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

lmao stop supporting these ghouls

Disney gives a "no merit whatsoever" response to Johansson's pay lawsuit and calls it "sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic."

— Brooks Barnes (@brooksbarnesNYT) July 29, 2021

jesus, get your money ScarJo

oh shit they're trying to guilt trip her out of money?!

lmao at the mouse taking the high road

yeah, that's... quite the statement, lol

it's cool that she apparently has an email from Disney's chief counsel saying - “We understand that should the plan change, we would need to discuss this with you and come to an understanding as the deal is based on a series of (very large) box office bonuses.”

Not paying royalties due to authors they don’t care about makes a certain evil kind of sense but fucking with their headline stars is an incredible move. “We own it all what the fuck you gonna do?”

But Covid.

when someone says you breached a contract and you start talking about global pandemics you 100% breached that contract https://t.co/eXhc1Jz6OF

— Law Boy, Esq. (@The_Law_Boy) July 29, 2021

More shocked they didn't pay her off ahead of time (ala the Warner / HBOMax / WW84 deal mentioned). Disney clearly in the wrong here, but they've got the legal team to keep it in the courts forever.

One thing regarding Loki and the MCU multiverse that I was wondering about the other day:

In Infinity War, Doc Strange scanned millions of futures to see the one way to win.
This set off a series of events which inadvertantly caused Loki to get his hands on the Space Stone/Tesseract in the past.
Which led to the events in Loki's own show.
Which led to the aforementioned millions of futures actually being able to exist.

My head hurts.

it’d be funnier if each future he saw had TVD fixing things so that the Avengers win each time.

"I went forward in time, to view alternate futures. To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict."
"How many did you see?"
"14,000,605."
"How many did we win?"
"Every single one of them.”

Finally saw "Black Widow." Count me among those that think this was actually one of the better Marvel movies. Certainly one of the most violent, that's for sure. At times it creeped into black comedy body horror territory.

that's a cool way to die

I’m now imagining Strange being like “we win in all of them but Tony is SUCH a dick…”

BTW, to be even more team ScarJo, this movie really did feel to me like, if not for the pandemic and all attendant bullshit, it could have been a much bigger deal at the box office.

Want to read J. Hoberman’s recent writeup about Stan Lee bios.

I enjoyed the first episode of "What If ...?" Kind of like watching a Marvel movie at twice the speed.

BTW, occurred to me mid episode that this would be an easy way to "introduce" the X-Men or Fantastic Four, if they wanted to.

I liked What If! The animation style was weird and off-putting for five minutes and then I got used to it and liked it. I think it works better for someone like my kid who's memorized every beat of every movie. But I felt it had more of the spirit of the comic than I'd expected.

i really loved it!

(bc I have memorized every beat of the first Cap movie lol)

I liked it a lot, and I appreciated that the creative team really seemed to relish animating someone beating the living shit out of Nazis.

Thought last week's episode was ok but this week's was brilliant.

Loved all the "good" Thanos scenes

is there a list of the full series in terms of episodes or is there intentionally not. Only seeing the first 2 episodes plot outlined so far.
Would be good to know what is coming and how long the series is.

Nine episodes I think (and the same for season two)

loved everything about the second episode. RIP Boseman fuck

something about this just seems...off

"When you love something, you protect it." Watch the brand-new trailer for Marvel Studios' #Eternals. Arriving in theaters November 5. pic.twitter.com/ClywAG421i

— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) August 19, 2021

haven't seen the trailer because of spoilers and because I seem to dislike all of them. but usually they are all same-ish? how are the eternals off?

Wait, Jon Snow's in this too? I thought it was just the other beardy one

If I was going to hazard an opinion on the Eternals, knowing next to nothing about the Eternals other than what is in that trailer, I'd say the mix of sand and costume and music and general portent gives it a Biblical vibe, and said portentous Biblical vibe doesn't necessarily jibe with the goofy jokes? Also, for something seemingly epic in scope and filmed in great locations, it seems weirdly ... small and cheap. Both may turn out to be big surprises, but my takeaway on this and Shang Chi is that for two big imminent Marvel movies with new characters, they've done a pretty poor job demonstrating why I or anyone should care about either of them. Besides magic bracelets and laser eyes, of course.

Yeah, this week's What If? was just really sweet, I liked it a lot.

new movie trailer has too many people in it.... that's too many people

gonna have to kill some of them off to fit them into an avengers movie, starting with robb stark cause it would be funny

also i don't really mind the standard whedon-style snark dialogue but i wonder how long they're gonna stick with it? feel like the world is getting increasingly sick of it and the children are ready to move on. i was sort of looking forward to the joylessness of the first trailer just as a change of pace, but then that "no one ever saved the world with sarcasm" line, ugh

It's funny because I thought that style of dialogue was fun and refreshing when they did the first few movies, a change of pace from every franchise/reboot being gritty. Now, tons of stuff has that style, spilling over outside of Marvel. Wouldn't say I'm as sick of it as I was the gritty style, but it can be pretty cringy when done badly

Hasn’t snappy sarcasm been Marvel’s USP since the days of the first Fantastic Four comic? Hard to see them dropping it now.

Lol I'm sure the Eternals will have more than enough dull pompousness to keep you happy.

A pre-FX version of the Spider-man trailer leaked and by all indications leans hard into lots of familiar faces and characters. There's always a chance December 2021 might end up December 2022 or 2023 at this rate, so maybe Marvel can team with the feds and dangle it out there as an incentive to get vaccinated.

And here’s the full one

What just happened? Watch the official teaser trailer for #SpiderManNoWayHome, exclusively in movie theaters December 17. @SpiderManMovie pic.twitter.com/IdK2DFTlQK

— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) August 24, 2021

I'm hoping that's like the first 20 minutes, but pretty cool so far.

“The multiverse is a concept about which we know frighteningly little”

— I wish! (longtime comics reader)

OK, *now* they're going to introduce Mephisto.

Reviews for Shang-Chi are out and seem to be overwhelmingly positive

Was skimming some comments somewhere and I saw someone sum up that Marvel movies generally have a high floor but a low ceiling, which is to say, they're almost all going to be pretty good, but most are only going to be *so* good, and that more or less scans. Only a couple of conspicuous lows, and a couple of consensus highs, but most MCU is pretty MOR. Curious where this one falls.

Each Marvel movie like a crawlspace in the sky

The reviews I've seen have definitely made me more excited for it (and the 4th phase in general) xp

Excited to see it, but really there's no way Doctor Strange would agree to do that for Peter Parker is there? He'd just be like "fuck no, kid... you might destroy the universe. I can put glowy stars on your bedroom ceiling though"

But what about an evil devil figure that frequently pretends to be other people and also gives people things in exchange for things?

The Wong / Strange interaction is there to show Strange is still learning what he should / shouldn't do, and that he has a little of the surgeon arrogance left over to push the envelope.

The LA Times review is positive and says not to fault Simu Liu, Tony Leung has the star presence. Stoked enough to see this, will brave the theaters instead of waiting for blu.

Simu is a gifted comic actor and deeply enjoyable to watch but that sounds right to me.