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

i would like to judge it from the trailer i saw on tv, which made it look like grey shit

Will definitely say this, I was thinking Weinstein at the end for sure, but the Karolyi idea, I can live with that as well:

Anyone else notice that the villain in Black Widow started off looking like ruthless gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi, and ended up looking a lot like Harvey Weinstein?

I think this movie might have slightly feministical undertones in the subtexts.#BlackWidow #MeToo pic.twitter.com/piY2ofbQuf

— Marc L'Hommedieu 💛❤💙 (@MarcLHommedieu) July 19, 2021

AITA for calling my bf a gatekeeper? https://t.co/MP5hLZ2wvt pic.twitter.com/TCkMHCmMc4

— Am I the Asshole? (@AITA_reddit) July 19, 2021

i liked loki a lot though i have thoughts on the somewhat pro-fascist conclusion

To Valentijn: yeah, i felt that was kind of abrupt, too. But I guess since we already know what happens between Civil War and Infinity War they were... too lazy to even bother explaining exactly what happened here?

I'm gonna challenge aldo's Black Widow take in spoiler tags:

It's really weird to me to clutch pearls about the collateral damage of all of the dead employees of the Red Room given that their job was "kidnap, brainwash, and mutilate orphaned girls to mold them into super assassins and murder the ones who don't pass muster". It reeks to me of "it's fictional so I can worry about good people on both sides without any real world blowback or repercussions". Like, are you really rending your garments because the dude who did IT for the Red Room blew up? THAT takes you out of the story?

Basically it's one thing to be all "I'm troubled by the depiction of fascism in superhero stories" but when the addendum is "because I'm sure some of the fascists were actually lovely and devoted to their families" I think you need to start asking yourself some hard questions

djp’s hidden text otm

yeah agreed. and a lotta people probably died in that

taskmaster chase

haha lol i suck at spoiler tags sorry.

DJP is completely otm wrt to the Red Room organization but, to be completely honest, I think the objection was more to the avalanche that presumably killed hundreds of prisoners who, given the narrative, were very frequently innocent people tucked away for being inconvenient to the regime.

Maybe not "more", but also an objection.

Meantime:

EXCLUSIVE: After a thorough search that has involved months of meeting a slew of talent, @Marvel's new 'Blade' movie has found its director: Bassam Tariq https://t.co/Nc13Q3bOh2

— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) July 19, 2021

Regarding that Black Widow scene: It's not defined who those prisoners actually were; for example, do you think Alexei is meant to be taken as an innocent person given how enthusiastically he gave Natasha and Yelena to the Red Room and how delighted he was by how many people they'd presumably killed? And even then, is the presumption warranted that they were all innocent OR that they all died in the avalanche? It seemed from the staging that most, if not all, of the prisoners made it back inside before the avalanche swept through as well as most of the guards; why isn't the presumption that they survived and were able use exits higher up in the prison to get out? It's literally fiction; the people in that prison can be whomever you want them to be and what happens to them after the snow sweeps through can be whatever you want it to be.

The point j/v/c makes was definitely the jarring point for the reasons he gave. But enhhh I don't really gaf about it, I was just trying to explain why I am less keen on the military complex films rather than Big Men Punching Each Other.

I certainly didn't intend to start an argument here, at all, just noting that it wasn't the scene DJP called out that stuck in my craw, it was a different scene. But to answer DJP's questions:

Fair, I do not think Alexei is at all innocent, and saying "very frequently innocent" was overstating the fact. However, given what we do know about Soviet era prisons (which I think was the implication here, or at least the implied allusion with it being in the middle of nowhere), I wouldn't presume them all to be hardened criminals and some of them would be dissidents or resistance types. So no, I would not presume them to be all innocent. Also, yes, I would agree that many of them did make it back to safety, but I don't think any prisoner, regardless of their criminal past, deserves to suffocate to death in a man made avalanche in the name of freeing one guy.

Some very geeky speculation based on Black Widow's post credit scene and the possible non-multiverse future of the MCU, also going into the MCU streaming series:

Early MCU days were set off by Nick Fury recruiting Tony Stark for his Initiative. Is Elaine from Seinfeld now setting up a private contractor version of the Avengers? Taking cues from the 'Dark Avengers' comic book storylines where supervillain Norman Osborn got into the good graces of the public and replaced the then-current altruistic Avengers with remodelled villains - maybe also drawing from Mark Millar's 'Ultimates 2' storyline where the Ultimate version of the Avengers were confronted by a counterpart team from opposing foreign nations?
The Contessa seems like a morally ambiguous or even evil Fury, who we now know has a morally ambiguous Captain America and a morally ambiguous Black Widow in her employ. Tim Roth's Abomination will show up in the upcoming She-Hulk series, who could be her Hulk. From the original Avengers, that leaves Iron Man, Hawkeye and Thor. There might easily be an Iron Man counterpart featured in War Machine's announced series Armor Wars, such as the Titanium Man or the Crimson Dynamo. Lalo Salamanca/Tony Dalton will feature in the upcoming Hawkeye series, he might fit as dark Hawkeye, alternatively Hawkeye's brother Trickshot might show up at some point. That leaves Thor. I have no idea which upcoming film or series might feature a 'new Thor'. I keep hoping that Hercules will be introduced at some point, as he's one of my personal favourite Marvel characters. Other Thor-counters could be Ares or the Thor cyborg clone (as in Dark Avengers), or Slavic deity Perun (as in Ultimates 2).
Obviously, I could be entirely wrong here.

I have no idea which upcoming film or series might feature a 'new Thor'.

Oh that’s no mystery, it’s been announced…

Oh that’s no mystery, it’s been announced…

Ah, yes... that's pretty obvious indeed. But I don't think -that- new Thor would be a likely candidate for recruitment into a Dark Avengers-style team. But maybe.

I like that theory a lot.

Yeah, I agree with that theory. Valentina/Elaine's first appearance should have been Black Widow BEFORE appearing in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, too... she's definitely going to make more appearances. Maybe they'll introduce Ares or Hercules in the next Thor movie. Abomination seems a lock for this, great idea there. Loki seems a good opportunity in the next season to introduce a character on that power level as well.

Good interview, this.

https://gizmodo.com/loki-director-kate-herron-explains-the-loneliness-he-wh-1847331591

This...is very very good casting.

https://variety.com/2021/film/news/michaela-coel-black-panther-2-marvel-1235024815/

Also, the making-of on Loki is up at Disney+ as I figured it would be.

And said making of special is pretty fun. Hiddleston narrates, a good piece of promo.

Owen Wilson talking about working with Tom Hiddleston lmao pic.twitter.com/SOUXMbwOIM

— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) July 21, 2021

the moment where Owen talks about Tom suggesting “there was only one person we considered” vs. Tom later on wrt the casting choice for classic Loki.

There are no good options with regards to BP2. It's dumb to lose the character of T'Challa, but Chad's take was so definite...

Casting Coel is exciting, but i'm not sure which wakandan female character is even left to cast? Maybe Storm?

xpost
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead with Wilson and Hiddleston could be actually amazing

i just watched the last episode of loki and it was boring as fuck

How dare you

suggest ban

our hero sits in a chair for like 25 minutes straight. i lost count of how many times the camera pushed in on the big executive desk of the guy pulling the strings, only to pull back out again in the next shot, or pull out on the desk during the delivery of another dreary bit of exposition in order to push back in on it once we cut back. back and forth. up and back. trying to create the illusion that something was happening! the actor was doing everything he could. trying to find moments. yikes!

oh and every now and again she’d try to stab him. just to keep us awake. utterly transparent and very desperate.

and all of a sudden loki’s in favour of pruning, and keeping the tva going? okay. fuck’s sake

Complaints complaints. (I say this out of love, of course.)

at least in bond movies when the cackling baddie reveals his secret plan in laborious detail there’s a laser beam advancing insensibly on 007’s nuts!

Tracer otm tbh

search “chibnall” upthread Tracer

lol sic!! my kids were squirming in their seats. “why does he just keep saying the same thing daddy?? we get it!!” ffs i thought i was losing my mind. and then instead of cutting through the bullshit loki…… agrees w him?? “you know what mr baddie… i believe you have a point, you know”

because he actually wasn't bullshitting!

well we have his word for that. formally he’s the bad guy, the man behind the curtain. it’s true that the show gives us this twist that huh maybe the tva is necessary after all, but it felt very unsatisfying after a 20-minute infodump.

you're not saying anything i disagree with

I felt like the exposition went on a bit long and I also felt like he was hamming it up and got a bit tired of it, but I did get the feeling that what he was saying was not bullshit, which was possibly why they had it go on so long, so the viewer wasn't left questioning whether he was lying or not.

that’s fair

I think the show did a good job revealing Loki at his most humbled. Is it in the first episode where he recognizes he might be dealing with the greatest power he's ever known? The Sylvie Loki, on the other hand, is not humbled by the circumstances at all, through time and temperament, which is an early (if still obvious) sign that they are not at all the same. So it makes sense (to me) that Loki would just sit and listen, out of curiosity and awe, to what this lunatic is talking about, and ultimately believe him. And of course Sylvie was never going to chill, no matter what Kang said. That's why I was fine with an episode of mostly exposition; our Loki has been us, the viewer, for much of the show, and he wants to know what's going on, too. And as far as exposition dumps go this was a better ending imo than WandaVision (also lots of villain monologuing) and Falcon (don't even remember the villain). Loki's got an audience with God, more or less, so he's all ears.

I do think the show should have done a better job developing Sylvie, but talky or no by the end I really had no idea what either Loki would decided to do. And given how important Kang will apparently be going forward I think they (the show) really needed to explain him to the layman.

Our said told us that his camp counselor had a "strange conversation" with the kids (we were like - uh oh)... it turned out he had detailed some theory where if you watch these recent three Marvel series simultaneously, key moments onscreen will "sync up" with each other (we were relieved - oh, he's just a super nerd).

(*Our son told us...)

Pink Floyd tech still relevant

who would even do this

Loki wasn’t an anti-TVA ideologue, having doubts about the wisdom of destroying it all isn’t out of character.

There's these scenes in the Wandavision & Loki finales that sync up apparently (SPOILERS obvs if you've not seen them):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub3jCFh5W2Y

Not buying it at all. You could a random 30 seconds of Cheers and match it up that well with Loki.