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

part of what makes the fourth world collections so much fun is that jimmy olsen and superman just barge into this whole separate universe over here that neither they nor we know anything about and everything is equally compelling and visually exciting so you have a sense of wonders upon wonders
there have been a zillion new universes since but i think maybe only kirby figured out how to do it right

shocked that you nerds aren't already talking loki. is a thread necessary?

gotta wait until tonight to watch it with the kid

I enjoyed every second of this.

This was great

omg i forgot!! will watch tonight :D

All I know is if they don't do the Deadpool story where Loki shows up and says "I am your father" story line, they are missing out on what could be pretty fun if done right, especially considering what happens to DP's face as a consequence.

This was very good! Loved the 70s sci-fi meets Terry Gilliam's Brazil vibe.

I had the same thought about Brazil!

um yes hi Loki is great i love it the end

Yup, solid start all around. Also ended on the right fucked up note.

I'm aware the TVA has been around in the comics since the mid-90s, but if I was Steve Blackman I'd probably still give my lawyers a call in the morning just to spitball. Which is to say this was great, but it'll remind a lot of people of The Umbrella Academy.

I wold have had an easier time with the TVA if they weren't so strict about the timeline. Does this mean there is no free will? Is the TVA the baddies?

Fucking time travel amirite? I'm getting pretty sick of it. Any time you think more than five seconds about a time travel plot it all falls apart.

There are some easter egg-y bits suggesting that Kang (who is confirmed for the next Ant-Man film) may be one of the three timelords. So your POV may prove prescient.

when did owen wilson age into becoming john slattery?

I had the same thought

Owen wilson is always a joy for me and i hope he is well

he looks so good w grey hair holy shit

posts very much in character <3

:D

I like how owen wilson gets to do his signature 'whispery, flirty nonsense' occassionally, like talking up to the TVA judge.... he's still got it!

More of that this episode - if it was just 5 episodes of Tom and Owen bickering I would be very okay with that

mmm ragnarok salad

Yes as I was saying on the netflix thread - Wilson/Hiddleston banter I am here for, it was great.

This show is so much fun.

jet ski magazine <3

Caught up with this now and as well as Brazil/Umbrella Academy it seems heavily redolent of Legion

I know we're only two episodes in but I think I like this one the most of the Disney+ shows thus far. Hiddleston's Loki + Owen Wilson is a truly inspired combination, and I hope they find a way to continue the pairing beyond this show (assuming it's only limited to one season).

Thought this was fun, exciting, well scripted, well performed, a story I haven’t seen before on television – the whole package. Some of the Kirby-tribute background shots were stunning. And it looks especially amazing considering almost every scene is basically just two people in a room talking, during a pandemic. Like Wandavision - and TFAWS, which did it badly - it feels like an actual comic book story, not just a blockbuster movie with comic book characters in it.

Intrigued to figure out how they’ll do their usual thing and turn it into an airborne fight between two energy beings in the last half an hour.

"warring timelines" will be the beams of light, obviously

I look forward to getting stuck in to Loki based on what I've read here. WandaVision was so much fun but F&WS ultimately pretty boring and dour, and I couldn't give a shit about the Falcon's sister's damn boat.

Guess you aren't gonna be waiting in line when the Falcon's Sister's Damn Boat film drops next year.

I heard a rumor that the boat is actually Mephisto in disguise.

lol at the notion that umbrella academy somehow broke important new ground in comic book storylines

Yeah but the comment was "it'll remind a lot of people of The Umbrella Academy" which I think is fair enough as would imagine the majority of Netflix viewers who watched it don't read comics.

I only read the first volume of Umbrella Academy, did it develop a concept or storyline beyond "1989 Doom Patrol tribute band"?

funny you should say, given s1 of doom patrol was effectively “umbrella academy, but good”

the 1989 Doom Patrol was good

Yo this show, it’s my shit

the 1989 Doom Patrol was good

Holy shit, ep 3 is full-on a Doctor Who episode

Definitely that but relatedly some serious Douglas Adams vibes too, it wasn’t called an ark for nothing. Best episode yet, especially for being essentially a bottle episode at that.

Oh yeah, definitely caught some Hitchhiker vibes, too

There is a cast of dozens, almost none of the regulars appear, and all but one (used for thirty seconds) of the sets was new to this ep iirc - that's the opposite of a money-saving bottle episode!



Seems likely that Adams' Ark was inspired by Who, fwiw: he'd already been mailing pitches in when Doctor Who's serial The Ark In Space ran in 1975, and got a meeting & pitched a story called The Krikkitmen in 1976, directly to the author of Ark In Space, who was also the equivalent of a head writer/showrunner at the time*. Adams got his first freelance commission as a writer for the show by pitching with the pilot script of Hitchhikers in 1977, and had to get John Lloyd to write the later eps of the first series with/for him bcz he was busy with that Who four-parter.

Having gotten hired as a BBC radio producer after that first HHTTG series was produced, he became Who's "~showrunner~" six months later in October 1978, while his first serial as writer was going to air (his first obvious rewriting is on the final ep of Season 16). It took six months of rescheduled studio bookings to get the five episodes of Hitchhiker's second series - including the Golgafrincham B-Ark plotline - done, as Adams repeatedly failed to complete the scripts, due to simultaneously working on the HHTTG novel, stage play, LP and having a full-time day job on Who.

So Long And Thanks For All The Fish is basically the first** piece of Hitchhikers after the pilot episode that wasn't bashed out in a panic as a side-project from, or reworking of, Doctor Who!

* (Adams later rewrote the pitch as a Doctor Who And The Krikkitmen feature film in 1980, and re-rewrote as the third HHTTG novel when that went nowhere.) ((The first Dirk Gently novel is also a reworking of two of his Who serials, down to still including a TARDIS, dematerialising so the sofa gets stuck.))

** or only, if your headcanon rightly doesn't include Mostly Harmless.

Well, conceptual bottle if you like, didn’t expect most of the episode to be the two of them just talking!

the sicbot will not tolerate your puny human asides

<3

Both the first two episodes also (seemed to me to be saving money by) having half the running time be two ppl in a room talking - either Wilson and Loki, or Wilson and boss. Though the sets look to be almost entirely digital, and I wonder if that's because it's cheaper, or just safer in covid times, and actually more expensive.

(This interview with the bloke who novelised Krikkitmen in 2018 claims that the Golgafrincham plot was actually reworked from a Who pitch that was rejected because he'd clearly been too closely inspired by Ark In Space! Which I've never heard before, but since this guy had access to Adams' archives in order to write these and other novelisations...)

I appreciate all of Loki's confusing and elaborate metaphors.

This show looks really good for an MCU thingy - loved the purple skyline with the asteroids falling all around a dying planet