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Ben X

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Completely agreed about Captain Marvel.  She's supposed to be their ace, the big gun with the power to stand toe to toe with Thanos.  But she pops in the beginning to minor effect (apart from saving Tony/Nebula), disappears to patrol space or something, the comes back and does... nothing yet again.  That movie could have been basically the same without her (I'm sure there's some equally convenient way that Tony and Nebula could have been saved, like the remaining Asguardians who later resettled on Earth).

 

I have some issues with the little side trip to 1970 in that I think it was kind of unnecessary and didn't really buy the payoff but I'll let it go.

 

I'm not even going to try and pick apart all the problems with how they present time travel.  That's an aneurysm waiting to happen.

 

And to clarify, I did still like the movie.  I was ultimately entertained by it in the same way I was entertained by 90% of the other MCU movies.  But as a big finale, I think it felt rather incoherent and something of a letdown after a decade's worth of buildup.  Even the finale of the finale just didn't have the same punch it should have.

 

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I am still processing it but liked it a lot. Also Ned can easily be the same age as Peter if he just also got dusted and brought back with everyone else.

 

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Ned being in the half went away then came back did occur to me, but I got the feeling that scene at the end where he and Peter reunite seemed more like Ned was relieved his friend who was gone for 5 years came back.  I doubt it will ever get addressed though so there's really not much point in speculating.

 

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given that there's a Spiderman movie this summer it's very possible that they explicitly address it. Also it seems, from Peter's telling of what he remembers to Tony, that they remember being dusted, so it may just be the joy of reuniting after a mutually traumatic and confusing event.

 

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I thought the time travel stuff was executed pretty well. They explain that you can't change things in the past to change their present. Any change that happens just creates a new branch (essentially introducing what will probably be a multiverse thing years from now) The only wrinkle The Ancient One puts on the story, is that these branches *also* matter. That the people living on in those branches aren't meaningless, thus they need the stones back so they can actually fight the evils of the world, such and such. It's hand-wavy, but they spend a lot of minutes from an already long movie to make it fit together, I thought. Captain America goes back in time and spends his days growing old in a new branch of time, which has no effect on the MCU movie branch, then returns to his actual present. Loki disappearing with the stone in one of the time branches, the stone is still there in that branch not breaking Tilda Swinton's "get the stones back" rule, just not the same place as it was in our MCU movie branch.



 

It's convoluted and contrived, but the movie spends time explaining its rules and it *does* follow them. The only question I have left, because I wasn't paying attention to it, is where is Gamora. Was she on the ship at the end? I agree they just hand-wave Black Widow away because they don't want the can of worms of "can we just bring back all the dead Avengers, then?"

 

Oh, and I *loved* this movie. As a massive Marvel nerd by now it was everything I wanted, honestly. Love you 3000.

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6 hours ago, jennegatron said:

 

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given that there's a Spiderman movie this summer it's very possible that they explicitly address it. Also it seems, from Peter's telling of what he remembers to Tony, that they remember being dusted, so it may just be the joy of reuniting after a mutually traumatic and confusing event.

 

Spoiler

You have a point and it could very well be given some throwaway line in Far From Home, although the previews also showed a bunch of the other significant characters from Homecoming (such as Flash and their version of MJ) in the same group.  I can buy both Ned and Peter being dusted but when you start using for every character it feels far too convenient.  But again it's not especially important except to people like myself who spend more time thinking about such things than they should.

 

3 hours ago, BigJKO said:

 

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I thought the time travel stuff was executed pretty well. They explain that you can't change things in the past to change their present. Any change that happens just creates a new branch (essentially introducing what will probably be a multiverse thing years from now) The only wrinkle The Ancient One puts on the story, is that these branches *also* matter. That the people living on in those branches aren't meaningless, thus they need the stones back so they can actually fight the evils of the world, such and such. It's hand-wavy, but they spend a lot of minutes from an already long movie to make it fit together, I thought. Captain America goes back in time and spends his days growing old in a new branch of time, which has no effect on the MCU movie branch, then returns to his actual present. Loki disappearing with the stone in one of the time branches, the stone is still there in that branch not breaking Tilda Swinton's "get the stones back" rule, just not the same place as it was in our MCU movie branch.

 


 

It's convoluted and contrived, but the movie spends time explaining its rules and it *does* follow them. The only question I have left, because I wasn't paying attention to it, is where is Gamora. Was she on the ship at the end? I agree they just hand-wave Black Widow away because they don't want the can of worms of "can we just bring back all the dead Avengers, then?"

 

Oh, and I *loved* this movie. As a massive Marvel nerd by now it was everything I wanted, honestly. Love you 3000.

 

 

 

Spoiler

Gamora is totally not in the ship at the end (I think one of the screens is scanning for her or something?)  She also wasn't at Tony's funeral.  The last scene I remember her in was when she kicked Quill in the balls (either that or during the scene where all the women form up), then she's just kinda... gone.  I mean granted, this version of her doesn't know any of the other Guardians but I can't recall a single person even asking what happened to her.

 

I still don't buy their time travel and I don't agree they follow their own logic but that's going to lead me into a long diatribe that's better left unsaid and I've already been nitpicky enough for a movie I don't even dislike.

 

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8 hours ago, BigJKO said:

 

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It's convoluted and contrived, but the movie spends time explaining its rules and it *does* follow them. The only question I have left, because I wasn't paying attention to it, is where is Gamora. Was she on the ship at the end? I agree they just hand-wave Black Widow away because they don't want the can of worms of "can we just bring back all the dead Avengers, then?"
 

 

 

 

at the very end Peter is using the ship to search for her, scanning to try and find her because he loves her, but she is not the Gamora of his memory. I assume that's what GotG 3 will be about, is reuniting Gamora with the team

 

the 2 deaths I was most interested in coming into this movie were Loki's and Gamora's because they were killed before the great dusting. I think that the Loki time travel pranking show that they listed on the Disney streaming service is probably the Loki we saw get the tesseract and he's still dead in the MCU timeline. Obviously Gamora's back but at the expense of Black Widow (whose movie will be a prequel.)



 

I liked that they used a measured hand with deploying Captain Marvel. Having her helping and protecting all the other planets gives her a purpose for not being on Earth. I like that she is the one Thanos headbutted and just no reaction. Similar complaints get leveled at her as Superman, and I thought they pretty elegantly sidestepped much of what people don't like about characters like that by deliberately bringing her back in. I like that they communicated her power by single handedly sinking the giant ship and having all the guns turn on her tells us that she alone is a bigger threat than the entire army of heroes and warriors on the ground. I assume someone called her, but because Dr Strange didn't know her before dusting, she had to fly back on her own rather than be summoned by a space wizard.

 

Where did Nebula end the movie? I honestly don't remember where she ends up. Was she on the GotG ship? Did she disappear with Gamora? 

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About Captain America's time travel adventures: it is implied that he didn't "return" to the original timeline by jumping back. They try to get him back, but he doesn't show up. Rather, he's sitting a ways away on a bench, as if he's been waiting there for them to appear. As in; he never left the same timeline and just waited it out. (Otherwise he should be wearing his spiffy quantum realm suit, and would've appeared near the device Hulk was operating.) This does, in a big way, undercut the whole time travel system.



 

Again, I understand why they'd do it like this, because it is the most emotionally satisfying end, but it comes at the cost of blowing up the system.

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18 hours ago, jennegatron said:

 

 

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at the very end Peter is using the ship to search for her, scanning to try and find her because he loves her, but she is not the Gamora of his memory. I assume that's what GotG 3 will be about, is reuniting Gamora with the team

 

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

the 2 deaths I was most interested in coming into this movie were Loki's and Gamora's because they were killed before the great dusting. I think that the Loki time travel pranking show that they listed on the Disney streaming service is probably the Loki we saw get the tesseract and he's still dead in the MCU timeline. Obviously Gamora's back but at the expense of Black Widow (whose movie will be a prequel.)

 


 

I liked that they used a measured hand with deploying Captain Marvel. Having her helping and protecting all the other planets gives her a purpose for not being on Earth. I like that she is the one Thanos headbutted and just no reaction. Similar complaints get leveled at her as Superman, and I thought they pretty elegantly sidestepped much of what people don't like about characters like that by deliberately bringing her back in. I like that they communicated her power by single handedly sinking the giant ship and having all the guns turn on her tells us that she alone is a bigger threat than the entire army of heroes and warriors on the ground. I assume someone called her, but because Dr Strange didn't know her before dusting, she had to fly back on her own rather than be summoned by a space wizard.

 

Where did Nebula end the movie? I honestly don't remember where she ends up. Was she on the GotG ship? Did she disappear with Gamora? 
 

 

 

 

Spoiler

I get what you're saying about Captain Marvel and I agree a heavy hand would have been worse, but I'm just not satisfied with the explanation.  Her being "away" to patrol space doesn't feel like a good enough reason.  She gets summoned (somehow) for the big battle royale but why was she not called in for the arguably more important task of getting the stones?  If she had been there for that then maybe the entire final battle wouldn't have happened (which of course is the real reason she wasn't).  I think the scenes that show she's a badass are good but then she gets knocked aside with a quick shot by Thanos and is just gone for the rest of that fight which really undercuts the rest of her scenes.  Granted Thanos was using one of the stones (power I think?) to deliver the shot but we've seen other, less powerful beings take hits like that and keep on coming.

 

If I remember correctly Nebula is with the Guardians/Thor at the end.  She's definitely at the funeral, which is what made me notice Gamora's absence.  I'm sure this will get a continuation in Guardians 3, but what I'd like to see more is the payoff of the Adam Warlock teaser at the end of Guardians 2.  I thought he'd be a big part of Infinity War considering how integral he is to the comics version of the infinity stones.

 

 

2 hours ago, Roderick said:

 

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About Captain America's time travel adventures: it is implied that he didn't "return" to the original timeline by jumping back. They try to get him back, but he doesn't show up. Rather, he's sitting a ways away on a bench, as if he's been waiting there for them to appear. As in; he never left the same timeline and just waited it out. (Otherwise he should be wearing his spiffy quantum realm suit, and would've appeared near the device Hulk was operating.) This does, in a big way, undercut the whole time travel system.

 


 

Again, I understand why they'd do it like this, because it is the most emotionally satisfying end, but it comes at the cost of blowing up the system.

 

 

 

Spoiler

It's more than implied he remained in the past, he's shown reunited with Peggy Carter and has a wedding band on his finger at the end when he passes the mantle on to Falcon.  It does open up a huge can of worms such as the fact that up until he sits on that bench there are in fact TWO Steve Rodgers in this world, one of which has knowledge of all the events that lead up to this.

 

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I'll preface this by saying I only went because I had some friends visiting that really wanted to go and I haven't seen any other avengers movie, but have seen the odd marvel one (I think most recently, ragnarok and black panther).

 

Overall it was fine, which is about what I expected. Nothing about it really blew me away but for a three hour movie it moved pretty well. I liked the five year time jump and just tried my best to turn my brain off with regards to time travel logic. It almost never makes sense and I don't think it really did here either as others have pointed out. The arcs for Iron Man and Captain America felt pretty satisfying to someone who has minimal background. But I really didn't like the Thor stuff. It seemed like they tried to keep the fat shaming to a minimum but it was still there, and I didn't like them treating his alcoholism as a joke either. Though on the bright side Thor was drinking a good Georgia beer (Tropicalia) so at least he's got good taste.

 

It's interesting listening to the complaints about consistency in strength...having not seen the previous ones nothing like that bothered me, though I did wonder what Thanos' big sword was made of that he could block/smash literally anything with it.

 

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here is that Girl Power moment in the final fight felt, which felt really contrived and unearned, and also meaningless because Captain Marvel proceeded to just fly straight through all the baddies anyway so what were they even doing? And I wouldn't say Captain Marvel was wasted but she never really seemed to have any personality at all. Her defining character moment is getting a haircut.

 

One last thing...they show how the world is devastated by the population halving Thanos did but let's be honest that if five years later the population instantly doubled, the world would be equally fucked. I hope they snapped some extra food into existence while they were at it.

 

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It's fun reading about all of these huge logic holes after the movie! You guys are all totally right, I didn't think about any of that when I was sitting in the cinema.

 

I had a great time, and even though I don't consider myself to be a typical internet nerd geek, I don't own funko pops, I don't have a Loot Crate subscription, but I did cheer and laugh at those fan-service moments and all the call-backs! It worked on me, I had fun.

Like you guys said though, I can't recommend it as a "great film", because it's not very emotionally impactful.

 

 

Going into the movie, I was saying this would be a disappointment. I wanted funny gags, and all I saw in the trailer was serious, deadpan, depressed avengers. I didn't think Marvel could work that angle, so I was not anticipating the film.



I absolutely did not know it was going to be a Back To The Future II caper, and I really enjoyed the fun of that ride. I was even RELIEVED that the movie was such a theme-park ride. I had a blast with lines like "Hail Hydra" and Captain America holding Thor's hammer. Hulk's big glasses? Very funny, I laughed a lot.

Time travel does suck all the emotional conflict and interesting character development out of a story though. I was impressed by how impactful the first 30 minutes were. Facing the 50% world head-on was an interesting direction, it felt a little bit like watching Logan, and I would've been blown away if the film was all about accepting fate and moving on. Can you imagine?? Oh well!

A silly theme-park ride is the 2nd best thing to a GOOD FILM, so I left the cinema happy.

Also I agree that the girl-power shot was completely un-earned and very cringe-worthy. Iron Man's wife is such a caricature, such a ball of movie tropes who gets put in a fridge time and time again, you don't deserve a round of applause for having her do a Big Punch and then get back to weeping about Iron Man!

Maybe I'm crazy, but the Stan Lee cameo actually put a pit in my stomach. He died so recently, it didn't feel right to have him drive by as a scrambling old man shouting at people. Not nice :/

 

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I like the girl power moment.  It's actually one of my favorite scenes in the film.  I agree it's really contrived but I'm also a sucker for the whole "good guys line up" trope.

 

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I liked that moment, but I was disappointed it didn't really go anywhere - I would have loved a proper sequence of them all using their powers together. But then we weren't getting much of that Avengers 1 style stuff from the boys either, so a bit much to hope for, I guess.

 

 

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8 minutes ago, Ben X said:
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I liked that moment, but I was disappointed it didn't really go anywhere - I would have loved a proper sequence of them all using their powers together. But then we weren't getting much of that Avengers 1 style stuff from the boys either, so a bit much to hope for, I guess.

 

 

 

Spoiler

Yeah something similar to Iron Man reflecting his beam off of Cap's shield in the first Avengers or Thor banging his hammer on Cap's shield (sensing a theme here) in the second would have been cool.

 

In other news I just saw that the one person I couldn't identify during Tony's funeral scene was actually the kid from Iron Man 3 which is an admittedly nice touch.

 

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It's not a movie but I watched the new Agents of SHIELD last night and we don't have a separate topic for it (that I could find).  I don't think its worth making one so I'll talk about it here.

 

They do their normal thing of throwing you right into the thick of it without really explaining anything so that they can string you along over the season with bits and pieces of information.  And even though that sounds negative I kind of like it because it keeps me engaged more than a straightforward story does.

 

(Contains Endgame spoilers in case you haven't seen that)

Spoiler

I already knew Coulson would be back in some form so his reveal wasn't at all a surprise but it's still nice to see him.  Coulson may be my favorite character of the MCU.  I think it would have been really cool if they could have worked him into Stark's funeral scene but that would have been very problematic.

 

I think the season is set during the five year interval after the Snap (man I hate calling it that).  The last season ends shortly before the Snap if my info is correct and this one is set one year after that.  That Snap was very selective in who it decided to keep, namely the entire cast of SHIELD (as well as getting rid of all of Peter's classmates so they could be the same age in Spider-Man).  While I think it would have been a very cool angle to explore events during these 5 years, it's clearly not going to focus on that.

 

Daisy clearly has much better control over her powers but I can already see her attitude and tactics causing major problems down the line.  Jemma becoming hard and dark in her search for Fitz is kind of a nice turn.

 

There's not really enough info to begin speculating on where the season is going so I'm not going to bother just yet.  I do hope they at least wrap up some loose plots though.

 

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11 hours ago, SecretAsianMan said:

It's not a movie but I watched the new Agents of SHIELD last night and we don't have a separate topic for it (that I could find).  I don't think its worth making one so I'll talk about it here.

 

They do their normal thing of throwing you right into the thick of it without really explaining anything so that they can string you along over the season with bits and pieces of information.  And even though that sounds negative I kind of like it because it keeps me engaged more than a straightforward story does.

 

(Contains Endgame spoilers in case you haven't seen that)

  Hide contents

I already knew Coulson would be back in some form so his reveal wasn't at all a surprise but it's still nice to see him.  Coulson may be my favorite character of the MCU.  I think it would have been really cool if they could have worked him into Stark's funeral scene but that would have been very problematic.

 

I think the season is set during the five year interval after the Snap (man I hate calling it that).  The last season ends shortly before the Snap if my info is correct and this one is set one year after that.  That Snap was very selective in who it decided to keep, namely the entire cast of SHIELD (as well as getting rid of all of Peter's classmates so they could be the same age in Spider-Man).  While I think it would have been a very cool angle to explore events during these 5 years, it's clearly not going to focus on that.

 

Daisy clearly has much better control over her powers but I can already see her attitude and tactics causing major problems down the line.  Jemma becoming hard and dark in her search for Fitz is kind of a nice turn.

 

There's not really enough info to begin speculating on where the season is going so I'm not going to bother just yet.  I do hope they at least wrap up some loose plots though.

 

Yea the 5th season finale took place as the fight in new york happened, they actually show a clip of the ship coming in on a tv at some point.  This puts season 6 a year post ginger snap.  

 

Anyway.  I'll watch it, but a little skeptical? Season 5 was fine, there were parts I enjoyed, but season 4 was the highhhhhhhhhhh point of the show for me, there was such a focus on character in that season that I felt got a little lost when they tried to go bigger in season 5.  Also Doom Patrol is kinda shitting all over any other comic book show I've seen, it's just so ridiculously good.  I never root for properties, but I wish it wasn't on dc's streaming service so that more people could see it.  I guess I should say I did watch the new ep of AoS, and it was fine. I wasn't super pulled into it, but we'll see how the show plays out.  

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I kinda stopped watching Agents of Shield after the 3rd (?) season, which was the big Hydra/Ward blowout. The ending there felt satisfying and had tons of closure, and I never picked it up afterwards. I'm hesitant about it too. I'm not as much IN the MCU anymore, not like, say, four years ago.

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2 hours ago, Roderick said:

I kinda stopped watching Agents of Shield after the 3rd (?) season, which was the big Hydra/Ward blowout. The ending there felt satisfying and had tons of closure, and I never picked it up afterwards. I'm hesitant about it too. I'm not as much IN the MCU anymore, not like, say, four years ago.

 

As much as I actually like AoS, if you reached a satisfying conclusion then I wouldn't recommend getting back into it.  Most of what follows after that has LOTS of open plot threads that have never been resolved.  It's one of the things that drives me nuts because I hate loose ends.  When it looked like season 5 was going to be the last one I was mainly bummed about not getting any resolution to those stories.  I really hope season 6 at least attempts to close some of the gaps but I'm not hopeful it will.

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6 hours ago, Roderick said:

I kinda stopped watching Agents of Shield after the 3rd (?) season, which was the big Hydra/Ward blowout. The ending there felt satisfying and had tons of closure, and I never picked it up afterwards. I'm hesitant about it too. I'm not as much IN the MCU anymore, not like, say, four years ago.

Season 4 is really really good! Though I also back up what secretasianman said

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As long as it doesn't have Gotham's MadLibs approach to writing ("In THIS episode, RIDDLER teams up with POISON IVY, who falls in love with JIM GORDON"), it's probably fine television. But I have to say that I'm also thinking of seriously pruning the amount of shows I follow. Not that GoT is very nearly done, I don't know if I need more stuff to fill that hole.

 

The shows I currently follow:

- GoT

- Gotham

- She-ra

- Dix Pour Cent

- Planet Earth

- Brooklyn Nine-Nine

- The Good Place

- Star Trek Disco

- TNG

 

Plus some anime like Sarazanmai, Ace Attorney and Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

 

I could do with a few less.

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4 hours ago, Roderick said:

As long as it doesn't have Gotham's MadLibs approach to writing ("In THIS episode, RIDDLER teams up with POISON IVY, who falls in love with JIM GORDON"), it's probably fine television. But I have to say that I'm also thinking of seriously pruning the amount of shows I follow. Not that GoT is very nearly done, I don't know if I need more stuff to fill that hole.

 

The shows I currently follow:

- GoT

- Gotham

- She-ra

- Dix Pour Cent

- Planet Earth

- Brooklyn Nine-Nine

- The Good Place

- Star Trek Disco

- TNG

 

Plus some anime like Sarazanmai, Ace Attorney and Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

 

I could do with a few less.

With season 4 they change up how the seasons are written, with it being a couple interconnected arcs instead of stretching out one story and it actually becomes alot more focused and tighter because of it.  The problem for me is with how season 5 starts and largely plays out it drops some threads that were important to the world of the show. It also goes for alot more bombast and Epicness which didn't work for me as it lost some of the character focus of season 4.  There's no mad libs shit in either season though!

 

I should add, I was into the show but not a super fan or anything, season 4 hooked me haaard though.

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On 5/15/2019 at 12:54 PM, SecretAsianMan said:

It's not a movie but I watched the new Agents of SHIELD last night and we don't have a separate topic for it (that I could find).

 

No, we have the Netflix Marvel thread, but any AoS talk is scattered through the Movies/TV Recs megathread.

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On 5/19/2019 at 3:28 AM, Ben X said:

 

No, we have the Netflix Marvel thread, but any AoS talk is scattered through the Movies/TV Recs megathread.

 

I considered that but AoS isn't a Netflix show.  Although I guess I could rename the thread since I guess I started it (technically I didn't create the thread, I think it was Chris when he started splitting all the megathreads into individual ones and I just happened to have the first post).

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Oh damn, sorry, I meant to mention that we had previously decided it made sense to keep that thread to Netflix only, but obviously my attention wandered!

 

Makes sense to keep it in here, I reckon, rather than start a bunch of tiny non-Netflix Marvel tv show threads...

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