Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie Thread

[Chris2K]

I can't wait, but I also can wait because the longer I do, the longer they are all still alive in my MCU viewing canon.

[Hellraiser]

This looks amazing!

Also: Rainbow in a marvel movie! And the Graham Bonnet-fronted version too!

Edited February 13, 2023 by Hellraiser

[The Kraig]

I finally saw Love & Thunder on the plane. Such a disappointment. I can't believe they wasted Gorr on this, but oh well.

Really liked Wakanda Forever.

Overall though, Phase Four went strong on the goof factor, for better and worse.

[Lint]

So the reviews for Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania on RT...aren't good.  Sitting at 53% right now.  Yikes

Quote

Quantumania is somehow heavy without feeling substantial, almost desperate in its dourness. Even scattered with occasional wisecracks, it makes Eternals feel positively breezy by comparison.

 

Quote

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania works on one key level, establishing Kang the Conqueror as a truly formidable and worthy villain. Yet with its plunge into inner space, "Ant-Man" comes up short in almost every other way that matters.

 

Quote

While there's a kooky, psychedelic feel that echoes Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy, it falls under the weight of its own ambition and loses sight of what made its two predecessors so breezily enjoyable.

[GoGo Yubari]

Huh! Weird movie. I don't think it's a bottom-rung MCU film but I get where the overall negative critical response was, I think stuff like Love and Thunder (which I feel very comfortable in saying is a bottom-five MCU movie for me) has a clear constituency where I don't know if this one does. There are long stretches where I'm into it and then something weird happens and I'm thrown out of it for a bit, in some ways it feels like Peyton Reed's obvious love of absurdist/anti-humor kind of bleeds into how most scenes that end with a joke play and it's an odd fit (though I don't really know where that one review excerpt gets "dour" from). Definitely think that if people go in with the expectation that this one is going to feel like the last two Ant-Man films, where part of the charm is how comparatively low-stakes it is to other MCU films, they'll be kind of disappointed.

(Though as a Kang delivery device, which is obviously its main job, it definitely works. Jonathan Majors is great.)

[Benji]

I've not seen it yet, but hearing that they ditched half the friends and allies he's made over previous films bums me out.

I'm surprised people are so down on Love and Thunder. It wasn't their best, but I definitely don't feel it was one of their worst outputs.

Honestly though, I feel like the MCU in general has lost its way a lot. I don't much care about seeing the films as an event any longer and am happy to just wait for it to hit whatever streaming service, which is sad because they were one of the few things making me actively still go and see films at the cinema.

[Colly]

Benji's last paragraph sums it up completely for me. We used to watch all of them in cinemas just because I always feel big effects films benefit from it, but post Covid and in the Disney+ era of streaming 2-3 months later we've not rushed to any. To be honest given several of them have been okay at best and none particularly amazing (I'm struggling, Spiderman was good I guess, and I didn't hate Love and Thunder but I'm a Waittiti guy) I've been glad of that. 

Might go and see Guardians of the Galaxy I guess, they haven't burned their bridges yet.

[Chris2K]

5 hours ago, GoGo Yubari said:

Huh! Weird movie. I don't think it's a bottom-rung MCU film but I get where the overall negative critical response was, I think stuff like Love and Thunder (which I feel very comfortable in saying is a bottom-five MCU movie for me) has a clear constituency where I don't know if this one does. There are long stretches where I'm into it and then something weird happens and I'm thrown out of it for a bit, in some ways it feels like Peyton Reed's obvious love of absurdist/anti-humor kind of bleeds into how most scenes that end with a joke play and it's an odd fit (though I don't really know where that one review excerpt gets "dour" from). Definitely think that if people go in with the expectation that this one is going to feel like the last two Ant-Man films, where part of the charm is how comparatively low-stakes it is to other MCU films, they'll be kind of disappointed.

(Though as a Kang delivery device, which is obviously its main job, it definitely works. Jonathan Majors is great.)

I don't think I could say anything different to that. It's fun in places, disappointing in places, and just pretty average. I think the ending could have been treated a bit differently to give it more impact, but the post-credit scenes do at least remedy that somewhat.

The amount of CGI is off-putting, particularly for an Ant-Man movie where the rest of the franchise has saved the CGI for the characters, not absolutely everything. And the choices made in the casting leave a lot to be desired...

Spoiler

... No Luis and Kurt is unforgivable. Having David Dastmalchian voice a joke CGI character is not a suitable compromise.

My biggest annoyance is M.O.D.O.K. being treated as a one-and-done, as soon as they re-characterised him as Darren Cross it seemed inevitable, as he wouldn't work without the Ant-Man cast around him, but it's frustrating that someone as iconic as M.O.D.O.K. has already been and gone.

The biggest plus is Jonathan Majors. Obviously a very different potrayal to his Loki appearance, but everything he said and did was superb and full of genuine menace. Can't wait for his next appearance, which I assume is Loki Season 2.

 

[GoGo Yubari]

re: MODOK

Spoiler

I loved the idea of MCU Modok being Darren Cross and the character design/effect was so deeply upsetting and unpleasant that I had to respect it. I swear to god at some point there was a show or something that put a human face on a thumb and that's what this looked like. Horrible! Brilliant!

I was really excited about the premise of him as a weird gag villain that could periodically come back in the more absurd corners of the MCU or maybe showing up in the inevitable Young Avengers movie or show once they get there, so basically having his arc be The Executioner's from Ragnarok except not really earned in any way, shape or form was one of those big "wait, what? Why did that happen?" moments that took me out of the movie entirely. Even the movie doesn't seem to know why it chose to do that.

 

[Tigerstyle]

I watched it, much like any marvel movie it’s dumb fun. Use them to cleanse your brain of the shit outside, it’s decent

[Maxx]

So I liked it, and Majors is awesome as Kang, but Marvel needs to start mixing things up because the last 3 films they released…

Spoiler

All have a climax where our heroes are aided in a big battle by an army of minor characters and stand ins.
 

that also happened in Shang Chi and kind of Black Widow.

 

[GoGo Yubari]

Steven Yeun has been cast in Thunderbolts. No announcement as to the character he's playing but apparently it's a significant one.

[IDOL]

I liked Ant-Man and The Whasp 🤷‍♂️ 

[tristy]

On 23/02/2023 at 14:35, GoGo Yubari said:

Steven Yeun has been cast in Thunderbolts. No announcement as to the character he's playing but apparently it's a significant one.

Rumor has it that Yeun is

Spoiler

Sentry / The Void

 

[Chris2K]

Victoria Alonso has left Marvel Studios, she has been Kevin Fiege's right hand woman since 2012 after being on the team before even the first Iron Man film in 2006, and her departure is more than a little surprising.

[Chris2K]

As part of yesterday's Alonso post I initially wrote there were rumours that she was responsible for the recent VFX issues because of her instigating a toxic "with us or against us" policy where VFX studios got blackballed for not meeting Marvel's expectations of both quality at unreasonable turnaround, and the lengths that they go to to prevent leaks. But I had no sources, so I deleted it.

Anyway, here's a source.

It seems to be stirring up a strange mix of people accusing her of being the sole person responsible for Marvel's issues, to people saying that she's being scapegoated for being an LGBTQ+ woman in the movie industry. As with all things in 2023 the concept of a middle ground is seemingly not an option.

[gunnar hendershow]

https://apnews.com/article/jonathan-majors-arrested-3ccf23bb407f5e6d2441ccc536b254f2

Recast and move on.

[Chris2K]

Directors are now speaking out about his "cruel and sociopathic behaviour in both his professional and personal life". 

I knew he was too good to be true.

[GoGo Yubari]

Looking forward to Doctor Strange somehow meddling with the fabric of the multiverse and suddenly all Kangs look like John David Washington or someone like that

[Hellraiser]

Fucking hell! This is extremely disappointing. But I have to concur with damhausen. Fire him and recast. It'll be easy to explain away in-universe with all the multiverse shenanigans going on in the MCU right now.