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

I hate to sound like a broken record but… this show rules

xps

Moon Knight almost had two crossovers with the MCU, but showrunner Mohamed Diab has explained why they were cut from the show. https://t.co/w7j5fcwUVW pic.twitter.com/pD0a86BRiQ

— IGN (@IGN) May 5, 2022

Yeah, full io9 interview here with a lot of info:

https://gizmodo.com/marvel-moon-knight-disney-finale-producer-interview-1848882606

Anyway, I have seen the Dr. Strange and it is strange! And mad! Thanks you're a great crowd.

No spoilers: I liked how there were definite old school pulpy and 70s horror vibes at play throughout, even through to the end credits. It's a good mid-range MCU entry and I mean that positively. Having seen Spider-Man: No Way Home doesn't hurt and it definitely helps if you've seen WandaVision though I suppose you could manage. Yes there are cameos, etc. etc.

The only other thing I'll add: the best person had the absolute best last word.

can you tell me anything about the Sam Raimi of it all … is he buried in the Marvelness or thriving?

seems all crap

I was hoping they’d go full shill, time the end with Thor movie, and the GOD KILLER character would pop up and just waste half the Egyptian dynasty

xpost -- Oh there is Raiminess as mentioned. And some of the gore is truly hliarious gore. It's unmistakably an MCU film but again, just enough going on to be off-center from it.

I’ve got absolutely no impulse or need to see Marvel movies in the theater now. Just, give me something pulpy that pops on the big screen, or something that feels like a good innovative film. I guess if I really just want to see a movie it’s fine, but I’m kind of just out

me however: IN

I enjoyed the new film, partially just to be able to experience new Raimi-ness in a theater. Without spoiling anything, one of the villains is dispatched in a VERY Raimi manner that had me burst out laughing and say aloud “fuck yeah! This is why you hire Sam Raimi!”

You will know this moment when you see it.

Also, I was wondering if they got Joe Loduca to do the score, turns out it’s Danny Elfman.

Also, hella credit to Taika Waititi(or his music supervisor) for being able to have consecutive Hollywood franchise trailers that _don’t_ have a cover of a recognizable tune done in a slowed-down, piano-plinky, breathy female vocalist in a different key.

It’s like we’re in another era like the mid 80s when they had a lot of then-current bands cover 60s hits for film soundtracks, a la “Lost Boys”

I'd like a breathy cover of "That Thing You Do"

Let’s talk more about Moon Knight and it ruling

The shot of Layla jumping off a building and kicking Ethan Hawke in the head was as joyous a moment as any I can remember in a superhero movie

This show also made me enjoy watching Ethan Hawke for the first time possibly ever! Tempted to check out The Good Lord Bird now

Had a blast at Dr Strange... It IS sort of a bit crap in that all the characters have been flattened out into nothingness in Feige’s quest to set up the next phase of the MCU, but it was still a lot of fun for what it was - really enjoyed Sam Raimi vomiting his Sam Raimi-ness all over the multiverse. and glad he managed to piss off a bunch of marvel fanboys in the process - just read one review that compared the movie’s treatment of the Illuminati to The Last Jedi in its lack of reverence loooollll.

And bless him for making a superhero fllm that’s less than two hours long.

DRS2 Might be in the upper quartile of marvel movies? Like maybe it’s recency bias

"This show also made me enjoy watching Ethan Hawke for the first time possibly ever!"

not a fan of the Before Sunrise/Sunset films?

Seeing Strange tonight. Will be hard to top MoonKnight which is clearly top-tier Marvel IMO.

This was a notable enough, mainly because of Raimi. Didn’t like the first 15 minutes at all though, throwing you in like that was simply confusing and weird. I did think it was interesting to release this on Mothers Day weekend given the Wanda plot.

No idea why that autocorrected to “notable”. I meant it was enjoyable enough.

god they really hate Wanda huh

what a waste of the Yesterday Quest material… and of America Chavez… and of Stephen Strange really

some fine shots tho. the beach stairway in particular was sublime, and the let’s call it spirit cloak really worked and hinted at what I’d hoped for in a Raimi MCU joint

There's a fair amount of Raimi horror in this as well, the shots of the charred bodies, revived dead bodies; it feels more Raimi than the original Spiderman movies, for instance.

There's also that fun sequence where they fall through about 15 universes in a row which is a hoot and reminded me of, of all things, the scene in the Pixar movie The Good Dinosaur where the kid and the dino eat hallucinogenic berries and you get a quick cut of total insanity.

I loved Strange 2 a lot

I figured there was no good way for Wanda to be anything other than an antagonist given the way WandaVision ended but it was still very sad and tragic that they couldn’t find a path for redemption for her given everything she went through. The scene where she was terrifying Billy and Tommy while repeating “I’m not a monster” was heartbreaking; like, of course you are a monster, look at why you did not only in your universe but in all of these others. Look at what you did to the Illuminati. Look at what grief drove you to do. I enjoyed the story for what it was but I wished they’d made a different choice, even though when she started slaughtering sorcerers it was obvious that she was gone. Hell, it was obvious she was gone at the end of WandaVision.

thank u sam raimi for the runtime
love him for that

personally I loved the Raimi-ness - the middle section was very “Dr Strange Me To Hell” and i dug the hell out of it

is this the first marvel movie with actual blood in it?

however i found a lot of the story kinda baffling & very hard to lock into, lot of ppl just saying nonsensical things imbued w deep meaning and me being like uh huh ok sure

and i didnt get why Wanda has to have this (to me) massively eyeroll storyline when we’ve kinda done a version of this already?

Am amused that both this and The Suicide Squad both had big ol’ eyeballs suffering horrible fates.

yes! i loled v hard

Verily did I lolz loudly at the flying eyeballs, yes

Blank Check’s David enjoyed it: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/05/doctor-strange-multiverse-madness-sam-raimi-marvel-review/629744/

Meantime, new promo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8usJNFvVS4

lmao

Just saw Dr. Strange 2, why was Professor X in a Zamboni?

— voudou’s dad (@fullblackarmor) May 9, 2022

I know it's cheesy, but I love a good "you never told me her name, did you?"

There's a fair amount of Raimi horror in this as well, the shots of the charred bodies, revived dead bodies; it feels more Raimi than the original Spiderman movies, for instance.

Yeah, the relatable zombies too, but especially the spirits!

I saw it in a quiet cinema on purpose, but I kind of wish I'd been in somewhere loud on a Saturday night to experience Black Bolt blowing his own head up. I wonder if there was a "I can kill all of these superheroes, right?" conversation (I'm also kind of assuming that Sam Raimi had a hand in the script).

finally finished moon knight — pretty good. i appreciated its stand-alone nature

hadn’t realized that ethan hawke is turning into nick nolte

also dag is the layla actress stunning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gim2kprjL50

that looks great! love Tatiana Maslany <3

First nine episode arc since WandaVision too.

I love Maslany and I've been really excited for a She-Hulk series, but the CGI for her looks like complete ass. It's weird, because Ruffalo's Hulk still looks good (guessing they still have rendering from Endgame), but Maslany's She-Hulk is really uncanny valley looking shit.

big woman pick up man

Hopefully the CGI will be better in the actual show?

I haven't watched a single Marvel series but I have a thing for strong tall women so I will probably try this one.

ruffalo’s hulk has always looked fake as shit imo

Having seen (and enjoyed) Moon Knight i would doubt the CGI gets better

While I am not a She-Hulk scholar, I’ve read some of the comics, and these criticisms were surprising to me:

Since her introduction in The Savage She-Hulk #1 in the 1980s, Jennifer Walters has been a frustrating character for a lot of comic readers because she is surrounded by regressive stereotypes. While Bruce Banner becomes a massive, mostly terrifying, green monster when he hulks out, Jennifer transforms into a sexy 6’7” muscular green lady that is almost always drawn in perverse, sexualized poses. Most of her comic runs feature her half-dressed, shielding her naked body with a newspaper, or bikini-clad on the covers. She often looks like the nighttime fantasies of a particular subset of comic book readers. Like most of the women in Marvel Comics, she has also been romantically linked with a long list of partners, and even referred to as “sloppy seconds” when torn between prominent Marvel characters. The She-Hulk trailer doesn’t seem to shy away from that, unfortunately, they just repackage it in slightly more appealing ways.

John Byrne is kind of villain

excited for the results of this poll

Roffle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go8nTmfrQd8

Hardly a new innovation but I do appreciate how this poster design is clearly meant to be seen, slightly scuffed around the edge, via a plastic security case surrounding the VHS it's on back in 1986.

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fit,f_auto,g_center,pg_1,q_60,w_965/5798f0f9f87c060750e2ca49f1885248.jpg

Gwar show looking good

i saw the preview for thor love and thunder today and it got me thinking about how the existence of the norse gods in canon in the marvel cinematic universe. so then does everyone on earth worship the norse gods? and if not, why not? like if you know thor actually exists, why are you still worshiping the christian god or allah or whoever else? i assume this has been discussed ad nauseum but i am not a comic book person, sorry.

At the end of "The Eternals" there is a giant cosmic space god that appears hovering over earth, you'd think that would raise a few questions among the faithful, too.

xp I don’t know about the MCU, or how things may have changed in the regular Marvel Universe over time… but the original (1983) Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entry for Thor says, “Identity: Publicly known, although the general public of earth does not believe him to be the god that was worshiped by the Vikings.”

(similarly, the entry for Sif, from the Deluxe Edition published a few years later (which I grabbed at random) — “Identity: Publicly known on Asgard and on Earth, although the general populace of Earth tends not to believe she is a goddess”

so I think most Earthlings in the Marvel universe don’t know that the Norse or Hellenic gods are “real”)

(although interestingly, the OG entry for Hercules just says, “Identity: publicly known”)