeat their entire purpose for going back in the first place.

I first learned of chaos theory when most people probably did--when Jeff Goldblum mentioned it in Jurassic Park in 1993.

Edited February 2, 2021 by fantastic_four