Topic: The Marvel Thread

@RogerRoger Yeah, Ecclestone had pretty much nothing to do in that film which is a real shame. He’s a great actor but nobody could elevate that part beyond the strange rubber mask.

Interestingly, Thor: the Dark World was on TV last night here in the US too (on FX). Didn't watch it all, though.

Anyhow, I'm super excited for Spider-Man: No Way Home in a way I haven't been excited for a superhero film in quite some time. Will definitely get around to watching Black Widow, Shang Chi, & the Eternals as well, though I can wait until they're "free" on Disney+.

Will be interesting to see how the MCU overall holds out post Endgame, though. Not that I'm exactly expecting any of the films to flop mind you, but with many of the original Avengers being retired & it becoming increasingly hard to follow (both for newcomers due to the sheer amount of content, & overall now that you're expected to watch 4 or so miniseries each year in addition to the films), I don't know if the movies will be hitting quite the same highs in terms of viewership.

@RR529 I do agree with your concerns. I thought Endgame was a perfect conclusion to the MCU, and Far From Home made for a nice epilogue. If it were up to me, I'd have paused the MCU for a while, a good few years at least, rather than attempt to continue it out of shareholder obligation. As much as I enjoyed WandaVision and Loki, and respected Falcon & the Winter Soldier for trying, I'm kinda waiting for something to change my mind and prove its ceaseless momentum worthwhile. Where's it all heading? Is it really just gonna be a neverending story? Are we just waiting for another Endgame?

My partner made me laugh. We've just finished Phase Two and he made the comment that he's starting to get bored of watching a bunch of two-hour trailers. I mean, he's not wrong.

It's the same direction Disney are taking Star Wars and, despite being a much bigger fan of that franchise and therefore much more tolerant of its oversaturation, I'm still worried about burnout. Why must every single intellectual property become an unstoppable multimedia juggernaut nowadays?

@RogerRoger It’s an valid concern. I am likewise a big fan of Comic based entertainment and Star Wars. Throw in Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and basically most nerd culture stuff. (Although I’ve never quite caught the Star Trek bug fully. I like the reboot movies though… But I digress…). And as a big MCU fan even I have trouble keeping up. The pandemic has slowed things down naturally, in addition to the nice wrap-up produced by Endgame and Far From Home that you mention; and now they are in this weird space of losing some of the momentum from the Infinity saga due to filming production delays, and yet they haven’t let things settle down enough to not feel saturated by the content. The TV shows have served to keep the IP relevant, but I think the movies are stumbling out of the gate, comparatively speaking (and granted, when you are comparing to prior success that was box-office record breaking, then it’s tough to compare). I still haven’t seen Black Widow, nor finished all available TV output. I know I’ll like them when I see them but I’m satisfied to wait. I might try to see Shang-Chi in the theater though, but with COVID raging again I might want to wait.

@RogerRoger, @Th3solution. Yeah, I'm really interested in seeing how Star Wars holds up under the same treatment as the MCU. While it makes some sense in terms of the latter since they have dozens of different heroes to adapt which helps add potential longevity in case some need to retire (or others flop), in terms of SW everything has the original trilogy at it's core in the end and I wonder how many degrees of separation it can endure before (the average viewer) loses interest.

@Th3solution Consider yourself lucky that you're not a Trekkie. It's another franchise which is tying itself in knots at the moment. I was actually kinda relieved when I didn't like two of its new shows, because it meant I had less to keep track of on a weekly basis. Never a good sign!

It's interesting how COVID put an unplanned pause on everything. If it had been a planned pause, it wouldn't have been a problem, but because bigwigs are losing money they'd been anticipating to earn, we're caught between this push to release half-finished, somewhat compromised content and this current rush to "catch up" and I think it's all gonna be overwhelming for a lot of casual audience members. It's a shame there wasn't a more pragmatic response to events, especially since the pandemic hit mere months after both the MCU and the Skywalker Saga came to natural conclusions.

Best of luck if you do brave the cinema for Shang-Chi, and hope you enjoy it!

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@RR529 I think Star Wars will be a little safer, in that its interconnected universe is being built primarily on Disney+ and hasn't bled into blockbuster movies (yet). It's easier for most folks to get a month of Disney+ and binge everything at once, rather than have to shell out the same money three or four times a year to attend the cinema. It's also interesting how box office returns (and TV ratings) are reported openly and can therefore become a public mark of shame if something fails, but the viewer data collected by streaming services is kept private. Something tells me that a flop like Solo would've been heralded as a huge a success if it'd been a Disney+ Original.

I'd be fascinated to find out how many people actually finished all of Falcon & the Winter Soldier, compared to how many finished WandaVision and Loki.

@RogerRoger I'm hoping Star Wars is safer in the oversaturation department as you can do so many different stories in different timelines; focusing on various aspects/people of the universe, it doesn't feel like it has to tie into one big story.

I think Star Wars will lend itself well to yearly content drop on the live action, subsidised by an animated series for us extra enthusiastic people.

As you say, we don't need constant content. Star Wars hopefully can lend itself well to a yearly new series and a new movie every 2/3 years I think (or hope).

@NedStarksGhost You're right. I think variety will always be key, even if it's in terms of presentation (like having a mixture of live action and animated shows, for example). As much as I respect the MCU for trying to shake things up every now and again, its movies always fell neatly into a safe, predictable template. Ant-Man being billed as a heist movie was all well and good for most of its runtime, but it still ended up hitting all of the standard superhero beats regardless. I get that stuff needs to feel familiar in order to be interconnected, and to prevent alienating fans, but there are still ways to branch out.

New What If is out tomorrow, the title is "What if... Zombies?!" and that is the best title Marvel Studios has ever thought of.

Really really hope that Ditko and Lee’s estates win their court case against Marvel. Lots of idiotic fans thinking that the estates getting the copyrights would mean the end of Marvel but no, it means that creators would be actually paid for their work.

I watched Black Widow the other day, now that it's part of a standard Disney+ subscription. All things considered, I thought it was a pretty solid chunk of the MCU, and I enjoyed it.

Wasn't perfect, mind. I expect far, far better from Ray Winstone, and it was kinda bizarre that the movie gathered together a bunch of British and American actors to put on dodgy Eastern European accents, whilst the cast's only actual Eastern European remained mute throughout (don't mistake this point for any kind of outrage; it was just an odd observation, s'all).

But the action was great, didn't get too blurry or confusing, and it had plenty of spectacle for what was essentially a Bond flick devoid (or at least, almost devoid) of superpowers. It made for a better Phase Three epilogue than Spider-Man: Far From Home in many ways.

Superb soundtrack from Lorne Balfe, as well. I'm listening to it now.

@RogerRoger One of the main reasons I’m trying to get through Falcon & the WS is because I hear there’s a little connection between it and the Black Widow movie and I want to complete it first before watching BW. Good to hear that the film holds up.

@Th3solution Apparently, pre-pandemic, we were supposed to see Black Widow before Falcon & the Winter Soldier. I don't know if that helps (as you might be using the former as motivation to get through the latter) but, knowing what the connection is, I can see how it could work either way.

@RogerRoger @Th3solution I thought the connection was so insigificant that if I hadn't watched FWS then I would have just said "who's that?". Having watched FWS, I just said "oh" lol.

Unfortunately I didn't hugely rate Black Widow, it's a bit too sappy for me which is unfortunate because Black Widow is one of my favourite avengers in the movies and has been since CA:TWS. Her character has been better served in every other film she's been in (except Iron Man 2).

I did enjoy Winstone though but I will always enjoy Winstone. I loved how he looked basically the same in all the photoshopped historical pictures and they didn't go for a Scum/Quadrophenia-era de aging. I say loved, more like I just thought it was really funny.

Red Guardian was good too and the film could have done with more of him. I liked Taskmaster but I probably would have gone with a different interpretation if I was making it. It's done plenty in origin films but it can be annoying when they kind of add extra motive for an already perfectly acceptable villain to arbitrarily tie them to a hero.

I think BW fits better after FWS but it's just a bit of a random film and beyond springboarding some new characters, I doubt it will get mentioned much in future. It feels like it's the new Incredible Hulk of the MCU. Just a film that came out under weird circumstances that will probably get forgotten.

If anyone wants to watch a really good Ray Winstone film, I recommend Sexy Beast that also stars Ben Kingsley who played Iron Man 3's "Mandarin".

(Proceeds to duck out of this thread to avoid Shang Chi spoilers as I haven't seen that movie yet!)

@ralphdibny Another great Winstone film is 44 inch Chest, a masterpiece in all ways. Also has Ian McShane, John Hurt.

@nathanSF ahh cool, haven't seen that one actually. I think I have the dvd somewhere though so I'll have to check it out!

@ralphdibny I see where you're coming from; that being said, given what we know about Black Widow's character and the flashback premise of the film, I expected more emotion from the final scenes (either structured or from Ms. Johansson's performance, or both). I wanted something on the same level as Tony's funeral as a delayed, melodramatic farewell to her character and didn't really feel like I got it because everybody was too focused on setting up future cameo appearances and crossovers.

And similarly, I also enjoyed the Red Guardian character and David Harbour's performance, but felt like his screen time was perfectly balanced. Any more from him would've diverted attention away from Black Widow in a film called Black Widow, and would've been a mistake.

Nevertheless, I'm sorry to see that you didn't have as good a time as you'd hoped. It definitely slots straight into the middle of my MCU rankings, so I agree that it could've done better.

So I rewatched a bunch of Marvel films over the past week.

Originally it was only going to be Spidey Homecoming and Venom but after that I ended up wanting to watch more Marvel so... I'm going to go through all the Marvel films I own as I fancy rewatching them

Spider-Man: Homecoming

It's a thoroughly enjoyable film and I like Tom Holland as Spidey (Certainly better then Garfield at the very least). Michael Keaton's brill as Vulture too and I really like the design of his suit with it being fairly menacing.

I adore Ned too. He's a cute character, his friendship with Peter is well done and has some fun lines and wanting go be the "guy in the chair" for Peter.

Only thing I don't really think I don't like is Zendanya's character (why does she get third billing when she barely has 2-3 minutes of screentime?) and is rather poorly written in my eyes.

I like the Sam Raimi films more (Spider-Man 2 is still THE Spidey film to beat) but Homecoming is pretty darn good fun.

Venom

I hated this movie.

... At least... I did when I first watched it not long after it came out on DVD.

It's still not a good film (the ending fight is an absolute mess of CGI) but after rewatching it I can say I enjoyed it well enough and appreciated Tom Hardy's performance a bit more (Though his accent is not good(?)).

Villain's still terrible mind you and everyone else is a bit bland... But it's watchable enough.

Iron Man

For the film that started the MCU off Iron Man still holds up quite a bit to me. A blast from start to finish. I pretty much like everything about it and I've only ever liked it more every single time I've re-watched it.

Captain America

I first saw trailers for this way back when I'll admit I wasn't too interested in it. I thought he'd be somewhat similar to Superman being the boy scout fight for truth, justice and the American way and all that jazz...

And whilst he is a boyscout... He's a lot more relatable and endearing to me then Superman ever was or has been and Chris Evans is perfect as the "Star Spangled Man with a plan"

I would've liked to have seen more of cap with his crew (The Howling Comandos if I remember right?) and it's a shame we never get the Red Skull again as Hugo Weaving knocks it out the park as he always seems to do. But it's my favourite of the first phase of films

Thor

I know this film gets a bit of a but of a bad rap or at least more negatively perceived compared to most...

But I actually REALLY like this film. Always have.

Anthony Hopkins is so good as Odin (Especially that one part where he just snarls at Loki and Tom Hiddleston looks genuinely shocked by it 😂)

Who doesn't like Loki?

Chris Hemsworth does well as Thor too and I like the whole fish out of water concept with him & he has some pretty funny lines at times and a nice enough arc of character development!

Colm Feore doesn't get a whole lot to as Laufey... Yet he has an undeniable presence every scene he's in.

I even like the human cast of Jane Foster (Though I don't think she and Thor needed to be love interests), Erik Sellvig & Darcy (The dire sequel however doesn't do them any favours).

The destroyer's a bit naff but that's only my real complaint about it to be perfectly honest...

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy When I was recently going through the MCU with my partner, we both turned to one another at multiple moments throughout the Thor movies and commented on Anthony Hopkins' ability to out-act anybody, in any scene, every single time. He's such an asset to those films.

I didn't like Loki, for a very long time, and he still isn't my favourite character, but his show earlier in the year helped bring me around on him. He gets better with each subsequent appearance.

And yeah, I still reckon that Michael Keaton opening that front door is one of the single greatest moments in the entire series. I usually spot twists coming a mile away, but it really caught me by surprise. What a performance! I know you're a big fan of Mysterio, and Far From Home does him justice, but I still kinda missed Vulture. I really hope we haven't seen the last of him!

Eternals’ post credit scene leaking somehow has me even less interested than I was before. I just… don’t really care that much about that side of the MCU anymore despite being a life-long Marvel fan of the comics and having gone to see all the movies since Iron Man in the cinema.