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

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

i thought this was great, personally.

very much having fun with this. doesn't have the fun mystery box/whimsy of Wandavision but still a blast

What do we make about the fact that in Sam's conversation with Morgenthau they gave him almost word for word the line that MLK,Jr. puts in the mouth of the "white moderate" in Letter from the Birmingham Jail: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action."

Well, context is important; he said this to someone who tied people up in a building and then blew them up

That said, Sam’s characterization throughout the entire MCU has been solidly neoliberal so I don’t know why anyone would expect home to suddenly morph into a cross between James Baldwin and Huey Newton*

* I do have a theory but it’s neither nice nor generous

I was just wondering whether the writers did this as an intentional reference. Maybe my memory is overstating the word-for-wordness of it.

Sam stood with a dude who was the embodiment of white bread American values and still seems to believe in the 'dream' even though he has abundant reason not to; it's interesting to see the show flirt with taking this head on, but retreat. I don't know that they have the balls to go all out on it.

It wasn't clear to me (likely because I fell asleep and missed part of episode 3) that the people impacted (the 'refugees') weren't people returning from the Blip, they were people who were displaced because people came back. Karli is a relatively sympathetic villain for these movies/shows. I'd like to hold out hope that this show will tackle the toxic elements of nationalism. We'll see.

the show's throwing in with a "both sides are evil and a little right" mentality. it will be interesting to see how they use Sam and Bucky to thread that needle, hoping they'll come up with something a little more conceptually satisfying than the end of Winter Soldier (as much as I love that movie)

I would interrogate why you think Steve Rogers as depicted in the MCU stands for “whitebread values”

I was so high when I typed that last night I'm surprised the sentences are even comprehensible.

lol fair

As someone who hasn't read many comics since the 90s, I thought the idea that superheros=supremacists super-interesting. It's good argument, and could, of course, be extremely damaging to the MCU, which is why it felt so surprising. I guess this is already well-worn ground in the comic books (?). I read something about how it's the reluctance to use their powers that differentiates the good guys from the villains (who think their powers are their birthright, etc.) in the MCU, but I don't find that convincing.

I also don't really love Zemo's use of the word "supremacist" -- I mean, it's a word that at east in my world is only used with the word "white" prepended to it, so the use of the unmodified noun inevitably comes off as "you know, like white supremacy, but not involving whiteness," which I guess is a little too abstract for me. (I also feel like the comics world is quite plainly depicted as one where superpowered beings are not inevitably going to use their power to crush the unpowered -- come on, this takes the most famous line in the entire Marvel Universe, "With great power comes great responsibility," and renders it meaningless, false, or a cruel joke.)

I think it's a 100% rational position for Zemo to take, given what happened to his family as a result of superheroes saving the world from a menace that they themselves created. It's also meant to be one character's point of view, not a thesis statement for the entire fictional enterprise.

Yeah I guess this is where "haven't seen that many of the movies" comes in for me, I don't really know what's up with Zemo before this show

How good does your MCU knowledge have to be to enjoy the new shows? My partner has watched a couple of the films but has a terrible memory for that kind of thing.

I had to have a few tabs open to figure out who was what and which was going on in the middle episodes of WandaVision, but sounds like you would be able to murmur that sort of annotation more efficiently?

I guess this is already well-worn ground in the comic books (?)

Not necessarily in mainline Marvel books, but, yes, a strong theme of 1980s and 1990s revisionist supercomics, and of many booped out since by the Millar-o-bot 5000.

Whether or not we think Marvel superheros use their powers "with great responsibility" or not, I still think they (and in particular, Captain America, which is especially rich with irony) think that they are these exceptional beings who ultimately only answer to themselves. We saw this hashed out a bit in Civil War, but I think the fact that Zemo states this so plainly, in a time where many (mostly white) people are reckoning with their own participation in supremacy, is both topical, and potentially ruinous toward the whole idea of superheroes.

Probably worth noting that Zemo wants the supers snuffed out partly because he sees himself as an exceptional being who ultimately only answers to himself.

How good does your MCU knowledge have to be to enjoy the new shows? My partner has watched a couple of the films but has a terrible memory for that kind of thing.

I could probably fill her in as we go more or less, but it might not be very fun for her.

potentially ruinous toward the whole idea of superheroes.

they've held up under this kind of penetrating analysis for 51 years so far