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

Od's Blood! Hath ILE no thread for anticipation of THOR 4? Verily?

I have to alert everyone that the making of Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness special on Disney+ is hosted by Bruce Campbell.

they've officially reached the point where I was able to guess halfway through the movie exactly who would show up in the mid-credits sequence

the ending was kind of rote and corny, but there were some moments here and there. the highlight of Thor: L&T for me was probably the fast-paced battle scene with flashes of color. somehow managed the frantic quick-cut style reminiscent of a Michael Bay movie while still being legible, possibly because the camera wasn't two feet away from the characters

Ms Marvel ended very well. Great series I thought and I am really looking forward to the movie now. And boy were they dropping hints left and right at the end there (and not hiding it).

While there was a lot to like, I didn't think so much of the end of Ms. Marvel and it became my least favourite of the Disney+ MCU series. I thought the series started out pretty great, although I wasn't too keen on having another coming-of-age teenage girl with an overprotective/controlling family story following Encanto and Turning Red, this was very much saved by having a great cast, very well done setting/depictions of culture and a very unique, distinguishing style (drawings and emojis coming to life).

The great cast, especially Iman Vellani herself, and the cultural stuff stayed strong until the end. However, that style thing was hardly present anymore - maybe in the last 2 episodes only with the school board planning?

It was the story which got me less and less invested. I didn't think the Djinn were very compelling villains to begin with and the shift to Damage Control as the opposition in the final episode also fell quite flat to me - it seemed like such unnecessary escalation. I did like a lot that Sheikh Abdullah said "If someone treats you as their enemy, that doesn't give you the right to treat them as yours.", but I feel they could have done more with this (especially seeing as Damage Control are not 'villains'; wouldn't have bad intentions)
I also thought that the series featured not one but two drastic U-turns which weren't done very well. One: the Djinn being sympathetic, asking Kamala for her help, then Kamala saying 'Well, it might be dangerous, I have to think about it' being taken by Namja as 'What? She won't help us! We're going to kill her!'; the other: Kamala's mother (and other relatives)' shift from being overprotective to over-supportive.

Mixed feelings regarding Bruno's reveal in the final scene. An intriguing setup with a very cool music effect, but it didn't seem all that dynamic to me. So I take it that Bruno is a typical old-school Comic Book scientist who is an expert on all fields of technology, biology and chemistry? Seems strange that he would be able to discover these details.

Not a big gripe, but I still wouldn't know exactly why they opted to change Ms. Marvel's powers to a purple display version of Quasar (who, admittedly, is a white/yellow display rip-off of Green Lantern).

All that said, I am looking forward to seeing more of the character in The Marvels.

Thor: Love & Thunder on the other hand got very high marks from me. Absolutely loved it. At times they went a bit over the top with cracking jokes and being silly throughout everything and despite everything, but I didn't really mind as I had to laugh a lot and the movie completely landed with me with a downright beautiful finale (and a post-credit scene fulfilling a long-time wish of mine).

Agreed about Ms. Marvel. The storytelling was extremely weak but the show was saved primarily by its dedication to the focus on family and culture.

Of all the sloppy issues it had in the story I agree that the worst of all was “help us get home” “ok this a lot let me process it” “ok we waited literally 100+ years so we really are anxious to finally leave but hey another day should also be pretty trivial I suppose” “cool cause my brother is getting married like tomorrow so maybe we circle back right after that?” “What?! Fuck you we’re just going to kill you”

Humanizing them in their introduction and then suddenly turning them into ruthless one dimensional goons for the rest of their appearances just because of a tiny scheduling delay for a pretty understandable reason. There were better ways to demonstrate their impatience and have it escalate into fun fight scenes.

So Marvel went all in on announcements, huh?

But no mutant stuff, huh?

(didn’t mean to echo yr “huh”)

Okay, that last Phase Six film is exactly what I'd been expecting/hoping that all of this multiversal nonsense would lead up to and I'm re-psyched about the MCU. Not that I expect the movies to top the comics (that particular storyline and the build-up to it being among the best mainstream comics of the century imo) but still. It gives the sense that there actually is a bigger plan.

Too bad Hasselhoff’s aged out of playing the Beyonder.

can someone summarize so that i dont have to sit through a powerpoint please and thank you #lazy

https://www.indiewire.com/2022/07/marvel-comic-con-announcements-whats-next-for-the-mcu-1234744167/

ty

Okay, that last Phase Six film is exactly what I'd been expecting/hoping that all of this multiversal nonsense would lead up to and I'm re-psyched

……..when is Phase Six

It's after Phase Five but before Phase Seven.

this is everything that's wrong with marvel (there shd be no phase five)

Phase 4: Ants, Man

I guess they showed an Ant-Man trailer, and Guardians 3 trailer, but opted not to share them yet. No clips of The Marvels, either, I don't think. Black Panther 2 trailer introduces Namor. She-Hulk hints at the return of Daredevil (who is getting a new show). This is a ton of stuff. I haven't even finished Ms. Marvel or Moon Night.

Went down a twitter rabbit hole (thanks, algorithm) wondering if no show or movie has referenced the giant space gods in The Eternals because 1) they take place before The Eternals 2) they (either the other movies or The Eternals) take place in a different timeline or 3) they're trying to pretend The Eternals don't exist.

there have now been three Marvel movies that have taken place since Eternals, and somehow no one has once mentioned how the Earth now has this dude sticking out of it pic.twitter.com/oIU9FrHJZO

— Mike Murphy (@mcwm) July 25, 2022

They had a couple of Celestials hanging out in Zeus's place in the new Thor movie, and a Celestial statue's head almost crushes the Asgard kids at the end, so they're in there. Maybe it's more of a 'huh, that happened' (after half the earth's population dissolved and then reappeared five years later, a dude sticking out of the earth may be 'and in the lighter side of the news...' worthy).

That single shot in the Wakanda Forever trailer where they're flying up to what looks like a frozen landscape looked vaguely like a frosty Celestial

Also, is this wrong?

what a great commentary on society. Y’all know damn well this would be trending for a week, we’d all be doing the Tiamut Challenge, then some influencer will drink battery acid and then that’d be the new thing https://t.co/LDXLBPrQ60

— James III (@James3rdComedy) July 26, 2022

https://www.vulture.com/article/a-vfx-artist-on-what-its-like-working-for-marvel.html

The other issue is, when we’re in postproduction, we don’t have a director of photography involved. So we’re coming up with the shots a lot of the time. It causes a lot of incongruity. A good example of what happens in these scenarios is the battle scene at the end of Black Panther. The physics are completely off. Suddenly, the characters are jumping around, doing all these crazy moves like action figures in space. Suddenly, the camera is doing these motions that haven’t happened in the rest of the movie. It all looks a bit cartoony. It has broken the visual language of the film.

like, if you were a director, wouldn't you ... not want some lowly spline jockey coming up with the shots for the climax of your movie?

(apologies to my friends who work in vfx who aren't reading this anyway, but you know what I mean)

I’m definitely in cherry-picking mode with the MCU. These announcements were met with a … shrug, honestly.

That Vulture article was being discussed in my workplace; someone who has worked in VFX a long time had some interesting/detailed comments (it boiled down to, “this is both true and not true, some of it is not Marvel-specific”).

(I don’t work @ Marvel, ftr)

Two related articles (general about VFX):

https://defector.com/a-vfx-supervisor-explains-why-their-job-is-so-tricky/

https://defector.com/writer-x-offers-inside-look-at-bad-special-effects/

like, if you were a director, wouldn't you ... not want some lowly spline jockey coming up with the shots for the climax of your movie?

Multiple directors have said that they have turned down offers to make Marvel movies specifically for these reasons (which Marvel have pitched to them as positives).

telling directors not to worry about a lack of action movie directing because they've got people to do the action scenes always seemed kind of suspect, doubly so when the "people to do the action scenes" is a process of having underpaid vfx artists throw stuff at the wall until it sticks

Wakanda Forever trailer is pretty incredible. Agreed about Hickman's saga being one of the best superhero runs ever.

I want to see Wakanda Forever, but also I kinda don’t.

https://gizmodo.com/disney-marvel-movies-vfx-industry-nightmare-1849385834

Baby Groot shorts we saw were cute.

I’m very tired of all Marvel ventures, but everything in the trailer seemed good. I remembered the action at least being interesting in Winter Soldier, but even that one has the last act huge action set piece where it’s just a mess with all the fake sets and animated fights going off the rails

just keep it close, choreographed, and eschew that shit for once. that other recent article talking about the fight at the end of Black Panther solidified a lot of things I’d not quite thought about

I thought it was when funny when my son started talking about the Submariner and my dad and his wife had no idea who that was. They thought he must be a guy who has a submarine.

I haven’t heard Namor called that in a long time!

(he actually eats submarine sandwiches)

The king of Atlantis and your friendly neighborhood Wawa

https://www.avclub.com/namor-the-sub-mariner-dives-into-the-new-black-panther-1849324149

is it submarine-er or sub-marry-ner?

Quite enjoyed the first episode of She-Hulk (genuine lol at the post credits bit) and of course it's getting review bombed by angry, middle aged males.

CGI wasn't great but better than it was in the trailers and I'm definitely up for a weekly procedural Marvel show

yeah, really enjoyed it . Do enjoy Tas Mas . So long may she make humourous quirky semi sci fi.
I didn't know that Hulk was contagious in that way. Need to look up the comic book origin.
But yeah enjoying this.
So hope it is something that has a few seasons and all like that

I definitely enjoyed it, but it seems a bit basic (so far) and the jokes went took winky-winky too soon

The CGI is very Shrekky at times but I can ignore it

Lol that Ruffalo has a sexier chemistry with a character playing his cousin than with Scarlett Johansson

Ruffalo's movie acting energy vs. Maslany's TV acting energy sort of worked for the character dynamic though

*too winky-winky

And Hulk talking about Iron Man had a very "Sophia reminisces about Dorothy on Golden Palace" energy

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