Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase 4 & Beyond (and a chance to change your vote)

xposts lmao and they included all those other details i mentioned for ~aesthetic~ reasons I suppose? and do I really have to rehash 30yo arguments about the orientalism in Blade Runner c'mon

anyway, I don't read the comics so I don't know how it's portrayed there but if you can't see how messed up it is that a franchise that cares so much about ~representation~ introduced a city located in Asia, with an Asian name, with Asian characteristics, with no actual Asian characters in it, then I can't help you

yet if MCU madripoor is majority populated by gangsters who read east asian they’re just in a different representational bind

In terms of Asian representation in the MCU, the main cast of the forthcoming Eternals movie is about 1/3 Asian and the Shang-Chi movie looks like it will have an almost entirely Asian cast and both are helmed by Asian directors so I'm not getting too bent out of shape about Madripoor being presented the way Madripoor has pretty much always been presented (ie as an Asian island pretty much in name only).

sigh

afaict for all the talk about madripoor attracting criminals from all over the world, there weren't even any Asians IN THE BACKGROUND. fuck this, there were so many ways they could've done this even a tiny bit better... starting with the damn weather.

also Southeast Asia looks very very different from East Asia - for a start, we're significantly browner. but sure it's cool that they finally made some concessions towards asian representation 23 movies in with a mostly east asian cast.

It’s not really a good look itt at the moment

afaict for all the talk about madripoor attracting criminals from all over the world, there weren't even any Asians IN THE BACKGROUND. fuck this, there were so many ways they could've done this even a tiny bit better... starting with the damn weather.

I don’t remember all the movies but there are asian actors in the Dr Strange one, iirc.

& Tilda Swinton

Roz FWIW I didn't mean to invalidate your concerns. I apologize if that's how it came across. If the people making these shows/movies choose to foreground real-world details that weren't as prominent in the comics, they can and should do better about how they represent those details.

best thing about this show so far was marvel’s decision to swap wandavision premiering before this.

Bad faith representation notwithstanding, I get the impression people aren't enjoying this show, but it's kind of... fine? I'd put it squarely in the middle of what Marvel's done so far (along with e.g. Civil War, the 2nd Guardians movie). I'm enjoying it as I watch, and then completely forget about it, much like a mid-2000s Marvel comic.

I'm enjoying it just fine. Roz is right of course.

It's fine but, yeah, I'd say mid-tier MCU thus far. I'm not crazy about their pursuing the hoary old 'b-but legacy!' boondoggle that's been more of DC's stock in trade. Neither that nor the 'b-but ersatz super-soldiers!' thing really work for me as plot drivers. And taking Baron Zima along for the ride felt like standard issue 'people doing out of character stupid shit so that totally predictable bad things can happen' lazy plotting.

Anyway revived the separate thread but also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp9pNPdNwjI

I didn't think it was a mishmash of anything, I thought somebody just said "make it look like Blade Runner or something"

but yes... it would've been nice if there was more than one or two background Asians in this, but forget it it's Madripoor

Meantime here's the next series!

Loki’s time has come. ⌛ Watch the brand-new trailer for #LOKI, and start streaming the Marvel Studios Original Series June 11 on @DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/6bnfo5C2R1

— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) April 5, 2021

oh this looks bad-ass

the first (square, heavily filtered) pictures I ever took for instagram were of that elevator atrium

Badass Hiddleston in The Super Good Place: SVU Multiverse Edition? I'm into it.

Yeah this looks great and a half.

This looks potentially extremely good.

Nice to see the Timecops using a Volca Keys to monitor Loki! pic.twitter.com/FsiuVA9Yhq

— Matt Colville? (@mattcolville) April 5, 2021

Trailer breakdown

https://io9.gizmodo.com/marvel-secrets-in-the-new-loki-trailer-the-avengers-t-1846621398

Sure, you're enjoying #FalconAndTheWinterSoldier, but have you ever read Bucky's texts to Squirrel Girl?

From Squirrel Meets World by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale pic.twitter.com/9wyfSYKp4T

— Laura ✪‎⧗ (@maxiekat) April 5, 2021

more in thread

RELEASE THE FULL ZEMO DANCE #ReleaseTheZemoCut pic.twitter.com/r7nbO6dFlJ

— keely ⧖ (@yeIenabelova_) April 6, 2021

Just caught up with the most recent episode. Pretty dumb stuff, kind of tonally weird. My daughter actually calls the show "Falcon and the Winter Snoozefest," which is a little harsh but probably stems from her disinterest in following all the silly (not that intriguing) intrigue. Plus, she kept asking me if Madripoor was on Earth.

Btw, if Sharon can take out a dozen heavily armed goons by herself, who even needs super soldiers? They should be injecting *her* blood into people. Oh, and why does Zemo put on his purple mask just to do some butt kicking, then take it off again when he pulls up in his sweet ride? Does the mask have special powers?

It felt like the kind of dumb 'fanservice for the sake of fanservice' move that Marvel has generally been good about avoiding. He puts on his purple mask because he wears a purple mask in the comics. There was nothing in the narrative of the actual show that signified why it happened.

I believe it's foreshadowing for later in the series where Zemo incapacitates Bucky using his "purple head"

Hoping there's SOME kind of explanation for it, all you got was this weird longing look when he pulled the mask out of the car. But there's only three episodes left so probably not

At first I thought it was a self-conscious stunt man swap gag. Like, Zemo puts on the mask, "Zemo" (stunt person) goes ham, and then Zemo takes off the mask. I thought the clubbing scene was a joke, too. "You guys should blow off some steam." (10 seconds of club scene.) The next day: "Whew, this place sure knows how to party!" But then I realized they were both just kind of dumb. Maybe they planned to have a fight in the club, which seemed primed and is definitely part of the action movie lexicon, but just didn't have the time/budget?

I need you all to know that Marvel also released a version of the Zemo Cut on YouTube, but instead of a 30-second video it's an *entire hour* of Zemo dancing https://t.co/vEA3BLZxp5 https://t.co/yD2uioo0X4

— Michelle Jaworski (@michejaw) April 8, 2021

I like the idea that maybe the actor was dancing to nothing for an hour.

Aw, wait, it's just the same thing looped. Fake hour long dance!

They should have tossed a new scene in the middle of that, just to see if anyone caught it.

It might be old news, but I just read that this show was supposed to feature a deadly pandemic outbreak and that all of that stuff was cut out, or at least scrambled up. Don't know how accurate that it, but it could explain both why the show debuted after WandaVision and also why bits and pieces of it might feel disjointed.

Also saw that the writer of last week's episode (and the show's executive producer) is literally the guy that wrote the John Wick movies (which I didn't know), so that might explain the "John Wick-specific rip-offs/homages."

Started getting really strong Bruce McCullough (and possibly even Gavin, specifically) vibes from Zemo tonight and, well, it's distracting. Hope I didn't ruin the experience for anyone just then.

The depiction of Walker on this show is very nice. An avatar of white male anxiety (cheating as a means of dominating those whose existence threatens to expose your obvious shortcomings).

Kinda feel like Zemo has been throwing out words/phrases to see if he can reboot Bucky. His hanging delivery of “cherry blossom tea” had me wondering.

liked this episode much more than the last one, but the show as a whole is still kinda just OK-ish

Walker's petulant little "they weren't even supersoldiers" was so good, though. Is it just me or is there a bit of an echo between his Captain America and Homelander from The Boys?

also Dora Milaje spin-off when?

Allegedly Ayo is going to be a bigger part of Black Panther 2

who is going to be protagonist in Black Panther 2. I thought I heard they weren't recasting.

Black Panther is a title more than person so it could be anyone. Shura was Black Panther in the comics for a while

Final image of the episode was on the nose but, well, in a good way. Not a GOOD good way but you get what I mean.

idk this episode was v clumsy. dialogue as exposition, multiple instances of plot-forced stupidity, etc etc.

even before the heel turn it was, like, come on this guy has been through 1000 psych tests. make his fall plausible or it doesn’t mean anything.

whatever, not like I won’t watch it all but Invincible is better rn

Yeah, this may be another instance of 'John Walker is like this in the show because John Walker is like this in the comics'. If the MCU is letting Marvel Comics history carry the storytelling water for them, they're doing it wrong.

Like, I appreciate how he's portrayed at this point but I agree that the transition from how he was portrayed at the start hasn't really been earned.

I don't know, John's felt like a wrong'un since we first saw him. "Captain America should be the best human, not the best soldier" and all that jazz. The show is still pretty middling mind

Yeah I was about to say, from the get-go (start of second episode rather than the two-second bit in the first) you get a sense of someone who was overwhelmed at living up to a standard.

of course! that’s the setup! but that struggle between who he is and who he wants to be hasn’t been dramatized.

lol I made the crack about Invincible before Mahershala Ali even showed up. is there anything he’s not great in?

no knock on Wesley Snipes, who continues to steal every scene Eddie Murphy gives him, but I am an Ali stan since The 4400 and I cannot wait for Blade.

i’m enjoying this but sam and bucky feel like supporting characters in their own show - john and karli are the ones with story arcs and zemo is the fun wildcard