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

I love the parallel track the Kate/Yelena relationship seems to be taking to the Clint/Natasha relationship

I LOVE HOT SAUCE

Enjoyed the new Spider-Man movie much more than Far From Home, which was one of the blandest Marvel movies so far. But the gimmick of the new one didn't have the impact it should have had since it came off the heels of Into the Spider-Verse, which largely did the same concept better

Eternals is now streaming for free on Disney+

Watched it this morning & I am in two minds. Loved Angelina Jolie, Loved Bryan Tyree, oh and holy shit loved Kumail especially - i fell OUT over the Bollywood stuff, truly great.
the outdoorsy-ness of the movie itself was really beautiful, so many big scenic locations & wind blowing through their hair etc - and it’s incredibly colorful, the costumes look so good

But also watching this was a bit bemusing. like if i didnt know who the Avengers were & there had been no other movies to introduce the characters & i tried to watch like, endgame. but more boring. HI EVERYONE IT’S US. HI I’M THIS GUY WHO DOES A THING WITH MY EYEZ, HI I’M THIS WOMAN WHO TURNS THINGS INTO OTHER THINGS, ETC ETC OH NO A VILLAIN WE MUST FIGHT THEM , and they all just fly around blowing shit up or stand around in groups telling each other how they feel. A lot of the movie felt like that. Just kind of, *shrug*

I watched it last night cos I could finally gran a decent copy. It is a bit slow innit. It was semi interesting and I wonder if Eternals actually Will Return. I would probably watch another bit of it.

I think I enjoyed Nomadland more though and I think that was shot on the coat tails of this not vice versa.

I don't know the Eternals world so not sure how good a representation this was.

Kind of interesting to see Camden high st after not being there in a couple of years.

Filming for Nomadland took place over four months in fall 2018, with writer-director Zhao splitting time between the set and pre-production for Eternals (2021)

Are they planning to make a Sentry movie? That would be great!

Just started this, so far it's pretty solemn and silly and boring gibberish in service of nothing.

^^New Board description?

i watched it and it was hot garbage mixed with portentous claptrap. the only even vaguely redeeming element was mahershala ali’s cameo. everyone involved who is not mahershala ali should take a long, hard look at their life choices.

kumail nanjiani maybe gets a pass for:
• being wise enough to just peace out 2/3 of the way through and never return
• committing himself to getting marvel jacked for the shoot and then spending the entire movie in full CGI armor. that’s dedication to craft, people!

We took a break for dinner (I think they call those "dinner breaks") but there was a shot in the first half of a CGI airplane and it looked so shitty that my daughter was like, really, was that the best they could do? Also, so far some of the most distractingly set-looking sets since Dr. Strange, imo, which is weird, watching it vacillate from vast natural expanse to bad set back to vast natural expanse to bad set.

It's all super awkward so far in such an odd way, almost like she struck some kind of surreal devil's bargain, where they doubled her budget but cut her shooting schedule in half.

Maybe it will be answered, and it's definitely petty, but we were wondering why they spoke English in all the scenes set thousands of years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQkoQSJ47Ks

chloe zhao has a nice explanation for kingo peacing out, i’m just not sure that it was as clear as all that in the movie

but still love her anyway

https://uproxx.com/movies/chlo-zhao-interview-the-eternals/

gotta say so far all the reviews of eternals in this thread are exactly what i imagined the movie would be based on the trailer, so gotta commend them for making an accurate trailer at least

Oof, what a misfire this was.

Like, tons of just head-scratching what the fuck is going on-ery, not least what appeared to be an explicit FX nod to Carpenter's "The Thing," for some reason.

I’m really not sure how much clearer Kingo’s dilemma could have been in the movie given he has dialogue that explicitly says “I think Ikkaris is right but I refuse to fight my family over it” before he leaves

This makes me seeing it a second time and I like It even better, honestly. It’s just different enough from the rest of the cycle.

xpost i found it weird & it didnt make a lot of sense at the time to me but ymmv obv

My takeaways of Kingo from the movie were 1) he was kind of full of himself; 2) he deeply cared about the other Eternals; 3) he fervently believed in the Celestials and their mission. I thought his actions were weird only so far as the entire template of these movies (and the comics tbh) is that solution to every conflict involves punching and was an interesting narrative twist to have someone straight up remove themselves from the central conflict.

i just found it weird since he’d been throwing fireballs in every battle we’d seen
& like oh THIS battle is a no? ok. plus they kept killing off characters so i thought it was just a lame handwavey story device so that they didn’t have to have like 20 people in the final battle scene lol

They were fighting Deviants, not each other. As soon as the conflict went from arguing to physical confrontation, he leaves.

i never said i was right or logical to think that! it’s just how i took it when i watched the movie. i liked chloe’s explanation of hid reasons bc they were not clear to ~me~ & if you already got it then there’s nothing to talk about & i feel kinda stupid for bringing it up so i’ll stop talking about it

We tried to watch this last night but ended up bailing halfway - just couldn't find myself caring about any of it.

Felt like there were some clear problems with the script - as VG suggests upthread, it was like being dropped in the second half of a book that you haven't read (ok some people have read the comics, good for them). they're introducing us to these characters who have thousands of years of history together, but expected us to be deeply invested in their interpersonal relationships and conflicts based on the thinnest of backstories.

stopped at when they killed off Gilgamesh - y'all should watch Ma Dong-Seok/Don Lee in any one of his Korean movies, dude was utterly wasted here.

This was really bad. I'd rather see a spinoff film about the comedy chauffeur guy than see any of these main characters again.

for the record, I didn’t say the absence was unexplained. just that he was wise to get himself out.

It should’ve been a series, not a movie.

Forget Kingo being gone, why did his human valet get to stick around the entire movie as peripheral comic relief, but Jon Snow is basically introduced as Jane to a bunch of Thors and then is told "go home, loser." Would have been funny if we literally didn't see him again until the end credits, though I guess the movie comes pretty close to doing that anyway.

So much of this felt like she only had access to two actors together at a time, max, and they were all filmed separately and CGId together on screen. That could explain why possibly someone in this thread noted you never once get the impression these space gods have been around for thousands of years, let alone have known each other for as long, let alone have lived on *Earth* for that long. They're kinda bored, sure, but in the most neutrally boring way possible. They act like they've been killing time for a couple of years, not millennia. Only Kingo has something akin to a hobby, and even that only covers the last 100 or so years.

Anyway, if this movie were not so generally competent it might have made a good midnight watch with a rowdy crowd. There are certainly moments that would earn a hoot or two, but it's mostly too consciously sedate and slow to generate any steam. It's like Zhao figured out how to subvert big budget fun. "What if space gods, but bored and boring? Also, humanoid lizard monster with blurry motives that comes and goes but needs to exist to give them something to occasionally shoot laser eyes at."

xpost Would have been a much better series.

Would have been funny if one of them was killing time working in an Amazon warehouse. Though I guess one of them was working (or doing ... something) *in* the Amazon, or as titled, "Amazon."

Hey, if Sprite had such issues with being a forever kid, then why didn't she at least change her name to something other than Sprite? Start small. Anyway, theres your spin-off. An ancient space god with eons of experience and memories but no powers must face her greatest battle yet: high school!

Teacher: Sprite, could you explain Archimedes' principle?
Sprite (under her breath): Bitch, I was there when we *taught* Archimedes' his principle ...
Teacher: What was that you said, Sprite?
Sprite: Nothing, Miss (insert easter egg name of person who becomes yet another superhero in Phase 6).

Anyway, who is up for Oscar Isaac with an English accent?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Krla_UxRg

🙋🏻‍♀️

ooooooh

Dick Van Dyke currently trending on Twitter

There's the hook: the entire season is in fact a musical.

Cool. Moon Knight is another character I know nothing about. That trailer is cut and presented like it's a feature film, but I've liked the run of TV projects so far, so fingers crossed.

the character is different depending on who's writing it for sure but the key to the character is that he's probably the fist of konshu but he's definitely crazy

The shorthand is "what if Batman had multiple personalities?"

and spoke to god

So, the usual.

criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot

BTW Inception or something

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPC049JCdMg

Please pic.twitter.com/RXJT1Ph7c3

— Kate Sánchez⁷ (@OhMyMithrandir) January 18, 2022

https://www.theroot.com/black-panther-wakanda-forever-production-delayed-again-1848390454

Yeah, delayed again, more cast and crew testing positive for COVID. Half expecting an announcement that they are recasting Shuri.

lol

In terms of Raimi’s next directorial project, the sequel to “Doctor Strange,” the filmmaker wasn’t as willing to reveal details. He did share an uncertainty if the film was done filming, responding to reports that the Benedict Cumberbatch-starring sequel faced “significant reshoots” back in November.

“I wish I knew the answer to that question,” Raimi said, responding to the question of whether the movie was complete. “I think we’re done, but we just cut everything. We’re just starting to test the picture and we’ll find out if there’s anything that’s got to be picked up. If something’s unclear or another improvement I can make in this short amount of time left, I’ll do it. One thing I know about the Marvel team is they won’t stop. They’ll keep pushing it until it’s as close to being great as it could.”

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that all the ding dong marvel shows that aired in 2021 - Loki, Wanda, Falcon, Hawkeye, whatever - are nominated in the ILX TV poll, with voting ending this weekend:

ILX's Best Television of 2021 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 31, 2022

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

Just saw Spider-Man, and... gosh, I thought it was just terrific. It was fun and fast and bouncy and silly – then got super emotional and resonant. I thought the "uniting the universes" thing would just be played as a cheap gimmick (and some of the inter-Spidey banter did almost start to feel like an SNL sketch); but instead, it gathered decades of lore and turned it into something that felt as heavy and affecting as Spider-Man can feel.

And the way it ended, undoing all the irritating BS that I never liked about the MCU version of Spidey (or at least revealing it all to be prologue) – i.e., techno-suit Spidey, Parker having no Uncle Ben moment (and thus no apparent "motivation"), etc. – the whole thing felt so much bigger and more satisfying than everything it was drawing from, as if it was elevating all those older (sometimes good, sometimes crappy) movies though a grand unifying effort.

One random q about the ending: even though Strange took away everyone's memories of Peter, wouldn't there still be a world full of old newspapers, archived newscast,s and cached Web pages reporting on the events of the past few months? Wouldn't a Google search for "Who is Spider-Man" still pull up "Peter Parker" and his picture? Or did Strange's spell work on a deeper level than I understood?

A few other random thoughts:
* Zendaya was great, a real highlight.
* The de-aging of Molina & Dafoe was done so well, I honestly thought they weren't de-aged (I spent the movie like: "Damn, Wooster Group looks good!"). I had to Google afterward to settle the question for myself.

Searching around for something else, I found a listicle that raises the same question I put in hidden text (probably stated better): https://screenrant.com/marvel-plotholes-mcu-movies-tv-shows-2021/

Nowhere near as perplexing as the seeming contradictions and confusion introduced by "The Eternals," which who knows, maybe they'll address. Though unlike Spider-man, which can just be sort of hand-wavy about it, it's a lot harder to do that with giant space gods making appearances on Earth.

My daughter complained about the No Way Home (maybe my least fav Marvel since the second Iron Man) ending/Dr. Strange stuff, too, but being in the middle of college applications herself she had a tougher time buying that so many kids from one school could get into MIT. I thought this was amusing:

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