I went and saw one movie under those conditions (my youngest is autistic/sensory issues). It's basicially the same as watching in your living room with lights on. I did go see Wakanda Forever this weekend. Not sure what was in the air, some contaminant that kept making my eyes water. Overall, was a solid MCU movie. A nice final chapter to phase 4 which is all about remorse and regret. I get Marvel didn't want to use the same exact back story for Namor that DC used for Aquaman (same in the comics, Namor came first). So, the change to Mayan based backstory worked well for me . I get why they took out the references/end credit scenes that would have either shown Dr Doom or implied his character, but still wish they left it in there. Overall, quite good, but not great. But, given they were making the movie without C Boseman, it's about as good as can get without him.
https://screenrant.com/dcu-superman-henry-cavill-out-not-returning/ This article isn't about Marvel, its about DC. But the point is that Henry Cavill is out as Superman, that Gail Gadot is almost certainly out as Wonder Woman, and Jason Mamoa might be out as Aquaman. And all three would then seemingly be free to join the MCU, should both they and Marvel be interested. Cavill in particular has been connected to various roles in the past.
https://screenrant.com/marvel-echo-show-release-delay-marion-dayre-mcu/ This one is pure MCU news. The Echo show has been pushed way back, from mid Summer 2023 to at least December. The article speculates that the Ironheart show could be moved up to take Echo's place.
Wakanda Forever comes to Disney+ on February 1st, so I'm going to just hold out and watch it at home. It'll be the first MCU movie that I miss at the cinema since Spiderman: Homecoming, and just the fourth overall (Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger).
Finally watched Black Adam and I absolutely loved it. I know that's not Marvel, LOL, but it was the best superhero movie I saw last year.
I kind of feel that they are all pretty one dimensional and starting to get uninteresting. Mostly the same boat (though I caught CA and Thor in theaters). I kind of wanted to see it, but the Marvel fatigue is starting to get real and I really just don't enjoy Letitia Wright.
Thoughts on the phase 1 of the new DC universe? I do like how they are allowing continuation of Matt Reeves Batman and J Phoenix Joker, even though I am meh on the latter. But I did tweet over a year ago how DC should get their act together, clean house and get a unified vision like Marvel has with a real comic book nerd running the show and I specifically mentioned James Gunn should be that person. I got blasted in the comments for it. Regardless, I like how it's not just a reboot of the main Justice League pantheon/members. Gunn is mixing in lesser heroes with the bigger ones. Gunn has a really outstanding track record of making audiences love the heroes most have never heard of. The Lanterns detective series looks really interesting. and I love how Gunn is writing the Superman movie. Have to admit, even though I'm a comic nerd, I never heard of The Authority. seems like it has potential too
Finally got to watch Wakanda Forever, and it was honestly a let down. Obviously, it was a major struggle given the unfortunate passing of Chadwick Boseman. For most projects, it would just have never happened, but they had to find a way to make it work. Angela Bassett, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke and Danai Gurria continue to do excellent jobs in their roles as secondary characters, but Letitia Wright just isn't a strong enough actress to be the lead, and to me her presence just isn't that of a leading lady, and it held the whole movie back. There were also a lot of times where I felt that things that occured weren't planned out or explained as well as they could have been, and the entire aspect with Namor was half-done. Spoiler: Minor Spoiler On another note, I was surprised to see a name actress in Lake Bell have a few minutes of screen time at the start of the movie only to be immediately killed off. I suppose its connected to her being a voice actress on several Marvel animated projects.
Went to the cinema to see Quantumania, and was very happy. On one hand, its certainly a step down from the previous two Ant Man movies in quality. However, that's pretty typical with the third part of a series. The good news is that it really felt like what a MCU movie is supposed to be for me, and got the train back on the rails for the entire system. Its a good-not-great two hour fun ride that hits all of the high notes well, and doesn't leave itself too open with potential plot holes like so many recent MCU projects have. Really, no complaints with how anything was written, directed or acted. The pacing is excellent and never drags or gets stale. Returning stars Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly and Michael Douglas continue to play their parts well, I felt that Michelle Pfieffer actually did a much better job in this one than in the last, where I often felt she seemed out of sorts and out of place. She was confident and strong in her role in this one. New star Kathryn Newton as an older Cassie Lang does a strong job as well, and Jonathan Majors is excellent as Kang, in one of the strongest performances for a MCU villain in quite some time, IMO. They also made excellent use of William Jackson Harper in a supporting role, and he and a few other new characters added a lot to the movie. All in all, a middle of the pack MCU movie that I absolutely recommend, and the first one since Shang Chi that I have no major complaints about.
I thought it was fine as well, however, I do have one major complaint. I hate the, "I am not telling you because I am protecting you," trope. I hate it with a passion. I thought that brought down the movie. I also thought that Kathryn Newton did a terrible job and really didn't have any chemistry with her father. I think the movie really works because Paul Rudd is great, Jonathan Majors is great, and Michael Douglas is Michael Douglas. I kept on forgetting Wasp was part of the movie. TBH, Jonathan Majors was so great I wouldn't mind if he was the villain in every MCU movie until the Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. Though there are rumors that this version of Kang will be The Beyonder in Avengers: Secret Wars, which I will be down. He killed it in Loki.
I agree on what you said with Janet. Its unfortunate, and my best guess is that they did it in a way so that Cassie could do what she did while remaining completely innocent and ignorant of what was to come. Make Janet the bad guy to shield Cassie from any blowback, either in the MCU or IRL. I also noted by the end that Evangeline Lilly's part was a lot smaller than I had expected, which disappointed me because I like her as an actor and feel that she does a really strong job with the part, and has a really strong presence on screen. I'm expecting that we'll see the main characters back at some point in Phase 5 given that they're now familiar with Kang in a way that few others are.
I get why they did it, but I just find that trope frustrating because it just creates a fake feeling of tension. Plus we as the audience already knows, and movies have to be written really well for me to know something and the characters not knowing something and it not being annoying. Makes too much dialog, "Tell me!" "no" "Just tell me" "I don't want to talk about it." which felt like the first 45 minutes of that movie.
Its similar to what Disney is also doing with new Star Wars properties. Coming up with reasons why characters are ignorant of the Empire or Jedi, or to the extent of their powers, to force them into conflict rather than hiding or running away, or being forced to be more creative in how they write the dialog and action to actually come up with good reasons. Instead of being creative and/or intelligent, they just either take the lazy way out and make it too simple, or worse ignore it all together. And its shocking that something with so many eyeballs on it doesn't have a point in the process where someone higher up looks at it and says we need to fix this here, or give more explanation there, etc. They're all problems that are solvable, which is the worst part. Plug the leaks in the ship before it sets sail.
I don't mind characters being ignorant. It is a good way to catch people up who this is their first Star Wars/Marvel/Whatever Property. I am just annoyed when someone asks a question they don't just answer it. Like it is better for Janet to tell the people she is with that there is an entire world down there, a war/resistance, and creatures beyond their imagination without having them have to discover it. I think they wanted to make Lang less culpable in helping a mass murderer, but I think it is simple to think that he feels like he has no choice because of his daughter. Or find some other way to write around it or in the beginning have Janet go, "what there is something danger..." and then they get sucked in. I just think with better writing they could have just skipped that trope because it doesn't add anything to a story but frustration.
Jonathan Majors, aka Kang in the MCU, is apparently in very hot and potentially career ending water for an alleged assault of his girlfriend including strangling. A number of people in the acting world have also begun coming out saying he has been unpleasant to work with including significant sociopathic tendencies. Will be interesting to see how Marvel handles this. Being a time-travelling character with multiple variants, it's conceivable that he could be replaced by such a "variant", or as with Terrance Howard's early MCU exit, they could just replace him straight up and pretend nobody notices. Alternately, they could dump that whole line and pivot straight into a new "big bad" like Dr. Doom, Magneto, etc. It's also possible they wait to see if things blow over. Some people are noting DC retaining Ezra Miller of the Flash movies. However, most are under the assumption he will just quietly never be hired again and the only reason he wasn't straight fired and replaced is the movie being near completion and all the money spent.
If it's true with Majors, then I think that a recast is the only possible call at this point. And remember, they also did that with Thanos too, although the original actors screen time was far smaller.
I think with the MCU there have been so many movies with so many characters that changing an actor isn’t going to register on most people’s radar. Outside of Scarlett Johansen, Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Chris Pratt and Tom Hiddleston I don’t think anyone cares that much of who the actor is. (NB I am not including Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool and the X-men cast as being part of the MCU).
I guess that depends on who the fan is. As someone who watches everything closely, its a pretty big deal.
Losing Majors would be a critical blow depending on how you look at it. On one hand, there's so much Marvel fatigue (the movies have a continually underperformed by a large degree) that it wouldn't make a difference. On the other hand, losing him could really affect the audiences that are still going to see the new releases.
I honestly think the MCU needs a correction to cut the extra dead weight of the bloated fan base back to the levels of Phase 2 and 3. Not every movie can or should be the biggest blockbuster ever.
I clocked out of the MCU after the first Avengers movie. I hadn’t seen the Hulk movie, or really been aware it existed, but not bring up to speed on the current iteration of Bruce Banner made the first Avengers a little confusing at the start. It was at that point I realized I didn't want to have to watch every movie to make sense of the plot. My wife has little interest in superhero movies and we put on Spiderman, No Way Home a few weeks ago because Spidey is a superhero she knows. She was completely lost 5 minutes in with Dr Strange doing his stuff with no explanation and then when they started pulling in all the rogues gallery she had no idea what was going on. I’d like to see some more street level movies with nothing more at stake than a dozen people or so. Things that can stand alone. More stuff like the Deadpool movies.
We all like what we like certainly. I'm deeply invested in the MCU in large part due to the total connection between everything, and have been worried that they're messing that up with what they've done with various projects lately. It makes it all more important and appealing to me.
IMO, I think that is one of the biggest issue with super hero movies. Almost all of the movies are "The world is at stake", and there really is just so much of that I can take. There needs to be more, "My life would really suck if I don't fix this." I think that is an area where Super Hero stories can also shine. One reason I really liked Spider-Man: Homecoming, it was just a bunch of bad people were going to get powerful weapons. Also, the Netflix series did a really good job at this for the most part.
There were a series of pulp hero movies in the 90s that came out of this mold that I really liked. The Shadow, The Rocketeer, Dick Tracy, The Crow, Darkman. I’ve rewatched some of them recently and enjoyed them more than the most recent MCU titles. Practical stunts and physical props give them a much more believable feel than the CGI everything. Plus the lighting is sufficient to see what’s hapoenung on the screen and I can understand the dialogue without needing subtitles. The only one from that era that really misses the mark is The Phantom and that’s because the bad guy is after a magical plot point that will end the world. With a plot true to the source material they would have had a much better movie. [The phantom normally fights against criminal gangs, corrupt politicians or evil rulers of micro nations].
MCU got the characters right, just not the fact that not every story needs to be Earth ending. They need to make more movies like Civil War
I completely forgot to come on here and talk about Guardians 3. Holy cow, just go and see it. Its extremely well done, well written, honors all of the characters and their arcs, gives closure to just about everyone, and is an extremely emotional movie at many different parts. Hits hard, but hits right. The best MCU movie since Endgame.
I still like the first one more, but that's just my style. I'll always go upbeat as a favorite. But 3 needed to be what it was to properly tell the story and do its job, and they did it right.
I think the first one is also in the conversation for the best MCU movie. What I mean by that is that if someone makes a top 5 and puts it at #1 they could make a solid argument. Guardians 1 and 3 both are up there. No one can say that about Thor 2 or Thor LaT.
https://screenrant.com/disney-marvel-movie-delays-2024-2025/?newsletter_popup=1 Due to the ongoing writers strike, Marvel and Disney have moved a lot of the upcoming projects around on the release calendar. Some of them are now far later than they were originally planned to be taking these and other changes into account. Deadpool 3: From November 8, 2024 to May 3, 2024 Captain America: Brave New World: From May 3, 2024 to July 24, 2024 Thunderbolts: From July 26, 2024 to December 20, 2024 Blade: From September 6, 2024 to February 14, 2025 Fantastic Four: From February 14, 2025 to May 2, 2025 Avengers: The Kang Dynasty: From May 2, 2025 to May 1, 2026 Avengers: Secret Wars: From May 1, 2026 to May 7, 2027
I know a lot of people are down on some of the Disney+ MCU product, but I actually like a lot of it. Secret Invasion doesn't have superheroes (and doesn't explain why, TBH) but the writing is the best of a Marvel property since Loki season 1. Looking forward to seeing how it leads into the next phase of movies. Like Andor, sometimes I want to see something that's more appealing to adults who aren't necessarily comics fans. I waited decades for an actual sci-fi Star Wars project and Andor filled that bill. Secret Invasion is compelling because everybody but Talos is painted in shades of gray. I like the fact that it's hard to suggest that Gravik and his followers are necessarily wrong to do what they're doing.
I didn't watch Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3* at the theaters and now, I regret that choice. James Gunn is the master. Everything you want to see in a movie is in this film. I'm watching it again really soon. *Edit for derp
I watched Secret Invasion and didn't care for it. I honestly would have given up after three episodes due to the combination of how dark and dry it is. I didn't find it to be very deep or very clever either, I questioned the motivations of a number of the characters, it only added to the growing pile of plotholes Marvel keeps digging themselves into, and the production quality was often lacking due to how cheap their budget clearly was with sets and locations. Fingers crossed for Loki season 2 this autumn, but after that my hopes aren't high for Echo, Ironheart or Agatha, as I worry all of them will suffer from the same problems that the recent MCU and Star Wars shows have. I'm hoping that if they scale back like Disney CEO Bob Iger suggests they will, that it will lead to quality over quantity. Two really good 12+ episode shows a year are better than four mediocre 6 episode ones.
