Topic: The Marvel Thread

@ralphdibny @RogerRoger I've not seen any of the Disney+ shows, but thanks to YouTube, there could be a crossover at the end of Hawkeye . I could be wrong though.

@Th3solution I'm of a mixed mind about the self-awareness, personally, insofar as it's often a little too 'wink, nudge, wink' for my liking, as with the meta-commentary about the reception to Garfield's Spider-Man films. But yeah, I do agree this film does a much better job of drawing from and commenting on the past without shamelessly exploiting it.

Ultimately, I wanted something more in line with previous Spider-Man films: grounded, imaginative, charming, and almost deconstructive in its approach to the genre without being obnoxious about it. Instead, they gave us the ultimate cinematic Spider-Man fanservice film. It does a good job at that, though, so I can't really be too harsh on it. Aside from Strange's role in the film, I don't think it has too many actual flaws.

@Fight_Teza_Fight The beginning was my favorite part of the film, by far. But, temperamentally, I'm not the sort of person this film was designed to appeal to, even if I had a good enough time watching it.

Hawkeye finished tonight and did actually pull it together at the end. Still felt like it could have done with a few more episodes but hey, season 2 hopefully! I was always going to hold it to a ridiculous standard as its basing itself off the very very well regarded comics and it didn’t really live up to them but it’s definitely one of the better offerings since Endgame.

@JohnnyShoulder sorry, had to duck out of this thread because I hadn't watched Hawkeye yet (the email notification doesn't display spoiler tags 😅 but I appreciate them nonetheless!)

Finally watched it though and loved it, great show!

Hope you had a good Xmas!

@ralphdibny No worries, and glad you enjoyed it!

Does anybody know if I need to watch Wandavison before the next Dr Strange film? I know a trailer for the latter dropped recently which I've not seen, but she appears in all the thumbnails I've seen.

@RogerRoger Cheers. Looks like I will begrudgingly be renewing my subscription to Disney+ soon then.

@Keith_Zissou The run’s just the 2012-15 series by Fraction and Aja. It’s collected into 4 volumes which you can get basically everywhere too.

@RogerRoger Hmmmm, not sure on that one. The end of The Mandalorian season 2 kinda soured the experience for me. Too fan servicey for my liking.

Binged Hawkeye earlier in the week. It was a fun time, but between setting up Kate, following up on Black Widow's post credit scene, and finally deciding to recognize the Netflix shows in some capacity (without getting too spoilery), it seemed to have a lot going on for it's runtime.

Sorry for the double post, but I just finished binging the back half of What If?.

I had procrastinated on watching this one (started last weekend), but I'm glad I got around to it. The first couple episodes were a bit slow, but I thought it picked up by episode 3, and then by episode 4 (the Doctor Strange one) it was absolutely fire. There were some ups & downs after that, but the last few were absolutely amazing.

A couple notes:

• I was surprised to see Spider-Man show up given the whole rights juggling act. I assume that since it's a TV series instead of a movie (and animated) that it lets them bypass whatever rights Sony has? It certainly wasn't Tom Holland voicing him, that's for sure.
• It would be an absolute shame if the show's events (or at least some of it's universes) weren't at least referenced in Multiverse of Madness. I think a version of "Evil" Strange is confirmed to appear, so here's hoping.
• Just a neat observation. Under the tab where they list all the MCU movies/series in timeline order, they have What If? listed right after Loki, which is neat given that the latter ends with the multiverse being unleashed.

Watched Eternals this morning.

Certainly very visually accomplished and the fight scenes could definitely be kinetic, but it felt a little slow & bloated (and I don't think any of them really stood out in terms of personality other than Kingo).

I feel like if you're the kind of person to really like the first two Thor movies, you'd probably like this. More of an epic/drama feel without much of the trademark MCU humor/quips (though there is some).

Gave Eternals another go since it was added to Disney+. It was a little better on second viewing but still kinda rubbish. Overly bloated with exposition (a title crawl these days is laughable) and the high concept nature makes it all feel a bit like a Syfy Channel made-for-TV movie. I wouldn’t even say that the actors did anything wrong, they were all pretty decent but it was more just fundamental issues with the structure, the expendable nature of newly-introduced characters and the messy writing.

@RR529 @nessisonett Mediocre as it sounds, I think I’ll try to watch Eternals this weekend if I get the time. Obviously not because of the glowing praise I’ve seen, but rather because it’s an MCU movie and I’m a fan of the franchise. Hopefully Disney/Marvel isn’t getting lazy with their output since they know there are millions of us that will watch it just on the affiliation of the MCU. Thankfully the movies before it (Shang-Chi) and after (No Way Home) were both excellent so maybe this is an aberration.

I have started Hawkeye, and watched two episodes so far. It much better than I was led to believe. It captures the Marvel fun and personality much better than Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I like Kate Bishop a lot more than I thought I would. Why they used that font for the title and branding I’ll never know. It’s a subconscious (or in my case, a conscious) turn-off.

@Th3solution The Hawkeye font and marketing is lifted from the comics it was based on!

@nessisonett Ah, well I guess that at least makes some sense. I’d thought Disney had lost their branding and artistic edge with this one. I can respect that they are trying to stay true to the comics then.

It’s just that it looks like the art design you’d see for a kids show on Nickelodeon or the packaging on the Barbie Playhouse box. Hawkeye is supposed to be this Ronin badass, not some cosmopolitan softie.

Perhaps back in the day, there was only so many fonts to choose from 😛

@Th3solution See, this is where the problem lies. Hawkeye shouldn’t be a ‘badass’ at all really, and any sort of characterisation along those lines is misguided. He’s too silly to be played straight. He’s basically an idiot who runs around with a bow because that’s the only thing he knows how to do. He’s absolutely better as a Spider-Man like hero with mundane problems and no money than a SHIELD agent which robs him of all personality.

@nessisonett Was his Ronin persona just a complete fabrication unique to the MCU?

And having only seen a couple episodes, it sounds like Kate Bishop fits the description of what Hawkeye was in the comics. Good with a bow, but a bit of a socially awkward and goofy character.

@Th3solution Ronin was a thing and did directly lead to Kate Bishop taking on the Hawkeye mantle but it was the result of an extended ‘grimdark’ influence on the comics which all seems a bit silly looking back on it. The MCU is primarily influenced by the Ultimate universe iterations of the characters which again has aged incredibly badly. In that, Hawkeye is the whole stoic agent with zero personality which he is in the MCU but then his family were slaughtered due to Black Widow betraying them so there’s that. Hawkeye as a character was just done dirty by Whedon and there wasn’t really a clear way back from the damage he did without extensive retcons.

Also caught the original X Men film on TV the other night. Definitely showing it's age, but still an interesting look back on how far we've come (also reminded me how much I loved watching X Men Evolution as a kid).

Since (most) of the X Men films are on Disney+, I'll probably start watching through them since there doesn't seem to be much Marvel content releasing on the service in the first half of the year other than She Hulk sometime in the spring. Since No Way Home is likely skipping D+ until sometime next year, the next movie will probably be Multiverse of Madness sometime in the summer after it's may theatrical release.

@RR529 I suspect No Way Home won’t come to Disney+ given the weird Spider-Man franchise rights. Homecoming and Far From Home aren’t on it.

There are some good X-Men movies (and some bad ones). I think they are all good except for X3 The Last Stand, which although bad, is actually not as much a travesty as the internet makes it to be, and Dark Phoenix, which is as bad as it’s made out to be. Oh, and X-Men Origins Wolverine is supposed to be bad but I never took the time to find out firsthand.