Rolling Marvel Cinematic Universe thread (+ a poll: Classic or Dud?)

I think the incoherency of Scarlet Witch's powers are a defining characteristic

but as far as I can remember they don't really do anything with him in this or later movies.

Well, he does play a pretty significant part in Infinity War/Endgame!

lol I don't remember! I know they take his gem. But I forget what he has to do with anything else.

"Civil War" held up OK. It helps that it has a bit of gravitas to it (if still, alas, a questionable relationship to literal gravity). Its biggest flaw is its utterly pointless villain, though I suppose in this one specifically the villain is not really the point.

It's a shame (relatively speaking) that they have burned through so many iconic baddies so soon: Red Skull, Ultron, of course Thanos ...I don't know much about many of the upcoming MCU properties, like Eternals or Shang-Chi, and the rest are all sequels, so I can't even hazard a guess who the overarching Big Bad is, if they even have one. There were hopes/rumors of Kree/Skrull, and of course they've stuck with them for a few features, but I don't think those are terribly compelling villains compared to Thanos, or some of the more cosmic stuff. (I say, as a pretty casual fan.) And who knows what they are doing with what is essentially a reboot of Marvel on TV with Loki, Falcon/Winter Soldier, Hawkeye and WandaVision. Those Disney shows I assume will have bigger budgets and greater leeway to encroach or expand on the films than Daredevil, Punisher, Iron Fist, Shield et al did. ( (Is Agents of Shield still on the air?)

It's a shame timing has failed "Fantastic Four." I notice Disney+ now has the Josh Trank version up along with the other Marvel titles (though curiously not any of the co-Sony Spider-man titles), which I can only assume does not bode well for a fresh "FF" feature any time soon, which lowers the likelihood of Dr. Doom, or Galactus or Silver Surfer et al. Though who knows, there was that story of Noah Hawley writing a "Dr. Doom" screenplay and Feige saying no, which can mean anything. Maybe Marvel has no plans, maybe they have plans but for no time soon, maybe they are being sneaky about stuff. Didn't Taika outright deny doing a new Star Wars movie and then later winkingly concede it? These folks are pros.

'so soon' here would be 10 years and 18 films in?

I'm basically now a Marvel agnostic (who ate up the comics in the mid-'90s), but it seems to me they've already blown doing the Fantastic Four. It's such a space age/space race property that--to me anyway--it should be set in the '60s, between Cap 1 and wherever the hell they picked up. However I assume the MCU is established enough that they can't go back and drop in something that major.

xp: In fairness, these characters all existed in the comics for decades

the whole thing about "greatest foes" in serialised stories is that they come back again and again and thereby earn their claim to being mainstays of the rogue's gallery. you could possibly do that in film but it's largely been avoided with the exception of Lex Luthor in the 70s/80s Superman films, and Scarecrow recurring in cameo parts in Nolan's Batman films. it's probably the right call for making the stories feel like complete thoughts with a reason to exist, but it does also often produce a sense that the handling of this or that iconic foe is somehow lacking the requisite larger-than-life, mythic status. Doom has surely been handled the worst, the most times, but also he might be sort of impossible to really sell as a one-movie villain.

xpost That's sort of what I mean. Characters or villains that existed for decades in the comics wiped out or negated by one two and a half hour movie.

and xpost again They actually did a pretty good job having Thanos loom over several films, even if he was only the explicit villain of a couple.

Doom would probably actually do well as a future villain as lead in his own standalone movie / origin story.

A new MCU-based FF movie has been all but confirmed, btw. A ways down the line (alongside an X-Men revamp, presumably) but on the way nonetheless.

I mean, Loki's been the villian in two and half films already!

I know it's a DC property but is anyone watching Doom Patrol? I noticed it in HBO Max and I wasn't familiar with it at all. Is it a Teen Titans thing?

It's loosely connected to Teen Titans in both the televisual and comic book versions but only loosely. It's absolutely the most OTT weird superhero adaptation I've seen (which is true to the Grant Morrison iteration of the comics, although the show doesn't quite reach those heights). NB, I still haven't seen Legion, which is supposed to be totes bizarre.

(Also please note that if you enjoy legitimately weird arts + entertainment that I acknowledge that a super-weird Big Two superhero adaptation is only ever going to scratch the surface of true and legit weirdness.)

Legion S1 is AMAZING

Legion gets very tiresome very quickly (albeit in a totally distinct way from MCU things)

lol I forgot they killed Loki, too. "Killed," because of course that's never stopped any hand wavy "arise!" magic or science or back from the void or whatever.

C'mon, man. The current Loki is the Loki of an alternate reality. It's cut and dried, very simple and grounded and real.

Is it a Teen Titans thing?

http://www.tcj.com/the-wreckage-part-one/

i assume we would already have Kid Loki in the MCU if Tom Hiddleston wasn't so endlessly shippable

be shocked if we don't get some variation of that in the TV series

for those of you who watch the movies but gave up on the modern comics, I can STRONGLY recommend Jason Aaron's outrageously good, near-decade long run on Thor. It's great reading!
https://www.cbr.com/jason-arron-changes-thor-marvel-comic/
https://www.howtolovecomics.com/2019/06/16/jason-aaron-thor-reading-order/

Yeah, it's one of the few recent Marvel things (along with Hickman's Avengers run) that I've read multiple times over.

he's been so dang consistent

If you've got a choice between that and Gillen's Loki-and-pals runs, I'd take the latter, though.

Legion's second season goes all over the place - if you can stand it (and there's a lot of good in there) the third is amazing.

Is it a Teen Titans thing?

the first real revival of the characters was in a teen titans storyline

further for polyphonic: Doom Patrol predate Teen Titans by a few months (1963 vs 1964); the third major Teen Titans version/revival, 1980's New Teen Titans, included a minor Doom Patrol character as a member (which led to the team's resurrection, and eventually the resurrection of most of its dead members); the Doom Patrol TV show for some reason includes the 1980 NTT character Cyborg as well as the Doom Patrol's cyborg mainstay Robotman.

This is also a dece summary of the parallels between Doom Patrol and X-Men:

https://nerdist.com/article/doom-patrol-x-men-parallel-history/

Yeah, Cyborg threw me off. Although to be honest I assumed the show was about Doctor Doom at first. I don't know comics too well.

the robotman tv show face is very doc doom-ish

Watching Into the Spider-Verse again (yes, I know it’s not an MCU movie, but if we’re talking Doom Patrol...). Still get tripped up by the following plot holes(?), which come up in the same scene:

1. Why doesn’t Peter B. Parker react, at all, to meeting a young version of Gwen Stacey, alive and well? Even though he knows she’s from an alt universe, you’d think he would have some feels about the encounter.

2. If Spider-Gwen arrived in the Miles-verse a week before everything went down – before Miles even got his powers – how did her spider-sense know to direct her to go to his school? How did she enroll, get a uniform, etc.? Where has she been living for a week?

Great movie, tho!

(Gwen also doesn’t seem to have any emotional response to working with a grown-up version of her deceased best friend; but I guess she’s had a little time to get used to the idea of multiple Peter Parkers.)

does gwen track thru SM canon? that PP might not know gwen

This movie kind of goes sideways from the canon (e.g., the Miles-verse isn’t literally the Ultimate Universe, although it’s based on it) – but that Peter is meant to be a version of Spidey-616, it would be odd for Gwen not to be part of his backstory. But I acknowledge your point, it’s loosey-goosey enough that who knows.

Huh, apparently they’ve given that Peter (and his universe) an official designation: https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Peter_Parker_(Earth-TRN701)

(It’s funny b/c “Earth 616” is actually used in the movie, as kind of an Easter Egg; but it’s not literally that universe, so makes sense for it to get its own number.)

Huh, apparently they’ve given that Peter (and his universe) an official designation

they

Ok, an “unofficial” designation.

(Btw - fixing my link, for anyone who cares)

I also see the aforementioned Easter Egg is addressed in the Notes for Peter B. Parker’s reality:

In the Super Collider's screen, this reality is designated "E-616" after Earth-616, the reality this universe is an adaptation of.

BTW, 616 technically no longer exists since the events of Secret Wars. (pushes tape-festooned glasses up nose, takes hit from inhaler, adjusts pocket protector)

My son has been watching a Spidey animated series which seems to mash up events in the Ultimate Universe and regular universe, at least as far as I can tell from watching a few scenes. (Wonder which "TRN" that Earth been assigned, LOL.) Anyway, there's apparently a riff on the Superior Spider-Man arc - Otto Octavius (who's a teenager in this show) takes over Peter's body, according to my son. He asked me what bad things Doc Ock did when that happened in the comics... because in the show, all he's done so far is "tell Aunt May to stop making wheat cakes, because they're not healthy." And I thought - "Hey, I get that reference."

Just finished all the movies my daughter wanted to see (basically everything but the first two Thors and all of the Iron Men). Found it kind of amusing that all these movies build up to the epic conflict with Thanos, who first destroys half the life in the universe and then later decides to rebuild the universe from scratch ... which is sort of the scheme devised by Ego in the second "Guardians" movie, which is introduced and thwarted in a single standalone movie by a ragtag crew of misfits.

Yes that is a fascinating observation about these movies

people just get really angry at Kurt Russell

I mean the crux of Ego’s plan was he had to reproduce the celestial quality of himself in another person, so all it took was for that one person to strongly disagree with the plan, plus some additional surgery by the rest of the team to obliterate Ego so he couldn’t try it again.

Thanos collected six individual artifacts with unsurpassed celestial energy and was able to bend that power to his will with no outside help. That’s why thwarting his plan took everybody and required time travel.

Ha, no, I get that. It wasn't really a criticism or nitpick, I just like the way the movies scale up and down as much as needed. For example, Captain Marvel is massively powerful, but she mentions in passing that it's a big universe and she can't be everywhere at once and there are battles that need her elsewhere, implication being battles similarly in need of someone at her power level. Or a quip from Rocket to ... Tony Stark? Anyway, I think he grumbles that he's only a genius *on Earth,* which snide or no implies there are beings much, much smarter than him elsewhere. Or just a character as goofy and aloof as Ego, practically godlike but sort of casual about it; reminded me of the Beyonder in the comics. I kind of like how Thanos has godlike aims but not really godlike ambitions, and in the grand scheme of things, yeah, it took assembling all those stones to come close to the innate powers of some entities in the far flung universe. Though I guess the movie didn't really have time (or need) to delve in to what the infamous finger snap might have done to not really living in the traditional sense entities like Ego or the like.

Obviously the scaling works the other way, too, letting, say, Spider-man or Ant-man or even Captain America and Iron Man deal with smaller more terrestrial villains in their own movies, while Thor gets to zip across the galaxy battling fellow pseudo gods and supreme beings.

Or just a character as goofy and aloof as Ego, practically godlike but sort of casual about it; reminded me of the Beyonder in the comics.

wild that a Marvel character generated in the 1980s by some efficient hacks who never otherwise created any significant characters of their own would be reminiscent of a Marvel character created by Jack Kirby in the 1960s

IIRC, Ego of the comics is not "godlike but casual about it", but rather pompous and grandiose? So it's not really Kirby's characterization that informed that aspect of the movie version, and the Beyonder doesn't really resemble the comic book Ego.