Marvel Studios

I watch pretty much all of it still. Eventually. Sometimes months later. I think Echo is the only one I haven't finished, but I saw several of them months late.

It's mostly fine, but that's about as far as I'd go. Among other issues, Multiverses dangle the specter of irrelevance in front of every story. I know it's not always there in the script, but the meta commentary that everyone is replaceable and any event can be undone unavoidably reduces the stakes and my investment in characters. If they bother to make a point of concluding the "multiverse" arc, it needs to be something that promises to make the storytelling ~~crutch~~ mechanic of crossing between them much harder to invoke in the future. It can be utter handwavium, but I need that promise from the Marvel Industrial Complex to me as an audience member.

Then more generally, the Marvel "house style" is either so overwhelming that it ends up the equivalent of pleasant but low-stakes episodic TV from the before-times with 23 episodes per season, or else it's shoehorned into a halfhearted attempt to let a director or showrunner do their thing and reduces the effectiveness of both. There was good TV then, and there is good Marvel now, but the specialness has worn off.

I liked Loki (esp the season 2 ending) but I can understand why others didn't. It's slow and attempting to be more cerebral than it really is. But IMO it's still far better than all the films. I watched the whole Antman quantumania movie and I honestly couldn't tell you what it was about.

You're missing surprisingly little.

IW + Endgame were such a high note to end on, they basically killed the series because everything else dies in comparison.

Gotg was fun, and well executed, but otherwise there's basically been nothing, except Loki which was excellent, but then Deadpool and wolverine tried and fell over themselves in my book.

Harrison Ford, or at least his cumulative body of work, is a goddamned national treasure, but the man is 82. Stop throwing money at him and encouraging him to leave Wyoming to do boring things. Besides, he might try to fly himself, and we as a country don't need that kind of stress.

Anyway, it's so unrealistic. Why would America ever elect an octogenarian president?!?!?!

Maybe I'd watch if terrorists hijacked Air Force One and Harrison Ford yelled GET OFF MY PLANE

Oh boy, a secret global plot... the entire world in danger... Sounds so refreshing...
The Falcon is an alright character, but he's too much of an asshole to take him seriously as Capt America.

What would make you interested?

Or specifically which part do you find uninteresting?

T'Challa, heir to the hidden but advanced kingdom of Wakanda, must step forward to lead his people into a new future and must confront a challenger from his country's past.

That's the plot line of Black Panther.

Political involvement in the Avengers' affairs causes a rift between Captain America and Iron Man.

That's Captain America: Civil War.

What are you expecting to read?

That's a great point. Cap was important because he meant something to everyone, given his WW2 hero status. Sam is just a guy, nothing that makes him fill that role in any newer group. If they want to maintain the importance of the character in the film world, they need to fix that.

I don't really blame him for that... I blame the book being better, and everyone on set clearly knowing it.

I was so excited by Altered Carbon S2. Now I'm sad again.

You're mistaken. There is no Season 2 of Altered Carbon.

For a $350 million budget? Not a chance, if they can salvage anything out of it.

Test screenings gave us the shitty ending to I am legend

While it is hard to get "official" information about it, there definitely have been news reports that some of the most successful movies ever had some bad test screenings and vice versa.

I don't think Joker 2 had a test screening

I can't put my finger on the specific film, but there are those where the happy ending seems especially contrived, and the director's commentary lamented that's because anything less than a happy ending tended to test poorly with viewers. It might have something to do with the fact that they tested them tight after they watch the film rather than letting it sink in for a bit.

Test screenings are the J.D. Power Initial Quality Award of the film industry.

We could barely even remember the name of it.

The wife insisted on calling it Wingman and Handjob.

I just couldn't get on board with the idea of a guy with a billion dollar set of equipment struggling to get pennies together to save the family boat business... Weren't you billionaire Tony's best mate? You seriously telling me he left you nothing?

Not only that, but the superhero bit is getting played out. Comics can have some real depth (and some real dumb stuff) but I feel like they haven't done much besides the usual "not hero, gets powers, struggles with bad guy, understands powers, beats bad guy, happy ending, sequel teaser".

They need to mix it up. Gimme a superhero crime drama, a romance novel, a true comedy not just quips, etc. They have a whole universe and years of content to draw from and they keep telling the same story over and over.

Isaiah Bradley was actually already in the TV show and there’s a clip of him in the trailer

Yeah, test screening reactions rarely are indicative of anything.

Months after Isaiah was rescued from Germany, he was able to finally return home where he was promptly court-martialed and given life in prison for stealing the Captain America costume. Starting in 1943, Isaiah served seventeen years in solitary confinement.

That's almost cartoonishly evil, and at the same time in reality it would have probably been worse.