Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie Thread

[GuyIncognito]

1 hour ago, Gabriel said:

I don't think I like the idea of them just saying "Well, they've been here the whole time... but no one knew". If they didn't do that with Wakanda already, then I'd say maybe. But you also have to consider that Atlantis would end up taking the same route, and then it just becomes a question of how much of the planet don't the people know about and is it realistic to think that three major areas in the world were just invisible to everyone for so long?

Eternals basically told us that everything is a lie and the Earth is just a giant egg for a giant space man to emerge from. Pretty sure that's going to be continually glossed over given the various wide ranging and ridiculous implications it has. 

[Jimmy]

Was personally disappointed with the new Thor, thought it was fine, but didn't land any big laughs and felt pretty messy. Hope you guys enjoy it, but Ragnarok feels way more like it's own thing than this does.

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Yeah I felt the same. I enjoyed it, I love the general tone Taika goes with, but it didn't hit the same heights Ragnarok did. Laughed a good few times and enjoyed what they did with it but at the same time it was just kinda... there.

Great soundtrack though.

[Chris2K]

I'm glad I'm not the only one a bit underwhelmed. It felt like the movie was based around the theory of "Hey! You liked Ragnorok? Have all this Ragnorok-like stuff in every scene!" Spoilery stuff below

Spoiler

I don't really know why the GOTG needed to be in it other than to tie up the Endgame thread, but now it just feels like a wasted idea. I also wasn't a big fan of the several instances of heavy emotional moments being immediately undone, Korg's "death", Valkyrie being seemingly fatally stabbed and Jane's sacrifice being immediately brushed aside for what feels like a really awkward coupling just to make the movie title make sense. If/When Thor 5 happens hopefully the Love character will have a bit more depth than Chris Hemsworth's daughter is able to provide.

Negatives aside, there were some real strong points. The Stormbreaker gags, whilst a little silly, were hilarious, the soundtrack was great (although I'm sure G&R charged a lot for the privilege) the fight scenes were superb and the aesthetic of the Shadowrealm was just as good as the trailer made it seem. And of course there's the addition of Hercules, which should be great.

But the biggest plaudits have to go to Gorr, both in Christian Bale's performance and the development of the character. Granted the latter was helped by the comics, but they managed to convey everything they needed to in the introduction and kept it going throughout the movie. Bale though knocked it out of the park.

 

[tristy]

I dunno, I really liked it, but I'm super easy to satisfy when it comes to these MCU movies. I'm not looking for anything other than a good time and to continue the connected universe, and it did that.

Christian Bale's Gorr was fucking terrifying and awesome and I loved it.

Spoiler

Brett Goldstein as Hercules in the next Thor movie? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP.

 

[The Lusophone]

On 07/07/2022 at 18:17, Jimmy said:

Was personally disappointed with the new Thor, thought it was fine, but didn't land any big laughs and felt pretty messy. Hope you guys enjoy it, but Ragnarok feels way more like it's own thing than this does.

I just watched it and it really felt like they trying to make Ragnarok again, but they missed by quite a margin.

I've come out of the cinema not really sure if I've watched a good film or not.

[gunnar hendershow]

It was alright. It really was just them doing Ragnarok again and while that wasn't necessarily a bad choice it felt much more like they reused everything from Ragnarok instead of doing much of anything new. Where Ragnarok felt so refreshing this really just felt like I had seen and done this before.

Also, I thought it was just limited to the TV shows and Dr. Strange being entirely filmed during the pandemic but the CG is so off-looking now. Seems like it's plaguing every MCU production now. 

Spoiler

I guess we're getting a 5th Thor movie with the same crew where he has a showdown with Hercules? Unless he shows up elsewhere in the MCU? Hopefully they take a lot of the criticism for this one to heart and try some new things.

I will say I personally found the screaming goat gag hilarious but that's very much something tailored to my sense of humor. 

 

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Spoiler

The screaming goat gag was honestly one of my favourite bits from the film.

My other favourite part was the film portion where they went pretty much black and white with it, really stood out against the colourful setting of the rest of the film as something different, which it needed.

Basically any time Chritsian Bale was on screen was the highlight.

 

[Jimmy]

2 hours ago, MadJack said:

I just watched it and it really felt like they trying to make Ragnarok again, but they missed by quite a margin.

I've come out of the cinema not really sure if I've watched a good film or not.

I would just say it felt quite lazy. Ragnarok was inventive and fresh and it felt like Taika's style was kind of bursting out of this Marvel production and, while it's really good fun, I've been excited for so long to see what it'd look like if they gave him full control.

But this film just didn't feel...like much really. There's very little in there that felt new or particularly memorable. It was fine, I didn't have a bad time watching it, but with the level of talent involved it just feels like a wasted opportunity. 

Spoiler

Also thought the goats were fun, the stormhammer stuff was goofy and great. Bale was great with what he was given (although I still think it feels like a waste of an actor of that talent) the black and white stuff was cool, but it still all felt...meaningless, I dunno. 

And to whoever said it, I thought the Guardians stuff was so flat? Like an obligation? 

 

[tristy]

One thing I didn’t catch on my original viewing until I saw it on another board:

Spoiler

Heimdall’s child is trans

 

[Benji]

Is Moon Knight or Ms Marvel going to enhance my viewing of Thor? Just wondering if I should catch up with them before seeing it. I assume neither is essential, just curious if either will enhance viewing or not.

[tristy]

Moon Knight is almost entirely disconnected from the MCU outside of like, three or four references/easter eggs to the larger MCU world.

Ms. Marvel won't enhance anything in Love & Thunder. There's a VERY small Valkyrie reference in the first episode, but it's not going to improve the experience of the movie or anything.

The reference is (you can safely click this)

Spoiler

Kamala ships Valkyrie & Carol Danvers being in a relationship together

 

[Josh]

I’m sort of in the same camp as most of you. I’m glad I watched it and it was fun. But it felt so rushed. It was doing too much too fast.

Spoiler

I think it’s partly because Waititi got handed Thor in a specific situation with his physique, character journey, companions with GotG, etc, and he just didn’t want to do that. So he spent a fair amount of time undoing all of that, while trying to avoid the appearance of hand waving it. A lot happens early on and there’s little to no gravity given to any of it. That’s how it seems from the outside anyway.

But even after that, it feels like a lot of stuff could have been stripped out to give more weight to the core story and character progression - especially everything with Jane. They never even say what kind of cancer she has. Then the doctor gives us one vague line to explain that being Might Thor is killing her faster. I’m not saying you have to linger in the exposition, but they kept having important moments happen with little explanation or no time to breathe.

In all, I still had fun - that final battle with the kids was amazing - but it felt a little bloated and rushed.

 

[Chris2K]

17 hours ago, tristy said:

One thing I didn’t catch on my original viewing until I saw it on another board:

  Hide contents

Heimdall’s child is trans

 

Spoiler

I've seen this in a few places but I fear it may be people jumping to conclusions, I don't remember anything specific in the film relating to his gender. My understanding was that he didn't like his name, liked G&R, and wanted to be called Axl from now on.

Happy to be wrong though, trans representation in a film of this magnitude would be great.

 

[tristy]

31 minutes ago, Chris2K said:

  Hide contents

I've seen this in a few places but I fear it may be people jumping to conclusions, I don't remember anything specific in the film relating to his gender. My understanding was that he didn't like his name, liked G&R, and wanted to be called Axl from now on.

Happy to be wrong though, trans representation in a film of this magnitude would be great.

 

Spoiler

Thor referes to Axl as Heimdall's daughter (which is where Axl corrects Thor, saying his name isn't Astrid but he wants to go by Axl now, because of Guns 'n Roses), and then at the end of the movie Heimdall thanks Jane for saving his son.

EDIT: Actually I'm wrong! Whoops.

 

Edited July 10, 2022 by tristy

[Lint]

I think most people missed the biggest return to the MCU

Spoiler

Darryl from the Team Thor shorts was a tour guide in New Asgard!  And its not a case of "Same actor, different character", he's listed as "Darryl The Tour Guide" in the credits.

 

[GoGo Yubari]

Boy, I didn't like that much at all. Felt a lot like Iron Man 2, where a formula that worked like gangbusters the first time around is doubled down on, rushed back into the market ASAP, and ran straight into the fucking ground. There are some neat little bits in there (I kept chuckling at the Stormbreaker bits), the black-and-white sequence was really cool and Christian Bale completely elevated what could have been another Malekith/Kaecillius-like Z-tier villain, but almost nothing really landed for me and worse yet I barely found anything funny. In theory I'm glad that Marvel is going to directors with more recognizable styles, and frankly the best parts of Multiverse of Madness are the stuff that feel unmistakably like Sam Raimi made it, but here it felt a bit like Taika Waititi had too much leeway on the tone so what felt like a breath of fresh air in Ragnarok just kind of feels flippant and weightless here.

I think I'm starting to get a bit of an uneasy feeling about the overall coherence of the MCU, it feels increasingly like a bunch of people all doing their own things that don't really line up with each other anymore, like there was a very clear plan up to Endgame and now it's just a lot of grasping at straws and buying time.

Spoiler

I remember being really excited about pairing Thor up with the Guardians of the Galaxy and then that whole thing in this movie felt like one big "well I guess we have to address this" obligation. Similarly there's something kind of annoying to me about Sif's whole lengthy absence from the MCU ending in the whole lot of nothing she got in this movie but I guess it was better than the Warriors Three being offhandedly killed off in Ragnarok and then getting mentioned like "oh also these guys died, whoever they were" in this one.

Also really wary of Brett Goldstein as Hercules because I got a real "what if we got the guy who plays Roy Kent to do the Roy Kent thing but as Hercules" off of that admittedly like one second of him in the postcredits scene and boy if you're gonna go that route just make him Ares instead.

(Did like Darryl showing up, though. That was good.)

 

[gunnar hendershow]

2 hours ago, GoGo Yubari said:

I think I'm starting to get a bit of an uneasy feeling about the overall coherence of the MCU, it feels increasingly like a bunch of people all doing their own things that don't really line up with each other anymore, like there was a very clear plan up to Endgame and now it's just a lot of grasping at straws and buying time.

 

I was talking with a friend about this as it relates to the MCU and Star Wars. The total dearth of Star Wars films on the horizon gave us both the idea is their primary focus is on Disney+. Subscriber growth there means everything. More than box office numbers (because those have to be shared whereas subscriber numbers go all to Disney, and shareholders are hyper-fixated on streaming growth whereas assuming the film revenue isn't budging). So for the MCU most of this crop of movies are of the treading water sort, not setting up anything big and I would argue just fulfilling revenue obligations. That might change when we get to The Marvels and Fantastic 4. But everything else has been predominantly self-contained and the movie that was most likely to branch out into something bigger was probably the most widely criticized MCU movie in years (Eternals).

The nice part about a treading water era in theory is that it lets directors do their own things, but they have really struggled to get that right. And a definite downside is it creates a recurring feeling of wondering what you just sat through and why. Which is something I've basically felt since Black Widow - even No Way Home while good was very much a "ok that's it for Tom Holland, thanks bro" experience. But between the TV shows, the (enormous) new crop of superheroes and characters, and what appears to be an effort to get regular people comfortable with the idea of a multiverse, I can't shake the feeling that the MCU won't ever have a truly coherent structure again. There will just be more movies and more TV than is manageable.

I'd also speculate somewhat that letting directors put their own stamps on MCU films is a way to get out from the criticism they dealt with for years that these were all "studio films". A phrase that doesn't mean much to most of us but people in the film industry hate with every fiber of their being. So now the MCU can point at this latest crop of movies and say "look we let our directors do their own things". Which, yeah, actually this makes sense since any mild criticism for the MCU by Scorsese or whomever is met with righteous anger.

Overall though I think the biggest catalyst for how unplanned everything feels right now is down to Disney's enormous pivot to streaming despite Feige (and Kennedy with Star Wars) being film people first and foremost.

[Chris2K]

Pardon the pun, but it feels like there's no real endgame in place at the moment, and there are so many things up in the air that aren't being followed up. Perhaps because of everyone doing their own thing that have left so many strands unchecked, but there are so many questions that don't feel like they're going to be answered any time soon.

I also wonder if part of the blame goes to the demand for post-credit scenes to be newsworthy, they seem to introduce new characters all the time and I'm starting to wonder if there's a plan in place for any of it.

Compare this to phases 1 through 3, where the infinity stones were constantly involved or referenced, and Thanos was an ever-present part of several post-credit scenes and films, before he even appeared as a proper character in Infinity War.

Sad as it is to say, I think they'd be better off not introducing mutants and the Fantastic Four until they get a hold on things.

[Hellraiser]

IIRC, the focus of the current phase was supposed to be on shit going on in space and James Gunn was supposed to oversee that endeavor. But that was before he got axed and it seems like plans have changed a lot since then.

Spoiler

Seems like the possible big baddies for the MCU now are Kang The Conqueror and the Celestials. And neither of them have shown up outside of their respective show/movie of origin yet.

I suppose in respect of Kang they laid the groundwork for him showing up on the big screen with the multiverse stuff in the most-recent Spider Man and Dr. Strange movies. But it still doesn't really feel like they are building toward something on the movie side of the MCU.

 

Edited July 12, 2022 by Hellraiser