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

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

As they add more super teams to the mix (X-Men, FF, Defenders, etc.) and ultra-powered individuals, the interconnections will become more complex. Being Disney, they will saturate their market, so even more hand waves and "they were ... busy elsewhere" will be coming.

They're all going to form a giant superhero Voltron and then die saving the world from an even bigger, more powerful space god. And then they will reboot "Spider-man," hopefully this time revealing how he became Spider-man.

I'm kind of excited, if the MCU rolls on undefeated, for actors' availability/age to push generational and identity changes. Instead of the 4th iteration of Peter Parker, let's grow Spider-Man to Miles or Spider-Gwen or Spider-Girl or ... Growth eliminates the stasis of Spider-Man being a 60 year old comic.

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

This was an extremely accurate part of the movie based on my experience at the school down the street; one of my roommates was one of four kids from Uniondale High School on Long Island, which to my knowledge isn't even set up as an advanced top university/college feeder in the same way as, say, Hunter College High School, who sent at least 10 kids in my class alone.

Knowing how old you are (which is to say, around my age) I gotta say, the game has changed *radically*. I graduated high school in 1993. Admissions that year at MIT, for class of 1997, were 32% of 6,410 applicants.

https://news.mit.edu/1993/class-0331

Last year, for the class of 2025, MIT's admissions rate was 4.1% of 33,240 applicants.

https://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/stats/

That doesn't mean certain schools aren't more-heavily represented, particularly reputable magnet schools and private schools.

By the end of the movie, 3 kids from the top math and science magnet high school in NYC got into MIT; this is not far-fetched, particularly since the acceptance for two of them were put into motion by Peter's heroics midway through the movie.

An analogous real-life school is Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria, VA, who had 35 former students graduate from MIT between 2015 an 2017: https://www.washingtonian.com/2018/10/10/which-local-schools-have-the-most-graduates-go-on-to-the-ivy-league/#:~:text=Number%20one%20on%20the%20list,%2C%20or%20MIT%20(35).

the kid in real genius was only 15

You'll believe a man can get into MIT

lol it's definitely *possible* for three best buds from one school to get in to MIT, but the class of 2017 acceptance rate to MIT was already somewhere around 7% and now it's down even further to between 3.5% and 4%. But sure, Spider-man and his friends do all probably have a leg up on the competition. Good for Spider-man. Though to be fair, he and his spider-friends were initially all denied from MIT, so maybe it was pretty accurate after all.

We just saw a good doc called "Try Harder," about the #1 ranked public school in San Fan, where everyone thinks they can get into Stanford, and most are probably qualified, but who all get a rude awakening come application season:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4WZ6nDz-3w

lol that school got turned into a normal school during the pandemic (no more testing kids to get into "the one good high school in SF"), and parents are freaking out.

Tell me about it. I'm not even a parent and I couldn't miss the noise that happened over that.

I love it. Why should one school get all the "smart" (ie rich) kids and resources?

Eh, 35% of the kids there are categorized as economically disadvantaged. Apparently, from what I saw, Lowell High is in the middle 50% of schools by income level.

"I can't believe this movie about superpowered humans battling each other and traveling through multiple parallel universes doesn't accurately reflect the college application process!"

Tbf, counterpoint: I can't believe this movie literally hinged on Peter Parker asking Dr. Strange to cast a magic spell on the entire world so that he and his friends could get into MIT (and Dr. Strange saying yes).

That did lead to one of the better exchanges in the movie, when Strange was all “wait, what do you mean you didn’t talk to anyone at the school”

Strange comes off as a pretty hapless knucklehead in this film... was he like that in the comics, too? (In the issues I read, I guess later in his career, he seemed rather more... mature.)

Wtf does the superhuman genius need to go to college for anyway

Connections? You know literal gods!

Peter? I can see why – Tony's not on the scene any longer, his gf is going there, he wants to be sort of a regular guy

Tony had to have left a will. So many plot holes in these sagas of alternate universes

he left Dr Strange a fart

Yeah, that college admissions consultant video I posted brings that up, that multi-billionaire mentor father figure Tony Stark really should have set up a 529 or something for Peter.

A few great uses of songs in the movie as well: “I Zimbra” at the beginning, De La Soul at the end

When Peter moved into his apartment, and you could hear neighbor noise, I thought he was about to meet Candi, Randi, and Bambi (as the ultimate fan-service moment for headz like myself)

Peter was very thin in this. And Dr. Strange was obssessed with those cow hides.

I thought he was about to meet Candi, Randi, and Bambi (as the ultimate fan-service moment for headz like myself)

oh man I didn't know I needed this but now I'm really bad they didn't do it

*mad

That would have been pretty funny. Babes of the multiverse.

man talk about culture shift
http://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/spectacular-spider-man-99-2-604x299.jpg

Wow... who's the writer on that?

al milgrom

more like al milfgrom amirite

Just saw spider man (finally)

Movie: dope
Huge group of theater goers who were either a family or a group of friends plus some adults who took over the row I was in and spent the whole time talking, laughing, on their phones, walking back and forth, passing food: dopes

I finally understand why so many people are done with movie theaters. (Yeah, COVID, but this is a complaint I heard a lot before COVID.)

We saw it on a weekday afternoon in a totally empty theater, it was pretty sweet.

That’s how I’m determined to see movies from now on.

Healthy approach.

Meantime, unsurprising consolidation here: in essence, all the Netflix Marvel shows plus Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are leaving the platform at the end of the month, presumably to be consolidated over at Disney+

https://gizmodo.com/marvel-netflix-daredevil-leaving-streaming-march-1-1848523123

Strangely, nobody has a thing to say about the smash popular and critical success that was Inhumans.

I gotta assume those shows do *not* end up at Disney specifically and instead end up at Hulu. They are *way* too bloody and ugly for the relatively wholesome Disney+ platform, which had to make a special exception for the *Beatles* doc, because of smoking and a few bad words.