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Post by Jeremy on Feb 3, 2022 19:11:16 GMT -8
You could make the case that the MCU has always had one foot in real-world conflict, since the very first Iron Man features a lot of commentary about the War on Terror and the prospect of WMDs in the Middle East. But I always think of that as an early exception; most Marvel movies since then have made their political commentary more indirect and open to interpretation. (The Captain America films, for example, are a deconstruction of patriotism and government overreach, but they're intriguing in the way they avoid referencing real-world contemporary politics more directly than necessary. Meanwhile, the spinoff Falcon and the Winter Soldier fails in large part because it can't figure out how much or how little of real-world politics to incorporate into its story.)
The Hiroshima reference feels jarring in context, but it's not without precedent. There's actually a Marvel character in the comics - the Japanese hero Sunfire - who received his superpowers from the fallout of the Hiroshima blast. (Looking back now, that character was also probably in poor taste.)
As for the Eternals themselves, I think the giant space creature who created them (don't ask) was very forward-thinking, which is why he designed them to be ethnically diverse and also made one gay and another deaf and so forth. That explanation makes about as much sense as any other.
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Post by Jeremy on May 9, 2022 5:32:15 GMT -8
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Mid-ness (or Meh-ness, depending on which decade you're from) debuted over the weekend, and I've got a full review of it now. Don't worry, it does not contain a lengthy section where I delve into and geek out over all the cameos. You're welcome.
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Post by otherscott on May 9, 2022 5:53:41 GMT -8
I did not think The Multiverse of Madness featuring Dr Strange was very good, but I also think it had the misfortune of coming out so soon after Everything Everywhere All At Once. The condiment universe was probably supposed to seem a lot weirder, but it's no comparison to the "sausage finger" universe. I also had a friend point out that we only really spent time in one other inhabited universe, which is not enough for a move called The Multiverse of Madness. So yes, it didn't go weird enough. I appreciated the occasional horror aspects, though.
Ultimately, Dr Strange just isn't an interesting enough character to carry a movie, and Wanda was too one note in this movie for the role she was trying to play. The movie just did not come together emotionally, which the best Marvel movies do, even though they all feel a little sanitized while doing so. I think I still probably liked this one better than the first Doctor Strange movie, so I think it escapes my lowest tier of Marvel, but it's not far above it.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on May 9, 2022 12:43:19 GMT -8
I did not think The Multiverse of Madness featuring Dr Strange was very good, but I also think it had the misfortune of coming out so soon after Everything Everywhere All At Once. The condiment universe was probably supposed to seem a lot weirder, but it's no comparison to the "sausage finger" universe. Hold on, I need to make a meme of the WHO WOULD WIN variety, where on the left it's the gazillion-dollar apotheosis of twenty years of superhero movies and corporate mergers and on the right it's "one raccacoonie boi." You're all honorbound to retweet this.
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Post by Jeremy on May 9, 2022 15:36:08 GMT -8
I also had a friend point out that we only really spent time in one other inhabited universe, which is not enough for a move called The Multiverse of Madness. So yes, it didn't go weird enough. I appreciated the occasional horror aspects, though. Yep. I was reminded of the trailers for Wreck-It Ralph, which made it look like Ralph would visit over a dozen different video games throughout the film, when in actuality it was just two. (They also made it seem that popular IPs like Sonic and Bowser would play large roles in the film, and they wound up just having frontloaded cameos in the first ten minutes - though that was probably the right decision.) Doctor Strange himself has never been a particularly interesting character (in large part because Marvel - while humanizing many superheroes with their 1960s creations - usually downplayed the civilian aspect of his life and made him a full-time sorcerer). I always appreciated how the first film shows his personal side; the sequel barely gives him an arc at all. And sure, the film really falls short when compared to Everything Everywhere All at Once. But given that one of those films made $45 million in a month and the other made $450 million in a weekend, I think it's safe to say that they've got different goals (and to some extent, different audiences) in mind.
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Post by otherscott on May 9, 2022 17:07:17 GMT -8
Everything Everywhere All At Once making 45 million in a month given that it has no connected IP and no really big names attached to it is way more impressive than Doctor Strange making 450 million in a weekend though. Marvel movies are going to print money regardless of the quality at this stage unless Disney REALLY screws the marketing or the quality changes significantly, and I don't see that happening any time soon.
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Post by ThirdMan on May 9, 2022 20:53:20 GMT -8
I think I preferred the first Doctor Strange, because it was more recognizably human (at least in the first half), but also because I found the visuals more striking and artful. Perhaps I'd feel differently were I to revisit it (I've only seen it once, in a second-run theater), but I thought they put visual effects to better use in the original. In the sequel, it was just a lot of artificial-looking magic swirls and whatnot. I wish these films had a better balance between actual physical sets and green-screen, as very little of them feel genuinely tactile in nature.
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Post by Jeremy on May 10, 2022 17:00:14 GMT -8
I do think there's been something of a quality drop in recent, post-Infinity Saga Marvel films - of the five newest MCU movies, there's only one that I would consider above-average (i.e. in the upper half of the MCU). Part of the problem is that there's less of a cohesive thread now that the Thanos arc is resolved, so while the films may include references and crossovers, they don't carry quite the same gravitas as they used to. The other problem is that as the MCU spreads its wares to Disney Plus and tries to tell more stories in more formats*, it becomes more difficult to see any of it as organized or coordinated, which was part of the franchise's key appeal to begin with.
The recent Moon Knight miniseries really underscores this point - I liked Oscar Isaac as the title hero, and the first episode got the series off to a fun and adventurous start. But the story quickly spiraled out of control and bogged itself down with uninteresting side characters and interminable exposition. The finale was simply awful, and effectively killed whatever interest I had in seeing more of this character going forward.
*I know some people were annoyed that a certain character detail in Multiverse of Madness hinged on familiarity with WandaVision, but I don't mind Marvel taking that kind of jump. There's always been a level of communicated coordination between the filmmakers and filmgoers when it comes to the MCU - gotta watch 'em all if you want to understand everything! - and naturally it serves their financial purposes to get the TV shows in on the act. It only took this long due to copyright issues; had Kevin Feige been able to buy out Marvel Television years ago, I expect Agents of SHIELD would have been allowed to do more direct crossovers with the MCU, rather than just carry water for the big boys.
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Post by ThirdMan on May 10, 2022 20:47:33 GMT -8
So what you're saying is that the MCU is experiencing Post-Thanos Depression?
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Post by otherscott on May 11, 2022 5:11:29 GMT -8
Either that or some Post Thanos Snap Disorder.
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Post by Jeremy on Jul 15, 2022 12:26:52 GMT -8
I saw Thor: Love and Thunder last night, and my thoughts aren't too different from the general consensus. There are some funny and creative bits (the gathering of the gods is pretty memorable, and I admit to laughing at the refugee goats from a 2012 Internet meme), plus Christian Bale is excellent as the villain. But the whole film smacks of indifference - the tone is a complete mess, the story barely feels propulsive, and (much like Doctor Strange 2) the film really struggles to give its main character an arc. Ragnarok had a good, zany story to justify its off-the-wall humor, but the comedy in Love and Thunder often feels like contrived silliness for the sake of it, and really clashes with some of the film's darker undertones.
It does seem like Marvel fatigue may finally be settling in with wider audiences - three of the last four MCU films have received a B+ CinemaScore or lower (Spider-Man: No Way Home got an A+, but that film benefited from aspects largely disconnected from the MCU), and word-of-mouth appears tepid. As I noted earlier, there's not much of an engine driving the larger cinematic universe at this point, and very little feel that it's all building to something. And of course, the question remains if the Black Panther series - originally envisioned as a tentpole of the MCU in the 2020s - can work without Chadwick Boseman.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jul 16, 2022 3:14:11 GMT -8
Is Love and Thunder at least better than the first two Thor films? I mean, it looks very slapdash and frivolous, but surely it's not as bland as those two...
Interesting about Bale, as the trailer gives off Generic Supernatural Villain vibes. Glad he brought more to the table than that.
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Post by Jeremy on Jul 16, 2022 18:17:58 GMT -8
Bale's villain doesn't get a lot of great material to work with (he's got more of a backstory than most MCU villains, though his motives are still a bit weak), but he makes the most with what he's given. I probably would't have realized it was him had I not known beforehand; he really sells his every role.
On the scale of Thor films, Love and Thunder isn't as bad as The Dark World, but I'm not sure it's better than the 2011 original. Bland and uneven as the Kenneth Branagh film may have been, the Asgardian scenes had a grand and sweeping scale that forgave some of the lackluster personality. Love and Thunder, by contrast, just looks very messy - lots of disoriented action scenes with subpar CGI, plus a climactic fight ruined by poor lighting. (There is a some stylish use of color - notably a B&W fight scene filmed with minimal dialogue and music - but much of it fails to distinguish itself from the larger MCU.) The film's biggest setback is the script, which needed at least one more rewrite to smooth out the tonal issues. Waititi really wants to recapture the thrill of Ragnarok, but it doesn't feel nearly as organic this time around.
Given the MCU's broader track record (i.e. not all their films have been great, but most at least hit the standard of "good"), it's a bit surprising and dispiriting that only one out of the four Thor films rises to the level of above-average - particularly since Hemsworth has proven himself to be one of Marvel's more entertaining talents.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jul 17, 2022 1:09:05 GMT -8
See, I didn't actually think the Asgardian scenes in the original Thor had a "grand and sweeping scale". The visual effects of the outside of the world's buildings made it feel empty and completely cheap and artificial to me. So then we saw people inside the chambers, but the outside and inside really didn't visually connect, creating a distancing effect. The first one also had really choppy and poorly-framed (too close-up) action. To me, Thor (the character) only works with over-the-top comedy, so even though I don't intend to watch Love and Thunder anytime soon, I'm inclined to believe I'll at least find it marginally more enjoyable than the original, which tried, at times, to be Shakespeare-With-Giant-Hammers. Of course, I thought the first one was really mediocre: YMMV on that.
It seems like the only (soon-to-be) wide-release movie that's coming up in the next few weeks that's getting really good reviews is Marcel The Shell With Shoes on, and that might just be because it's so gentle and "twee" that the critics don't feel compelled to have a go at it.
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Post by Jeremy on Jul 17, 2022 10:08:29 GMT -8
It's been several years since I watched the first Thor, so maybe the visuals aren't as good as I remember. (I hear what you mean in saying the exteriors and interiors didn't line up or establish a sense of location with each other; that becomes an even bigger problem when compared to the generally flat scenes on Earth.) Regardless, I don't think it's a very good film, and would rank among the lower MCU efforts overall. Love and Thunder may hold your attention more simply based on how manic it is -or is trying to be - and it may well be the second-best Thor film; I just found it difficult to engage with the characters or story. (In part because the film treats everything as one big joke.)
Still waiting for Marcel to shuffle its way into my local theater. I'm curious to see the reviews for Nope and Bullet Train; those look like the kind of late-summer entries that could gin up some good critical conversation.
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