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

I thought this was corny and boring.

Maybe it’ll get better now that they got the Ruffalo shit over with

Sort of unpleasant to look at!

Was the CGI really cheap for a MCU show, or was it just me? We have a pretty decent TV, but I felt like I could see the greenscreen on everything, and something about the perspective/size of Ruffalo vs Maslany looked really strange, like a bad photoshop.

while I didn’t adore She-Hulk I did feel like it captured a self-aware comedic tone that 70s/80s Marvel sometimes tapped into - like maybe it is the Steve Gerber vibe that I mean? and it is only a very light evocation of that vibe and not particularly funny/subversive - but if one Marvel series wants to try and play in that space then I’m at least provisionally interested

I thought the CGI actually did a pretty good job of capturing the She-Hullk I vaguely remember from the comics, it looked kinda cartoonish which - worked? for me anyway

* and i think part of that vibe is that there are real people living in the real world doing real jobs like street-sweeping (and lawyering) and occasionally these super hero bozos are doing dumb shit in the background, which is just faintly ridiculous or bemusing to these regular joes

I didn't mind the FX; motion capture human-hybrid monsters like the Hulk(s) basically epitomize the uncanny valley, anyway, and I enjoyed how She-hulk specifically sort of vacillated between human and cartoon.

I think this show and some like it exist at a kind of historical tech nexus, where they're still expensive and working with state of the art stuff (like those giant wraparound green screen sound stages I first learned about via "The Mandalorian"), but operating on a slightly smaller scale than the movies (because it's TV) that requires some smart cutting of corners. And then along comes covid at the same time, which I imagine further encouraged the FX people to explore ways to virtually assemble all manner of stuff. An actor filmed remotely over here, a set built over there, people acting and interacting together that may have never been in the same room, etc.

captain america fucks

Anyway, upcoming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLEFqhS5WmI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZVTkn2NjS0

i wanna put on the record that i am still watching and enjoying She-Hulk

i was on the fence at first -love maslany but it felt too quippy & corny but this newest episode was really great so i am in

the drunk madisynn girl was hilarious

Secret Invasion looks cool but I’m still not subscribing

Watching these in order with the family. BUT, is it agreed that Hulk, Iron Man 1&2, and Thor 2 are skippable?

Iron Man 1 is great imo

I was a total comic book nerd but missed most of these movies. It’s pretty fun seeing a drawn character perfectly realized on film.

Oops, i meant Iron Man 2&3. We watched Iron Man 1 to start and everybody liked it. It was almost too much for our 7 year old.

olivia colman!

Thor was tonight and everybody enjoyed it. I loved seeing the Destroyer and the wife loved shirtless Thor. Plot didn’t feel as strong as Iron Man but there was way more eye candy.

Thor 2 is kinda muddy & not as good but it’s not terrible

Hulk is a weird oddity but i don’t hate it

Thor 2 was fine? I think part of the bad reputation is that the villain is supposedly way more interesting in the comics, but otherwise it really didn’t stand out as obviously worse or anything...

I might watch those on my own just for kicks. This Hulk has nothing to do with the Ang Lee Hulk? I’ve seen neither.

both are worth seeing imo

It has nothing to do with Ang Lee's film. And it's increasingly relevant to the MCU (just confirmed this morning that the villain in the upcoming Thunderbolts movie made his one and only prior appearance in Incredible Hulk). It seems to be almost universally derided but I enjoy it as low-stakes fun trash.

Just got round to seeing Thor L&T and its the first Taika film I have been a little disappointed in. Most hilarious part was Crowe's Con the Fruiterer accent, geez. I'm prob just an old grumpy cunt now, but "love saves everything" makes me blerk. Was funny in many parts though.

Not sure if its standard for all Marvel tv shows but She-Hulk has post credits scenes.

Iron Man 3 is the best of the 3 imho, definitely not skippable (though not as far above 1 as 1 is above the very terrible 2)

I hope this latest Thor is the end of the "I'm so meta and wacky" school of moviemaking but that's wishful thinking. Annoyingly dorky.

I like parts of the She-Hulk show but the quippy fourth-wall-breaking comments aren’t distinct enough from the default Whedonesque attempts at wit to really stand out. They just become redundant and annoying

yeah it felt at first like the result of a series of focus groups that determined QUIPS THEY WANT QUIPS

Haven’t seen any of this, but fourth-wall-breaking quips were a core element of the Byrne series from 1989

figured that was likely

still it felt a bit corny in the execution at first but it’s grown on me

SH is sloppily paced for a workplace comedy

Tatiana Maslaney is one of the most charismatic people I’ve seen on screen IMO

she’s so great in everything

Watched the Incredible Hulk while folding laundry. The CGI was pretty rough, but I liked Norton more than I expected. He’s no Ruffalo, but I can’t hold that against him. Ruffalo in the MCU makes me extremely happy.

They should do a multiverse thing where Norton and Bana show up and give Ruffalo a purple wedgie.

The design of Norton Hulk was repulsive. His little pinched face in that big head gave him a strange childish appearance, and the absurd amount of muscles was silly. Not the size of them, but the quantity. It’s as though his muscles had muscles.

Oh I read a lot of the John Byrne series, so I knew the gag. The writing is such that it doesn’t differentiate enough between those(which made the character distinct) and default MCU speak

Just got round to seeing Thor L&T and its the first Taika film I have been a little disappointed in. Most hilarious part was Crowe's Con the Fruiterer accent, geez. I'm prob just an old grumpy cunt now, but "love saves everything" makes me blerk. Was funny in many parts though.

Also saw this this weekend (with my son) and was also disappointed. Felt like they were trying too hard to be funny & wacky and so lots of it came off almost as a spoof. The whole Guardians bit felt especially phoned in.

My son loved the goats though.

Tickets on sale...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z3QKkl1WyM

Finally got around to watching Thor Love and Thunder this weekend and I think this was maybe the worst Marvel film I've seen.

tapped out an hour in

I think I may be done with the MCU

"Thor" was fine but all the criticisms I've heard of it I also think are legit.

Speaking of tapped out, there is so much MCU out there, between the movies and the TV shows, that I've totally lost track. Finally finished "Moon Knight" because I forgot I hadn't. I think I'm a few episodes behind in "She-Hulk." Does "Werewolf" go live today? Tomorrow? No idea what movies are coming out in the next year (besides "Black Panther 2"). No idea what shows are coming up and when. And there still is no over-arching plot/villain, right? Just hints of several (Kang, more multi-verse, Krulls, etc.) as they keep adding characters.

Thor was totally dumb and that's why I was watching it, to see some dumb shit.

The shows can be a little harder to stomach because their action/CGI budgets are smaller and their stories have more opportunities to be incoherent or less easy to ignore over the course of multiple episodes vs. a couple of hours. For instance Ms. Marvel had some charm but the story unraveled into a mess and the action felt proportionately cheap, so there wasn't a lot of incentive left to keep going aside from momentum (not to mention the unique Marvel-specific requirement to learn what events will effect the plot of the next movie).

I totally forgot about Ms. Marvel, too! I think I saw two (fine) episodes, so need to catch up.

I keep up with nearly all of it but She-Hulk is where I've been slack. At this point -- and COVID kinda accidentally underscored it -- it's pretty clear that the growing center-of-pop-culture mania throughout the 2010s over the whole cycle can't be recaptured in full. But as long as there's interest and money there's going to be more.

I've only really cared about the MCU since the tv shows started.

I really enjoyed Ms. Marvel, but we haven't watched beyond episode 3 of She-Hulk. My 11 year-old flat out told us he doesn't want to watch it anymore.

new She-Hulk ep was quite fun this week

She-hulk is clearly not meant for the younger demo. Ms. Marvel target audience definitely skewed younger.