Captain Tightshirt and the Sisterhood of the Intergalactic Traveling Pants 2 2

[Dr. Balls]

I'm going to tag @CGC Mike to make sure I can even start this post, since the last one that I asked to be re-opened to talk about the Marvels movie got hijacked again by all sorts of female talk. So, Mike, if you don't want to deal with it - I understand. I gave the title of this post a different name so maybe it would be disguised as something else.

However, I would like to talk about the Marvels movie, if that's ok. I figure it will probably earn me my fair share of ire since I actually found it halfway entertaining (much moreso than Quantumania).

If people don't already know, it's now streaming on Disney+ - and I wasn't real big on spending money on it, so I'm sure there's lots more that feel that way.

I can totally see why people had a dislike for it. It deviates from the MCU way of storytelling for sure. But, I didn't mind the odd, weird quirkiness of it. I would have loved a Captain Marvel movie that was all about Carol Danvers - that's what I wished we would have gotten. But we got this.

My takeaways:

Kamala Khan, not nearly as annoying as I thought she'd be. Her dialogue was actually quite believable for a 13 year old. It's not nearly as hamfisted as Cassie's dialogue in Quantumania - her presence flows much easier. I'd like to reiterate: "not nearly" as annoying is not the same as "not annoying".

It's too bad they did not bring back Monica Rambeaux's character for more of the movie. She was pretty cool in Captain Marvel, and there wasn't much connection with her daughter stepping in for her presence in the film.

The dance scene on the alien planet: absolutely bizarre. 99% of people probably hated it, I thought it was unique and different. I won't lie, I was scrolling through my phone for most of it, but I'll give props for doing something weird in space. Because space is going to have some weird alien cultures in it.

Generic villain, but that's par for the course for the MCU. Between Zemo and Thanos, MCU blew their wad on those two and haven't recharged very well in the villain department.

The basic premise of all the problems being caused by Captain Marvel's actions should have been given more screen time. What she did was pretty hugely important, and it was relegated to like a 45 second flashback. That was lame. They really needed to explore those actions and give Carol Danvers some screen time to sell the repercussions of it.

Captain Marvel in a tight wifebeater shirt? 10/10

The very last scene of the movie and the end credit scene: kinda awesome IMHO. The way the MCU is going, it probably won't mean anything or never get followed up on, but still kinda cool.

[CGC Mike]

We can give this one more try.  

[grendel013]

[Dr. Balls]

On 2/9/2024 at 6:18 PM, CGC Mike said:

We can give this one more try.  

Thanks, Mike!

[Azkaban]

I'll give you a thumbs up for a great thread title 

[Axelrod]

Something something ...ESG! 

Something something...Social justice!

Something something...Sexism!

 

 

 

Kidding!

[s-man]

I gave my opinion in the watercolor (0/10 - could not finish).  I earnestly hope Disney goes back to the best MCU movies and figures out what made them great because I would love to see Secret Wars done well.

[Chip Cataldo]

On 2/10/2024 at 6:42 AM, s-man said:

I gave my opinion in the watercolor (0/10 - could not finish).  I earnestly hope Disney goes back to the best MCU movies and figures out what made them great because I would love to see Secret Wars done well.

Which Secret Wars would you like to see? I'm hoping for the 2015 one, as difficult as that would be for them. It's just SOOOOOOOO damn good.

[Dr. Balls]

On 2/10/2024 at 4:42 AM, s-man said:

I earnestly hope Disney goes back to the best MCU movies and figures out what made them great

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.

[Axelrod]

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.

Spoiler

Well, 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:

Spoiler

Here'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:

Spoiler

Umm, 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.

Edited February 10 by Axelrod

[s-man]

On 2/10/2024 at 12:16 PM, Chip Cataldo said:

Which Secret Wars would you like to see? I'm hoping for the 2015 one, as difficult as that would be for them. It's just SOOOOOOOO damn good.

I grew up with the 1984 one but I would take either, if done right.

[Dr. Balls]

On 2/10/2024 at 11:00 AM, Axelrod said:

I made this point in the now defunct thread.

  Hide contents

Well, 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:

  Hide contents

Here'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:

  Hide contents

Umm, 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.

I believe I agree with 99.999% of everything you wrote. Not only agree, but it's almost the exact same observations - I really hope that Marvel is picking up things like this and gets inspired to revisit the well and bring back what really worked for them.

And yeah, I came away from that movie not really hating it, but practically nothing about it I liked or took away in a positive sense.

[Bosco685]

On 2/11/2024 at 4:19 PM, Dr. Balls said:

And yeah, I came away from that movie not really hating it, but practically nothing about it I liked or took away in a positive sense.

If anything you hope it sent the shockwaves needed to rethink the future

[skypinkblu]

I don't want anyone to bash the Daredevil movie again, or they will be forced to sit through this mess...and this is from someone who has pretty much found every comic book movie, at least "entertaining".

I finally found one that made me cringe.

[s-man]

On 2/12/2024 at 7:43 PM, skypinkblu said:

I don't want anyone to bash the Daredevil movie again, or they will be forced to sit through this mess...and this is from someone who has pretty much found every comic book movie, at least "entertaining".

I finally found one that made me cringe.

Jennifer Garner 

[skypinkblu]

On 2/13/2024 at 3:09 AM, s-man said:

Jennifer Garner 

Ben Affleck..lol

[Bosco685]

On 2/13/2024 at 2:58 PM, skypinkblu said:

Ben Affleck..lol

Poor Ben. Always treated like sirloin steak, eaten and tossed away.

[jsilverjanet]

On 2/9/2024 at 6:30 PM, Dr. Balls said:

I'm going to tag @CGC Mike to make sure I can even start this post, since the last one that I asked to be re-opened to talk about the Marvels movie got hijacked again by all sorts of female talk. So, Mike, if you don't want to deal with it - I understand. I gave the title of this post a different name so maybe it would be disguised as something else.

However, I would like to talk about the Marvels movie, if that's ok. I figure it will probably earn me my fair share of ire since I actually found it halfway entertaining (much moreso than Quantumania).

If people don't already know, it's now streaming on Disney+ - and I wasn't real big on spending money on it, so I'm sure there's lots more that feel that way.

I can totally see why people had a dislike for it. It deviates from the MCU way of storytelling for sure. But, I didn't mind the odd, weird quirkiness of it. I would have loved a Captain Marvel movie that was all about Carol Danvers - that's what I wished we would have gotten. But we got this.

My takeaways:

Kamala Khan, not nearly as annoying as I thought she'd be. Her dialogue was actually quite believable for a 13 year old. It's not nearly as hamfisted as Cassie's dialogue in Quantumania - her presence flows much easier. I'd like to reiterate: "not nearly" as annoying is not the same as "not annoying".

It's too bad they did not bring back Monica Rambeaux's character for more of the movie. She was pretty cool in Captain Marvel, and there wasn't much connection with her daughter stepping in for her presence in the film.

The dance scene on the alien planet: absolutely bizarre. 99% of people probably hated it, I thought it was unique and different. I won't lie, I was scrolling through my phone for most of it, but I'll give props for doing something weird in space. Because space is going to have some weird alien cultures in it.

Generic villain, but that's par for the course for the MCU. Between Zemo and Thanos, MCU blew their wad on those two and haven't recharged very well in the villain department.

The basic premise of all the problems being caused by Captain Marvel's actions should have been given more screen time. What she did was pretty hugely important, and it was relegated to like a 45 second flashback. That was lame. They really needed to explore those actions and give Carol Danvers some screen time to sell the repercussions of it.

Captain Marvel in a tight wifebeater shirt? 10/10

The very last scene of the movie and the end credit scene: kinda awesome IMHO. The way the MCU is going, it probably won't mean anything or never get followed up on, but still kinda cool.

I'll watch it over the next few days - i hadn't even thought about watching it but your review gives me hope that its entertaining

[Dr. Balls]

On 2/13/2024 at 4:58 PM, jsilverjanet said:

I'll watch it over the next few days - i hadn't even thought about watching it but your review gives me hope that its entertaining

I probably see it through the eyes of a big Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers fan. As a reader of the post-2000 stuff, I really like her character and I think Brie Larsen brings the right attitude to the portrayal. But I am definitely in the minority.

However, I don't blindly accept every Hollywood adaptation of my favorite properties. What they did with Preacher - compared to the source material - was atrocious. Even as lackluster as Marvels was in comparison to the first Captain Marvel movie, I still feel there's quite a few things out there they've developed worse than that one. Marvels is likely one watch and done - which is too bad, because I probably watch the first Captain Marvel once or twice a year.

Edited February 14 by Dr. Balls

[Mr Sneeze]

On 2/14/2024 at 10:29 AM, Dr. Balls said:

I probably see it through the eyes of a big Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers fan. As a reader of the post-2000 stuff, I really like her character and I think Brie Larsen brings the right attitude to the portrayal. But I am definitely in the minority.

However, I don't blindly accept every Hollywood adaptation of my favorite properties. What they did with Preacher - compared to the source material - was atrocious. Even as lackluster as Marvels was in comparison to the first Captain Marvel movie, I still feel there's quite a few things out there they've developed worse than that one. Marvels is likely one watch and done - which is too bad, because I probably watch the first Captain Marvel once or twice a year.

For what it’s worth, I really liked the first film and never understood the controversy over it. It stands on it own and has aged well. Much better than most.