Daniel Bryan

Chapter 10:

So The Marvels pretty much sucked. Just all over the place, and not in a good way. A shocking amount of time spent on pointless bullshit, and zero spent on having the story make any actual sense, giving the antagonist a personality, or giving us any reason to care about it. Can't stand on its own merits at all, and didn't seem like it was even trying to. Iman Vellani doing her best Nick Fury impression was a good bit though.

The family dancing during the performance of Fairytale of New York was really touching.

I've only watched the first couple of episodes, but I was pretty let down, tbh.

I watched the first episode and found it very boring, so I can see that. It's got a real sense of trying to be prestige TV and failing because it's work-for-hire; Disney bringing someone in to just go through the motions and "do the Secret Invasion show", not because anyone involved has any kind of connection with the material or interest in telling the story. The actual events felt like a collection of clichés, and Fury's dialogue in particular sounds like somebody's trying to write for Jackson in Pulp Fiction. I dunno about the worst MCU show (because that's a high bar) but it certainly didn't give me any desire to watch the rest of it.

I was at North and the queues for food at least were ridiculous. People queuing for over an hour, and the way all the stalls were clumped together caused a huge gridlock in the middle of the festival. Definitely needed more vendors and better organisation. Getting the shuttle bus afterwards was a nightmare too, we were in the queue for two hours.

Yeah, Quantummania kind of sucked. There was a gem of an interesting idea with the Quantum Realm, but they didn't do anything with it, so it's just like a discount Guardians of the Galaxy. Kang started off interesting, with a very strong performance, but Majors turned out to be a scumbag and Kang turned into a generic villain by the end anyway - and if the hammy variants we saw in the post-credits were any indication where it was going, good riddance. I also thought Rudd wasn't great in this one tbh, though not sure how much of that was the crappy dialogue he had to say.

You're in for a treat. I went to see it two years ago -- had been waiting for a chance ever since I heard Felix do one of the songs from it, and it didn't disappoint. Seeing it again this weekend, really cool that it's on the West End now. Was mildly disappointed the recent movie wasn't an adaptation of the musical.

Multiverse, schmultiverse. Just Don Cheadle it: "Look, it's me, I'm here. Deal with it. Let's move on."

^ (game and likely last episode spoilers)

That whole excursion to America should have been cut out. It's already difficult to root for Shuri because of the Letitia Wright of it all, but the whole time I'm sitting there wondering what the fuck they're doing. Kidnapping Riri because she knows how to detect vibranium, not only stamping all over the lesson learned from the last Black Panther but also leading the Atlanteans right to her is bad enough, and then they just start casually attacking people and firing fucking rockets at them to get away with it? Then you've got Everett Ross committing treason and funneling information to Wakanda and covering up their involvement and Julia Louis-Dreyfus is the villain for holding him accountable? I get that it's the US government and all, but like, Wakanda was about to try and take over the world a few years ago so they don't exactly have the high ground to just do whatever they want either. Overall just one of the worst cases of protagonist-centred morality I've seen from a superhero movie in ages. Also, I am extremely done with every hero needing to have their own JARVIS. Namor was cool, but his backstory is very, very silly. Not the whole concept of Talokan, but having to crowbar all his character traits in there. "The herb let us breathe underwater, but because I was still in the womb it, uh, gave me wings on my ankles. And pointed ears! And one person hundreds of years ago called me The Child With No Love so I call myself N'love! Yes, that will do." Having Talokan just being underwater Wakanda to the point of them having their own Significant Hand Gesture was also incredibly lazy, even more so when Shuri had her Dramatic Realisation that they're the same. Man, how fucking great is Angela Bassett, though?

Now the song is nearly over We may never find out what it means Still there's a light I hold before me You're the measure of my dreams - "A Rainy Night in Soho", by The Pogues

Yeah, that was a lot of fun. It basically being a showcase for Pom Klementieff to show some range as Mantis is really great.

No, I just don't find lazy, hacky writing to be fun. But to each their own.

Oof. So I didn't mind She-Hulk; I mean... it's dumb and bad, but it's just a sitcom, so not a big deal. Quite disappointing that

That pretty much confirms Shuri is the new Black Panther, so that's very disappointing that they're replacing Chadwick Boseman with a proud anti-vax moron. Also I am very distracted by the physics of Namor's wings because I'm pretty sure as soon as he took off he would just flip over and only be able to fly hanging upside down.

You mean Thor 4: More Thor.

The Avengers don't exist anymore, but when they did Stark paid them, and then presumably the UN. I thought that line was dumb, because it's the kind of shallow joke someone who is aware of the Marvel movies but doesn't really watch them would make - not someone who exists in the same reality as them. Really, any time the MCU addresses the concept of "superheroes" as a societal thing, it's always really lazy and makes no sense.

Was it just me or did all the federal agents and drones briefly wink out of existence for that escape at the end? Kamala is a joy, but the writing on this show is hilariously lazy. I'd love to know how Bruno's iPad could tell the power was coming from inside her.

Hoo boy, Obi-Wan is not good.

Eternals was an odd one. For the first half, it felt waaay too long and very, very boring. Doing an exposition dump - (including actually just writing it out on screen!) - was a mistake, because we spend the next hour or so with them, except we don't have any attachment to them and we're also not learning anything about them. They could have excised Kit Harington entirely because he added nothing, and the references to other MCU properties clashed horribly with the tone of the film. I didn't have a problem with the flashbacks as a concept, except that it wasn't showing us anything interesting or that we didn't already know. I actually quite started to like it when: Also, does it bug anyone else that everyone in the MCU seems to have seen all the MCU movies? Like, I get that the Avengers are obviously well-known, but how the hell does anyone know who Dr. Strange is?

Hawkeye was probably the best of the Disney+ shows - the action was good, Hailee and Florence Pugh were excellent throughout, and it was nice to have low(ish) stakes, but boy did it not stick the landing. The series was mostly solid, but it had the same problems all the other D+ shows did, and that last episode definitely left a bad taste in my mouth. Feels like they're 0 for 4 on this.

Just watched Black Widow. Florence Pugh stole the show, unsurprisingly, and actually managed to lend some emotional weight to otherwise hollow scenes - she's very good. But overall it was weightless. I get that it's a Marvel movie and they're all trying to do the quippy thing - and it struck a nice balance for the first 40 minutes or so - but once David Harbour came in, the jokey dialogue started to make me uneasy, especially when it's about forced hysterectomies or all the people Natasha must have murdered, and The retconning of Natasha's backstory and general vagueness of the villain bugged me: On the whole it seemed like they weren't really interested in exploring Natasha's character or doing anything with her - just wanted to put her name on the poster and get a "Black Widow movie" out there. It started promising, and those first 30/40 minutes where they're basically doing The Americans and then the bit where it's just Natasha and Yelena are solid, but then it just became your bog-standard Marvel movie. Not disappointing, because you know what you're getting into, but still feels like a missed opportunity to do something interesting.