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

The shows can be a little harder to stomach because their action/CGI budgets are smaller and their stories have more opportunities to be incoherent or less easy to ignore over the course of multiple episodes vs. a couple of hours. For instance Ms. Marvel had some charm but the story unraveled into a mess and the action felt proportionately cheap, so there wasn't a lot of incentive left to keep going aside from momentum (not to mention the unique Marvel-specific requirement to learn what events will effect the plot of the next movie).

I totally forgot about Ms. Marvel, too! I think I saw two (fine) episodes, so need to catch up.

I keep up with nearly all of it but She-Hulk is where I've been slack. At this point -- and COVID kinda accidentally underscored it -- it's pretty clear that the growing center-of-pop-culture mania throughout the 2010s over the whole cycle can't be recaptured in full. But as long as there's interest and money there's going to be more.

I've only really cared about the MCU since the tv shows started.

I really enjoyed Ms. Marvel, but we haven't watched beyond episode 3 of She-Hulk. My 11 year-old flat out told us he doesn't want to watch it anymore.

new She-Hulk ep was quite fun this week

She-hulk is clearly not meant for the younger demo. Ms. Marvel target audience definitely skewed younger.

For sure, just notable for the first time my kid has ever expressed distaste for anything Marvel related.

I don't hate the show, we've just had less time to watch TV lately and we've finally cracked into The Americans, which is eating up what time we do have. I'll def return to She-Hulk, because I <3 Tatiana. It's just the first Marvel show to not feel like a "must watch".

For the most part, I've been enjoying the TV shows more than the movies lately, it feels like they are at least trying some new things there, even if they often don't really work.

Also it helps that my 9 year old daughter really liked Ms Marvel and now really likes She-Hulk, so it's fun that we have a show that we watch together every week.

My 15-year old watches all the movies but outright refuses to watch the shows (no idea why).

Yeah, She Hulk has been really fun so far. I do like the fact that a lot of the tv shows feel more like comics and are trying different things to the movies.

I dont think anyone who works on she hulk understands pace or timing

They feel like shorts to me.

not enough hulking and not enough lawyering and too much of “nobody likes jen, everybody loves she-hulk”
maslany so far is the only reason to keep watching

because everybody likes maslany but why is she hulk?

because captain marvel was already taken

i could not be happier abt this week’s she hulk 😍

// #SheHulk spoilers
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charlie cox as matt murdock daredevil barefooted whistling and humming doing the walk of shame the morning after having sex with jennifer walters in she-hulk attorney at law pic.twitter.com/QsEW5hcV13

— mcu reactions & clips (@reactmcu) October 6, 2022

lol loved that so much, although jen was right, should’ve ended the episode there. the change in mood at the end gave me whiplash

They needed to lead into the finale with increased tension.

"charlie cox as matt murdock daredevil barefooted whistling and humming doing the walk of shame the morning after having sex with jennifer walters in she-hulk attorney at law" sounds like an ai image prompt

Haven’t loved this so far – can I skip to the daredevil episode?

Haven’t loved this so far – can I skip to the daredevil episode?

Not MCU-related, but the latest She-Hulk comic collection, by Rainbow Rowell, is recommended. There’s not a lot of action (mostly dialogue), but it’s cute and funny, one of the better comics I’ve read in a while.

Haven’t loved this so far – can I skip to the daredevil episode?

FYI, my daughter changed her mind and decided to watch it, so I started over from the beginning. I'd only seen three episodes, but fwiw they were better the second time around.

i really wish it would drop all the internal arc stuff in favor of it being a full on romcom but it's otherwise the best marvel thing yet. The quality of the acting and the dialogue feels higher. The doxing of jen stuff mirrors the mariko tamaki adjectiveless "hulk" run from 2017 iirc, no one seems to be discussing that series. that had her connected with hellcat as a bff and i'm wondering if they're grooming ginger gonazaga for that role? I'd be good with that.

* best marvel TV thing yet

suggesting my friends who aren’t interested in the whole She-Hulk series watch the Donny Blaze/Madisynn/Wong episode

wedding episode is fun, too.

yeah that was def when it kicked into gear

(xpost)

"Werewolf by Night" was slight but enjoyable enough.

I was finding this show a bit too meta and glib, but the Daredevil episode was good, especially because of Leapfrog, what a twat.

RIBBIT AND RIP IT

I wasn’t too into She-Hulk for most of its run, and my dislike of Love and Thunder made me wonder if I was finally done with the MCU (probably not, but anyway). But the last two episodes were really good! Great to see Matt again, Cox seemed super happy to be back in that role

Very very happy with Werewolf by Night

If Gael Garcia Bernal gets even a smidgen of MCU money - great
Impeccable casting of Harriet Sansom Harris
Short and sweet
60s-late 70s Marvel is my sweet spot so though horror comics not my top faves still happy
Cliched - perhaps - but Judy Garland is never something I will be unhappy about ( & Vera Lynn!)
and tribute to 30s b+w horror movies

I still just can’t believe my childhood comics are on screen so may overlook stuff just out of childhood dreams being realized in decent to great live-action (THO still bitter that my 2 faves as a kid (Scarlet Witch and Dr Strange) not been great in MCU)

BUT Werewolf was great fun,
She-Hulk been giving me many giggles, esp Walk of Shame

Not the majestic march to Endgame but nobody expected that to begin with so I’ll give em some space

Carry on

Yeah, WWBN was fun. One of my favorite bits was the cue marks every few minutes on the "film."

Heh, my older daughter asked me what those were.

So is there a running tally somewhere of just how many super people/creatures are running around the MCU?

omg Werewolf was great

lots of good stylistic references, i could watch it on repeat all day just for the ~look~

flaming tuba forever

Really fun. I just wish the other hunters felt a little more threatening/skilled.

We've been catching up on "Ms. Marvel," and while we're not done yet, I do love how all these shows keep literally expanding the MCU. Different cities, different countries, etc., in addition to the different characters. Related, fascinating to learn that the Karachi street scenes in "Marvel" were apparently filmed outside Bangkok!

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/blade-movie-on-hold-as-marvel-1235238872/

lol, yeah, really, you probably should have locked down that director and especially the script part before you started production.

Wow. She-Hulk finale was absolutely wild.

Loved those opening credits too.

Another WWBN satisfied customer. Not 100% on Man-Thing's history - has he ever had a consciousness? I only know him/it as the "whoever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing's touch" / Nexus of All Realities shuffling beast, relatively mindless. I liked this Ted interpretation a lot.

jings

/Film can independently confirm that Harrison Ford will play Gen. Thunderbolt Ross in #Thunderbolts.https://t.co/BnI7ttWQPy

— /Film (@slashfilm) October 13, 2022

I thought the She-Hulk finale was excellent and set it well apart from all other series, obviously deliberately steered that way but in a very fitting way, done really well.
The entire series could sometimes frustrate me a little, as it had a 30m comedy/sitcom format but half of the episodes weren't really funny enough to match that style. But that finale and the Madisynn and DD episodes were really, really great.

Wasn't overwhelmed with Werewolf By Night myself. I did have a lot of appreciation for the way it was filmed, the classic horror style and especially all the lighting effects and enjoyed it enough, but overall the story, dialogue and characters didn't do much for me. Mind that while I'm a Marvel nut, I never got into their horror stuff/the source material for this at all. I do have got some good stuff with Elsa Bloodstone but I get that obviously nothing from Nextwave would fit in a feature like this.
The ww transformation scene did look amazing (the flickering lights and the shadow on the wall) but I thought his subsequent look was a bit disappointingly silly, although I know that it was very faithful to the comics.
Man-thing looked really good, but I had the same doubts as in body of a spider's hidden comment, I also am not aware of a conscious Man-Thing who responds to Ted Sallis' name. I'm not sure if I like this interpretation all that much - in the final scene with him and Jack, I found him a bit too similar to Groot like this..

Final She-Hulk was tons of fun. Did they only have Charlie Cox for a day? Because he did so little to hide his Irish accent I thought for a second he was leaving it on purpose.

he's English

huh. wonder what was up with his accent, we both heard Irish!

loved the she-hulk finale, super fun
and always glad for more charlie!