Marvel Movies

[HarryTrotter]

 I do believe that was done at least once in the comics. Maybe in the Ultimate universe?

[Silver Shocker]

Spoiler

I saw a tv spot that gave that reveal away, so I knew already myself. I don't have any strong feelings about it personally.

[UnkoMan]

So, I finally got around to seeing Eternals.
While I did like it a little better than Shang Chi (Turns out I find Awkwafina incredibly annoying), it's not great. To echo my earlier comments, maybe if this had been a Disney+ series it would have had the time to develop these ancient characters a lot better. Slowly introduce them and flesh out their concept more. Then the "big reveals" would have had more impact, and the characters would have been less shallow.
That being said, I thought it did so-so with what it had, but the end result was a bit boring to me. I fell asleep during a fight scene or two.

I'll put my other thoughts in spoilers.

Spoiler

Marvel is never a direct comic adaptation, as we all know. There are a few things in this that really change certain characters, though.
Sersi, to begin with, is given main character treatment. Okay, Sersi is dope AND she was an Avenger, so if they are setting her up to be one again (with Black Knight) I'm all for it. However, her character in this is completely changed. She DOES like humans the most of every Eternal, that much is the same, but they have lost her fun loving spirit. Plus, they stuck her in a monogamous relationship for 5000 years? That's completely unlike her. She frigs.
The other characters fulfill their roles in the movie, and their personalities closer to their comic counterparts. I especially liked Sprite's anger at being a child. Again, this would have felt better if it could have been more developed over the course of a series. Given the Ikaris is the "bad guy" and Sprite goes with him twist way more depth.

The Deviants are another wasted opportunity. This is a full race of mostly sentient beings, each one unique. They did a little bit of the "Eternals aren't really the good guys" but almost no "Deviants aren't really the bad guys."
In this they are little more than animals, and despite having unique designs, basically all look the same. They are a generic plot device characters, much like the Chitauri. They might as well just be Chitauri.
The movie also eliminated Thena and Kro's on and off millennia long relationship. This is a huge plot point. These characters have depth and shades of grey throughout, that were totally washed away.
Also what's up with Kro's Ultron voice? Yeah, that's supposed to be Kro. In name only.

Another huge plot point is that both the Eternals and Deviants were created from the ancestors of humans. Celestials made them, and then modern humans with latent genes that allow for certain humans to gain superpowers later on.
That's not a thing anymore. They trick you by saying they are aliens at first, but then turns out they are some kind of creature/robot/replicant fully created by Celestials. The thing where they can be reborn with wiped memory is from a certain comic run, but in this... what do they die every time? When they are reborn for another planet, do they look entirely different to match the species of the planet they were sent to? How many different groups of Eternals are there supposed to be now? Was Thanos' planet destroyed because of a Celestial egg?
Sorry, there are a bunch of questions now.
Also, humans suck. The Eternals invented everything for us, from the wheel to society. Without them, then what? We'd just be a bunch of mound living people, hunting fish with sticks, and that's it? Is that what this movie is trying to tell us? Also, I guess they taught us American Sign Language. (I'm not mad, I think it's pretty funny.)
The shows about "Ancient Aliens did Everything" are all 100% accurate?

Celestial design, they've decided to go with a more boring and organic look, I guess? Also, we hear them speak right out the gate. Okay, whatever.
I wonder if they are going to retcon that Ego calling himself a Celestial nonsense? Why he wouldn't call himself and Elder of the Universe or something is beyond me. Seems like an error you could fix with a little trickery and change all the digital copies with, at this point.
Anyway, these are set up for, what, an Avengers down the line? Or another Eternals? I don't really see a reason to have another Eternals movie, and my head keeps wondering when will they start building their next Avengers team? The space stuff could go in a Guardians movie or... well, who knows where they are going? They seem to have a lot of cosmic characters and plotlines now.

And a final complaint, that Bollywood number was too Americanized. In particular the singing, and not just because it was done in English. Come on, Bollywood is dope. Give us a full number.
Ha ha ha.

Sorry, ha ha, that's a bunch of writing. Probably more than the movie actually warrants? Oh well, I am just thinking out loud.
Also, what's with the digs at the Uni-Mind? Uni-Mind IS an awesome name. Phastos, I believe in you!

Spoiler

Oh yeah, and I forgot my biggest question which is, why are the Eternals so selectively bad or good at fighting Deviants? This is actually a complaint with most science fantasy action movies. Like how Buffy can't take one of those uber vamps in season 7, but then she CAN take one, and then everybody can casually kill them in an all out war. I wish shows would stop doing this.

[Tomato]

I saw dr strange yesterday, and... ho boy this is a movie i have conflicted feelings about. I'm gonna keep the real big stuff out of even my spoiler tags jic, but for the nonspoileryest version of my take: Its a well made film that is almost uniquely not made for me, and it will be a bit more polarizing. I recommend it even if i dont personally like it, if that makes sense. Everyone will have a different reaction to it.

Spoiler

Lets get this out of the way: cameos are tacked on and almost insulting. These do not feel nearly as earned as nwh, serve very little function, and only one of them matters long term (because the actor will likely play the "main" universe version). In hindsight especially theres a piece of... sound that is just SUPER blatant. Again, trying to be spoiler lite, but you'll know what i mean. It exists for no other reason than "look at me! I'm doing the thing!"

That said, it is admittedly a super minor issue in the movie. The bigger barrier to me personally is one i suspected going in: I'm not, and never have been, a fan of horror. And this movie dips into those elements as much as they can with a pg13 rating.

I also just dont like the story it's telling. It does that well and the motivations are natural but like... i still don't like how dark they took a character. It rubs me wrong, even though it's the natural outcome of everything we've seen. Can't really undo what they've done.

[SickAlice]

Love And Thunder. Where to begin? You have to have certain tastes I think? One for Thor and Jane romance which is fine I say but you have to want to see that. Also for real out there science fiction of yesterday because this felt like a love letter to directors like Tobe Hooper. I was expecting Barbarella to ice skate on a manta ray wearing a skunk outfit out the blue at any point. Also a love letter to Guns And Roses, also that's fine though then they should have included more of their songs which they do not. You have to have an appreciation for certain things that happened in the other films. For example friends of the director and their kids showing up, taking the spotlight and derailing the plot while playing "Just Some Regular Person You Never Heard Of" and saying quirky one liners that really aren't funny or cute. And that happens a lot, more than previous films. Though Janes friend does show up out of the blue for no reason but is not wearing not wearing a knitted cap. And actually she delivers this time as opposed to seeming like a person visiting a film set in the second film. Also just a cameo for her. Speaking of cameos the ad is deceptive in that that's all the Guardians Of The Galaxy do. Most have bare bones lines with the exception of Pratt and he's still a minor plot device. Just in case anyone is thinking of going because they want some Rocket Raccoon action or something. You won't see it here.

The actors deliver. Maybe the most entertaining thing next to the FX and action sequences. Especially Bale's villain. He plays deranged like it's second nature to him. His character is the most plot worthy and feels completed from start to finish. I can't say as much for the rest which is a complaint because again the center of the plot is supposed to be Thor and Jane's relationship. And it's there, a lot but it ends up anticlimactic. As does about anything else in the film, in fact it's going to steer right off the road over and over.

Overall it's a "Popcorn Movie" imo. Not something you're going to want invest yourself in. Just a bunch of fun noise, colors, movements and stupid jokes. Personally I don't mind, I'm there to be stimulated and that was most of the movies in the 80's when I grew up in fact it was pretty much every action movie. I otherwise think it's a pretty stupid and trippy production and more comes off like the directors personal vanity project and a college frat boy doing a thing because they think it be cool if that happened as opposed to doing it because the story demanded it happen. I do feel I wasted my money and should have waited for a cheap matinee at best and for it to stream at worst. You'll show up to see The Guardians Of The Galaxy but instead you'll see a lot of wealth peoples kids who they bought the present of being in a Marvel movie.

[Tomato]

Most of my reaction is gonna be copied over from discord, tho I will tweak it in places as I go. My opinions are pretty similar to those going in.

Benton and those with similar mindsets towards the previous film will hate it, and should not watch it (tho I doubt he was planning on it)

Personally I liked it, but I also dont have a great attachment to classic or modern thor stories. I think mileage may vary here, especially  with Bale's Gor. He does what the film needed. I do feel there's either a cut scene and/or another scene was cut down for time, but he works as an antagonist. That being said, his reasons for attacking Gods are believable and I totally buy it. Separate from the comic character (who I'm not sure he lives up to based on what i know) he's decent.

There's stuff I'm torn on, but it's a good movie overall. There's a lot more... pathos here, if anyone was worried about it being just Ragnarok again. The gags are there, but there's a bit of an edge to this one. More of a bite.

The dark realm or whatever was GORGEOUS. The way they handled it was so striking. I'd go so far as to say between that and the other brilliant uses of color, this was the most visually striking movie since Dr Strange 1. Even moreso than MoM.

Overall, I think the story is weak in a few spots, Gor is better than expected but still kinda eh compared to what I know of his comic self, and it is another film like Ragnarok. It's BETTER than Ragnarok imho, but your personal mileage will vary, especially with how it handles both Gor and the various Pantheons. Like, I fully believe it of the Greek ones don't misunderstand, but I do choke on the idea that Bast is complicit, if that makes sense.

But to be clear, I quite liked it. Not top 10 material, but it's quite good, and Janes arc in particular is something I do think fans of the first 2 films should watch.

[hmarrs]

I'm in line with Slick A.
The Humor is now starting to take me out of the Movie.
Where once the Humor was there to reinforce and serve the Movie it seems now the Movie is there to reinforce and serve the Humor.
I dont want to see Thor as a Comedy with some Dramatic Moments.
I want to see Thor as a Drama with some Comedic moments.

Or I wont be invested.

At this point Marvel has gone overboard with its Comedic Routine and is becoming a Parady of itself.

This is why the Dramatic was Anticlamtic Slick A.

If the Comedy drives the Drama then the Drama will be climatic if the Drama serves the Comedy then the Comedy becomes climatic...n here it was all about the Joke until it becomes a Joke...

N I dont mind Thor using Jokes I just dont want Thor to become a Joke.
N I was afraid of that after Ragnorok.
While I liked it I was afraid the people liking it too much..n the Director pushing it to another level with the Comedy...bcse it was already tetering on the Comedic..

Unfortunately that's exactly what they did.
To me it became a comedy and I for one cant get into the dramatic when I'm watching a comedy...its one or the other unless you can find that delicate balance...Which they did in Ragnorok.

The comedic thing started with Gardians of the Galaxy...

They found something that worked and tried to use it as a Formula until it became overkill.

It works well for Gardians of the Galaxy but it wont work for everything.
Like DC tried with being Dark..
While it works for Batman it wont work for Superman.

Every Corporation or Studio is looking for some fix all formula that they can just mass produce to feed to us and cash in on us...not realizing we are a thinking Audience/Consumer...

N it eventually backfires..

If you dont believe me just wait until Avatar 2 comes out with a breath of fresh air...

N watch how it booms.

P.S.Its sad too because when the very first Superhero movies came out they were always made into comedies because they always felt the Audience wouldnt take the Genere seriously.
Comic Book fans Screamed that this was a worthy Genre to be taken Seriously..
Then finally when people took the comic book genre seriously we had this Boom.
Just to go back to the Comedic.
We have come full circle
And may be witnessing the beginning of the end boys.

[Tomato]

I disagree. Thor going the more silly comedy route is more or less the niche they've been in since Ragnarok. It's not a niche that even I'm super fond of (I straight up told my roommate yesterday I liked L&T more than Ragnarok only because of the drama elements) but MoM was pretty dark. Shang Chi, Spider-Man, even Eternals (meh as it was) were all played straight. Wakanda Forever will open with BP being dead.

The issue isn't Marvel going all in on stupid funny goofy. It's that you have a director and a main actor on the Thor series specifically who both want to go full comedy with it because they have the same irreverence for the material that Snyder did, they just went the other way with it. But at least they're having fun with it.

For all the other garbage I give Marvel, they have had a good handle on keeping a good level of variety on their films. Heist movies, Space Operas, big dumb action movies, political thrillers... they're all spaced throughout. It is also not a coincidence that this dumb, relatively brainless comedy that still had themes of death and rebirth was placed between MoM (a child-friendly horror movie with themes of loss) and Wakanda Forever (a movie we know features the death of OG Black Panther and likely will feature his replacement stepping into the role). The idea is to place something a lot lighter between the two potentially darker films (MoM's music battle notwithstanding  ) much like Ant-Man 2 was specifically placed after Infinity War to give that breath of fresh air before Endgame.

[hmarrs]

I get you Tomato and I agree with you..

Well placed and well balanced goes well.
But when overdone it turns into just a comedy.
Thus becoming a Paraody of itself.

It's a delicate balance...there is a difference between being a comedy and being a joke.

Not saying its come to that I just to dont want it to come to that.
At least not yet I hope.

I just feel in Ragnorok it was better paced and better placed humor.

It had a tighter grip between the comedic and the drama.
Just my opinion.

[Tomato]

Eh, respectfully my opinion is on the opposite end of things. Neither is good at it mind you, but I never got drama from Ragnarok, ever. It makes fun of the previous films tragedy, Odin's goodbye is undercut by the revelation he was a terrible person who hid his awful past, the Warriors 3 are killed off almost entirely without weight (Hogun is the only one who gets ANYTHING resembling a good death) and about the only time I felt anything was some minor bits of character with Loki. Otherwise it's jokey joke get help nonsense. That's not to say I didn't have fun on the ride, but there's no meat on the bones for me.

L&T was more... bipolar, I guess. The comedy was... dumber I'll grant you (the whole realm of gods scene), but it contrasted those serious moments even more. 80% of the Jane stuff (when it's not trying to be cute with the flashbacks) is played straight. Jane's dilemma at the end is more emotionally impactful for me than anything in Ragnarok. That little bit of extra meat makes it a bit more palatable for me.

Again though, I think you're worrying over nothing. Feige/Marvel have always had a good sense of balance with this stuff. There's a reason the comic movie trend hasn't died off like all these doomsayers have been predicting it would for years... it's because they've gone out of their way to not have every movie be the same, to blend in tones and genres and ideas for each film so it's not just dumb action movie after dumb action movie. It's just that this one movie trends on the dumber, farcical end of that spectrum.

[hmarrs]

I actually agree with just about everything you just said.
Especially the Death of the Hero 3...not even mentioned.
I guess that's why that scene with Sif was upsetting for me because they had a Moment to address the seriousness of that Moment and played it off with another Joke.

I just felt many moments were out of place which to me made it seem like you say Dumber then Ragnorok.

It just seemed to me Ragnorok was just a little bit more intelligent in its delivery.

I like what you said about the Variousness about the Genre and I do hope it's what helps keep it alive.
😀

[Panther_Gunn]

I saw L&T opening weekend (something I avoid lately, but the theater wasn't too full).  As y'all might know by now, Benton & I are pretty much in the same camp for how things should look & feel.  The issues I had with Ragnarok (mostly silliness) continues here, and feels like it got cranked up a bit more, with a bit of bad rom-com thrown in.  While I haven't read any in-comic appearances with him, I do *not* care for Korg's portrayal, which I think detracts too much from everything else.  Some loose ends get tidied up, but not well.  There were serious aspects to it, but I felt the film gave more weight to the comedy & silly portions of it, which waters down the story too much.  And I did curse the movie at the end for making me care about a character that I had already decided that I was done with (which just means that part was done well -- damn them).  All said & done, not my favorite (superhero/Marvel/Thor) movie, but it was entertaining, and I'll end up owning it on blu-ray & watching it again, but I expect I'll just grit my teeth through the silly bits.

MoM, I mostly liked, but I think leaks & trailers spoiled some things and made me expect more from it that wasn't there (same with NWH).  I had expected it to be more of seeing *several* iterations of Earth, with several versions of heroes & groups, instead of somewhat focusing on only one.  And I also didn't care for how Wanda was written/treated.  She deserved better.

However, I will drop this here, mostly because I haven't seen it brought up anywhere around here yet.  Can anyone explain to me what all the hate for Morbius is about?  I'll admit it's not winning any awards, but I didn't really have too many problems with it (other than the SFX in the fight scenes making it rather muddy, visually).  I thought it was an acceptable character intro to the movie universe (still not sure which universe is, though).

[Tomato]

So I haven't seen hate for Morbius itself... well, not exactly. Biggest thing was that the trailers heavily featured shots of newspapers and graffiti involving Spider-Man that straight up wasn't in the movie, but mostly what I saw was just... the internet. Someone posted a "It's Morbin' Time" joke, the internet had fun with it and piled on even more... then Sony DRASTICALLY miscalculated the buzz (Thinking it was people just realizing it was out and disappointed it was out of theaters) and spent a whole bunch of money to re-release it... only for it to bomb again because anyone who was going to see it in theaters pretty much already had, which led to even MORE ridicule, until that just became a meme all on its own.

Beyond that there's general issues related to Jared Leto being kind of a garbage human (He apparently delayed production by being "method" and using his crutches to even go to the Bathroom, plus all the stuff he did as Joker, plus a bunch of other rumors I won't repeat here... not a good dude, basically). I've seen far more hate for Jared specifically than for Morbius, which just sounds kind of forgettable.

[SickAlice]

I didn't watch Morbius but couldn't avoid the chatter about it and what I got was:
1. Basic fandom snubbing of everything even when it's their favorite thing. I learned long ago this is just how a lot of fans express their enjoyment for a thing. Consider cable news shows, people like the anxiety of those and seeing (ironically paying for and keeping wealthy) public figures they both despise and fixate on all the same. It's a bit tricky to explain for me but I learned to adapt to that. Clearly the people that snub these things are buying, watching and focused on the things. If they didn't care for that it wouldn't be present. You probably can't even name a single property that you also can't find a verbal drubbing of. I say it's the nature of consumerism imo.
2. It's fun to chant online. Not so much to say "I thought it was okay". (see #1)
3. It seemed more over than all else the fandom didn't like that it didn't do well. NWH and MOM for example were spat on hard before they were released (which a form of advertising known as The Dove Marketing Method, and it works well (see #1). "The city likes it's sunshine but it loves it's dirt even more" -Brian Azzarello). Because it means the likelihood is less new content will not be greenlit in the future, noted that the film companies are cutting tentative releases currently. It's kind of obvious their projections show less comic book superhero stuff moving units in the near future, to be expected in a saturated mature market, well maybe within another given streaming apps platforms. So anyways most are able to see down the line and look at these other projected releases and consider they'll read news of them being scrapped at some point. Most are not good at expressing industry views but that's what I managed to decipher of what they're saying.
4. As Tomato says a loathing for the actor and/or media representation thereof. You'll see a lot of this with Ezra Miller going forward. Then again it "can" actually garner more reach thus people interested in seeing it, because Dove Method, but that didn't seem to stick the landing for Morbius. It of course gets engagements for media outlets (aka clickbait/rage or anxiety baiting) so it will be ever present.
5. Neglected often by us in fandom, the majority of a worldwide audience are not comic book readers thus do not carry the nostalgia nor bonus expectations of these productions thus it falls to different reasons for like or snubbing a film, add cultural differences of course and differences in how anything is promoted in any region.

On a side I think No Way Home upstaged it in part. It came out to close to that successful one thus inside it's shadow. I'm not a rush to see the film but more because I don't get to see much at all so I'm fairly frugal about what I do finally end up watching. But you know, all art has a target audience, someone it speaks to. Sometimes it doesn't speak as many is all. I'm sure that film had a special place for someone out there.