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

Personally I thought this episode hit hard — and always would, but this week underscored it.

yeah this was a good one

I'm with eephus (tonally, this can't find its stride) but JLD as madame hydra was inspired casting and woke me up.

sebastian stan’s resemblance to liam gallagher really struck me this episode for some reason

Sarah's boat was in such bad condition that "Mr. Dinh" realized it wasn't worth it to buy it, but all it needed was... a couple of dozen random people from the neighborhood with no special expertise in boat repair to hang out puttering with it for a day?

Why would you think people who live in a community where multiple people make their living as fishermen would have no expertise in fixing boats? Also, did you miss the narrative sequences where Sarah said she was trying to do everything herself and Sam had the idea of calling in favors from around the town after being reminded of how indebted most of the community was to their parents? We also don't know how much time passed while they were working on the boat; we don't know how long they had been working on it before Bucky showed up, we don't know how long Bucky stayed after he blew off his next-day flight, no specific time frame is given for that sequence of events.

I agree the Karli subplot is going south but you're picking on this for the sake of finding something to criticize.

yeah, they were doing the It's a Wonderful Life thing. had no problems with that

the Lumbly stuff was great and touching, in particular. Loved seeing JLD as Madame Hydra/the Power Broker, maybe? interesting to put kind of a "rest" episode (after the initial, Civil War-inversion fight) in preparation for the finale. good shield training montage, too.

not sure what the hell's up with Sharon Carter hiring Batroc to kill Sam though

I’ve been trying to torrent season 2 of Lodge 49 for about six months (with one seed!) and it’s suddenly finished downloading in a single evening. Perhaps some Wyatt Russell effect going on...

one of this things chief sins is how it got w. russell skinny and then let him do some bad acting

🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭 pic.twitter.com/KGj9vF4ocX

— TGB (@twitersbadboy) April 18, 2021

yikes

I’m assuming that’s an autocorrect for “yoked”

redirect to juiceman thread

lol at getting him disgustingly jacked just as he's threatening to get canceled

Shang-Chi trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giWIr7U1deA

that looks lit

didn't know so many people didn't like Awkwafina, I love her

does my man fight w chinese guard dogs bc that's cool :)

Awkwafina is GREAT, I love her in everything she's in

Partial San Francisco setting = does he run into Ant-Man or...

i am still pissed that Kim's Convenience was cancelled (actually not metaphorically) but looking forward to seeing Simu Liu become a huge star.

it got cancelled?!? Liu looked like a superhero in that show for years already

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/kims-convenience-concluding-1.5941254

having no closure with KC sucks

Shang Chi looks rad. What is Shang-Chi? Any relation to Iron Fist?

The reboot of Speed we've been waiting for

Character dates back to the actual Bruce Lee era, originally credited to Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin. He is literally the son of Fu Manchu. They play that down a bit these days.

Played down in the MCU to the extent that he is now the son of the Mandarin (like the apparently real one, not Ben Kingsley).

(Hence the ten rings, natch.)

Looking forward to this!

What's Kumail getting canceled for? I have been on a Twitter break for a bit, so all I knew was the 'roids accusation stuff. The cast of Silicon Valley is not doing well.

Actual goosebumps several times during that trailer. Stoked.

What's Kumail getting canceled for? I have been on a Twitter break for a bit, so all I knew was the 'roids accusation stuff. The cast of Silicon Valley is not doing well.

nothing specific yet but it seems inevitable

He’s pretty much the worst person I have ever worked with lmao

— Alice Wetterlund (@alicewetterlund) January 3, 2021

Okay, was curious. Sounds about like par for the course for the cast of that show, Jimmy O. Yang seems to be the notable exception (and hopefully Zach Woods too, though maybe I've missed something about him).

Also got this happening

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/olivia-colman-in-talks-to-join-samuel-l-jackson-in-marvels-secret-invasion-exclusive

The Big Sick left a very bad taste in my mouth though I would say I came away with more of a "dude who's too proud of himself" vibe than "abusive asshole" vibe. But obviously those can overlap and who knows anymore.

xp: I know she is a current nominee but don't they normally call you an Oscar winner if you've ever won one?

I don't know Shang-Chi at all. Does he have powers? Kind of looks like a pretty standard fantasy (?) martial arts movie, which I suppose in the end a lot of MCU action stuff resembles, too.

No powers, just one of the best martial artists in the MCU. Last I read was his extended Marvel Comics Presents serialization, but in his original run, it was a mix of capitalizing on Bruce Lee / kung fu appreciation and adapting Sax Roemer's Fu Manchu mythology with standalone stories and those that fit the Fu Manchu narrative. Some Marvel interaction, with Shang-Chi meeting the Man-Thing, and either Spider-Man and The Thing in their Team-Up / Two-in-One series. The Doug Moench / Paul Gulacy years are justifiably beloved as very very cool meditations on a gentle soul required to use his violent skill. Iirc, the MCP run had Shang tricked out of his retirement to fight again. Loved the character enough to buy the four thick book collections, and all but one of the Deadly Hands of Kung Fu collections.

Yeah, all I ever really knew of him was some older comics a friend had when I was a kid and what I remember reading was very much in thrall to the Bruce Lee / general kung fu zeitgeisty thing going on at the time.

Yeah, to answer DJI's question above, Shang-Chi isn't really connected to Iron Fist beyond the fact that they were both among a slew of characters whipped up in response to the '70s kung fu craze.

Thanks. I'm guessing Shang-Chi must have some sort of pseudo-invulnerability/fast healing, since it seems like even the normies (Hawkeye, Black Widow, for example) survive getting tossed around and slammed in ways that would kill actual people.

Feel like JiC right now. I can go google this stuff ;)

The MOKF issues drawn by the late great Gene Day are classics.

xpost Ha. One way Google isn't that helpful is that it doesn't really convey whether Shang-Chi (for example) is a major comic book character, a minor one, someone that just had a few years in the spotlight but has since faded away, a recent hit character, a cult favorite, etc. Everyone's got the same kind of extensive wikipedia page, but the context is lost on someone like me, who knows more about comics than 95% of the population but less about comics than 95% of the people that know about comics. Clearly Shang-Chi was big enough to justify a multi-million dollar feature film and yet, I'd never heard of him. I'd never heard of the Guardians of the Galaxy, either, or the Eternals, or a few others of these feature films or TV shows. Like, Moon Knight? No idea. Loki? Sure. The What If? comics? Yes. Ms. Marvel? No.

Sounds like we have a similar level of knowledge. I read X-Men back in the 90s, so the only thing I knew about Captain Marvel was that Rogue took her powers.

Sorry I guess it was more like the late 80s? So old...

Yeah, that sounds about right (I'm 46). I probably stopped reading any comics regularly by the late '80s, though did sort of keep up a little the way some people watch others play games online.

among comic nerds, Shang Chi gets love. He had over a hundred issues of his own comic in the 70s/80s!

I think it's less "Shang-Chi was big enough to get his own movie" and more "Ron Perelman is no longer able to stop us making movies about not-white characters"

it's gonna do ridiculous numbers and turn liu into a megastar.

lol I went too many Marvel-owning billionaires back: Ike Perlmutter.