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

I spent way too much time going "how would her costume affect the way they release these movies, that makes no sense"

xpost - Right, that's the current plan. I'm just wondering it this underperforms they might say, "screw it, let's see if we can milk some more cash out of the Premier Access thing until it hits the free tier". I mean, I know we can't be the only family that would willingly plop down the $20 to watch it sooner but won't go to a theater now.

lol DJP

"i mean sure it's a racist backstory but we're pretending that doesn't exist anymore WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US HERE"
https://screenrant.com/shang-chi-marvel-china-release-movie-backlash-explained/

i'm guessing the real reason is more related to chloe zhao tbh

Why? I'm assuming that would be the case for Eternals, but not sure why it would impact the Shang-Chi plans.

china being an 800 pound gorilla to marvel studios in general is my thinking?

anyway, if you care (spoilers obviously):
https://www.vulture.com/2021/09/shang-chi-legend-of-the-ten-rings-post-credit-scenes-explained.html

I don’t know what it’s like elsewhere but cinemas in London have not been crowded, or anywhere close to it, since before the pandemic. Even for opening weekends of big blockbusters.

i hope marvel takes advantage of the irony of letitia playing a scientist

“what you’re saying is completely unscientific!”
“i just want you to think for yourself..”

How is the fight/stunt choreography in the new one?

Will know tomorrow.

TEN-RINGS TONY - the good!
Combat scenes in the early stages are quite coherent by Marvel standards.
TONY LEUNG!
MICHELLE YEOH!
Fight scene between Leung & Fala Chen is unusually erotic by Marvel standards thanks to Leung’s micro-expressions; getting his ass kicked is a turn-on!

— Anne Billson (@AnneBillson) September 4, 2021

TEN-RINGS TONY - the not so good!
Directing is opposite of fleet-footed; should have channeled Tsui Hark/Lau Kar-leung.
Usual dreary Marvel father issues/dead mother woes. Yawn.
Third act degenerates into the usual Marvel CGI sound & fury n’importe quoi where you cease to care.

— Anne Billson (@AnneBillson) September 4, 2021

Looks like it's a big hit.

I generally find Marvel combat scenes quite coherent by modern franchise blockbuster standards.

Yeah, I think they've been okay on coherence since the (terrible) end of the first Avengers movie. The fight scenes at the end of Black Panther, GOTG1, WandaVision etc. are definitely coherent! They're just a bit shit compared to what came before.

Reviews seem uniform in saying the Shang Chi movie doesn't rely on lazy Asian stereotypes, which is really hard to believe given the trailer, but if it's so it's so

Most of the movie bends over backwards to skewer lazy Asian stereotypes

anything otherwise would be profoundly stupid given the importance of chinese audiences for these movies

and for other reasons too obv!

Fighting was good, probably the best we've seen in the MCU. Tony Leung was fantastic particularly. Movie overall was just solid, not top tier Marvel. I'd place it a notch over Black Widow. Had to be happy just to see every Asian and Asian-American on-screen, honestly.

Made the effort to contribute to this weekend's opening box office, as afraid as I was of the pandemic. Went to a very late showing last night with like six other people in the theater.

The third episode of What If…? was ridiculous in leaning on the grimness

I felt like it would have been more in the spirit of What If for Nick Fury to put on the Iron Man armor. Its whole thing is "things are different but somehow end up being kind of the same."

Also suffered from the fact that a What If is supposed to start by DEPICTING the alteration that changes history downstream, which this one, for obvious reasons, doesn't.

I may be too uptight about what counts as What If.

On Shang-Chi -- the last big fight was disappointing IMO, overcrowded and color graded down to a murky dusk for a scene that took place at dawn, but the bus and scaffold scenes were amazing. The fewer the characters, the better the fight in this case. Good performances -- Liu and Awkwafina have a great BFF vibe and omg is Liu great to look at or what. The elements shoehorning Shang-Chi into the MCU feel forced, but the elements shoehorning him into the Marvel print universe in the 1970s/80s felt forced too*, so I'm kind of okay with that. It's a very good MCU entry. Maybe not top tier? Requires further consideration.

(*Except for the Man-Thing issue, which I've always loved.)

The fewer the characters, the better the fight in this case.

I think this is actually almost always true throughout MCU

There are a couple of big free-for-alls I like in earlier movies, but mostly yeah.

The Civil War airport fight being an honourable exception.

For some reason I really like when they end in ott melee chaos, like Iron Man 3 and Black Widow.

I did love Katy being all “I just learned how to shoot an arrow yesterday!!!!”

I thought this was a lot of fun. Sure, some of the silly stuff was, well, silly, but it mostly flows really well. And it helps to have a real movie star as the villain. Given I know nothing about the titular character and had my doubts, I give up, I think this monolith MCU endeavor is capable of keeping the imperial streak going indefinitely. Just a matter of occasionally whittling down the number of superpowered heroes.

We watched the first Captain America movie over the weekend (one of the many of these I haven't seen). It was good, somewhat better than I expected (or at least it had a modest vibe and some charms I didn't expect). We also recently watched the second of the new Spider-Man movies... didn't like that one too much, but whatever. I guess if you don't like one particular cinematic Spider-Man, wait a few years, right?

Oooh, you are in for some treats with Winter Soldier and Civil War if you haven't seen those yet

First Holland Spidey is top-tier MCU. Second Holland Spidey...nnnnnnotsomuch.

Didn't like it as much as Homecoming, but still thought it was pretty great, esp. Mysterio.

Yeah, I do think Homecoming is good, we've watched that a few times.

My kid wants to see Winter Soldier next, so guess we will (someone told me IRL that it's their all-time favorite Marvel movie).

For those who don't care to go too deep, the list is basically: Cap 1 & 2, Iron Man 1, Spidey 1, Thor 3, Black Panther. If you aren't feeling any of those, you can safely shut it down.

(NB, have not seen either of the pandemic-era Marvels)

Cool – I also saw Iron Man OG (in the theater, little did I know what it was kicking off); and liked Ragnarok a lot too.

Ant-Man is one of the others I’ve seen and thought was fun and offbeat (at least except/until some of the generic fight stuff toward the end).

We always believed in you, @simuliu. And if being a super hero doesn’t work out, our door is always open: https://t.co/GhGMYwOdom

— iStock (@iStock) September 7, 2021

Ant-Man is one of the others I’ve seen and thought was fun and offbeat (at least except/until some of the generic fight stuff toward the end).

Ant-Man & The Wasp is more of the same except better.

For those who don't care to go too deep, the list is basically: Cap 1 & 2, Iron Man 1, Spidey 1, Thor 3, Black Panther.

I'd maybe add Guardians 1?

And doc strange surely

Black Panther I think is the only one I haven't seen a second time. It may, however, also be one of the few everyone in my family has seen, even my wife, for whatever reason. I could see watching Shang-Chi in theatres a second time at some point, the action in that one I felt took good advantage of the space. Speaking of which, I'd never thought about it or noticed, but I guess all the Marvel movies are in (more or less) Scope *except* The Avengers and Ant-Man.

And also speaking of action, Shang-Chi and Black Widow do both lean haaaaaaard into the impervious human heroes mode, which is a modest problem I had with both. If they're essentially harm-proof before they even get magic rings or fresh weapons then the fighting does become just variations of pachinko with people in place of little balls. When Shang-Chi gets his special armor in the movie I thought, huh, why bother? Is it just to get him out of the hoodie he's been wearing the entire movie?

To be fair, every action movie in the last forty years (maybe even longer) grants the main characters the ability to avoid harm in a seemingly superhero fashion, not sure that's unique to Marvel at this point.

No, for sure, that's right in "I am the best at what I do movies" movies like Mission Impossible, and Bourne, and James Bond, John Wick, et al. But when it's a series of fantasy movies that makes a distinction between human heroes and super heroes it's a distinction without merit. Iirc in Black Widow, at one point her sister complains that when space god Thor is done fighting he doesn't need to take an Advil, and I thought, Black Widow's sister, what you need is stronger than Advil.
https://c.tenor.com/XTAirZ-BVDcAAAAd/black-widow-explosion.gif

lol that gif reminds me that i actually ended up with so little interest in black widow that i skipped the last ten minutes or so and just read the ending/post credit spoilers instead. no regrets there.

Finally caught up with the two most recent "What If ... ?" episodes. The Doctor Strange episode was maybe the darkest Disney has gotten, and while the most recent Marvel Zombies one was mostly played for laughs, it's still pretty horrific for the Mouse. The show does seem to be missing (or probably more likely ignoring) the gist of the whole "what if?" premise, though. The Nick Fury one and the zombie one, for example, aren't about the repercussions of bad decisions or whatever, they're just basically ... what if something else happened, for some reason. (And incidentally both are Hank Pym's fault, so ... what if the original Ant-Man just messed everything up.)

I mean, that's the way the comics were too IIRC

The show does seem to be missing (or probably more likely ignoring) the gist of the whole "what if?" premise, though. The Nick Fury one and the zombie one, for example, aren't about the repercussions of bad decisions or whatever, they're just basically ... what if something else happened, for some reason.

Huh? That is exactly the point of What If... ? as stated in pretty much every intro. It's not supposed to be about "bad decisions", just what happens if one tiny (or not so tiny) decision point changes things. I don't think it's ever been intended to just showcase bad decisions.

xpost Maybe? I can't remember. Some of these definitely do play into the premise, though. Unrelated, this zombie one only riffed on the (not What If) comic series source material, maybe because many of the major players aren't in the MCU yet. But the Marvel Zombies comic was all horror, but this one by necessity had to tone things down (despite the number of beheadings, eviscerations, etc.)

xpost again, But most of these are not about what if one tiny thing changes, most seem to be about what if one major thing is different. Like, the first one, sure, what if Carter became Captain America, fair enough. Or what if Strange messed up time to save someone. But the Nick Fury one was "what if someone murdered all the Avengers before they became the Avengers," and the zombie one was basically "what if the Hulk returned to a world where everyone was zombies because ... reasons." They're totally different worlds.

The Nick Fury one was "what if Hope Van Dyne joined SHEILD and died" and the zombie one was "What If Janet Van Dyne became a zombie in the quantum realm" but you obviously knew that because you watched them