Rolling Marvel Cinematic Universe thread (+ a poll: Classic or Dud?)

some new Marvel ABC show is buying a bunch of casework + fume hoods from my company for one of their sets. stay tuned :p

Breaking Batroc?

black-ish panther

The first reviews of Doctor Strange are quite good, but several of them seem to be along the line of 'THIS ones really good, while all the other Marvel films are shite'. But I feel like I saw the same sentiment around films like Civil War and Guardians of the Galaxy, and probably others. It's like the whole series is in this weird place, where people like the new ones well enough when they see them, but looked back upon, or considered as a whole, the series has become unmanageable and tiring. #hottake.

Benedict Cumberbatch IS Doctor Strange.

Actually that was dumb of me, sorry about that.

I think that Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy _are_ sufficiently non-superheroic for that sentence to make sense without endangering the MCU - notably GotG hasn't been tied into either of the Avengers films since. I haven't seen anyone say that about Civil War - citation?

I think the MCU is replicating the effect of the published universe precisely — that feeling of thrillpower in the moment and then wondering what all the hoopla was about later. It's profitable as hell, as predictable and comforting and healthy as a plate of hot french fries.

notably GotG hasn't been tied into either of the Avengers films since.

GotG explains what the Infinity Stones are and properly introduces Thanos as a major villain, both of which plot threads are followed in Age of Ultron. That's a pretty major tie-in! I mean, Thanos' whole role in GotG is totally superficial, unless you know he's being set up as the Big Bad of Avengers 3, and the whole franchise. If it was just a stand-alone movie, there's no reason for Thanos to be in it at all.

The Infinity Stones and Thanos are also pretty incidental to Age of Ultron!

The Mind Gem has heavy plot significance for both Avengers films

A Thing that does Stuff has heavy plot significance, that it's the Mind Stone is irrelevant.

I didn't say those plot elements were super significant in AoU, I was just commenting on the claim that GotG "hasn't been tied" into the the Avengers films at all. GotG includes a whole extraneous character because of that tie-in. If it was truly a stand-alone movie, the Power Stone would be just a random super artifact with no exposition about there being six of them, Thanos wouldn't be in it at all (he has no plot significance except as a way of tying GotG to the rest of the franchise), and Gamorra and Nebula would've probably been written as Ronan's (foster) daughters.

Watched Civil war last night - was satisfyingly like reading an old-school 12-issue limited series in one sitting.

xp that's more GotG's problem though - their presence, such as it is, in AoU is the bonus material. If you'd never seen Guardians and then you watched Ultron, you'd have no idea you missed anything - which you can't say about any of the superhero movies.

I feel like all of the movies worked relatively well as self-contained entities until Civil War. And that could probably be enjoyed on its own terms even if you didn't understand all of the relationships.

wondering if that green medallion dr stange is wearing in all the promo materials is/contains an infinity gem

Surely that's the Eye of Agamotto? Though I guess they could change it from the comics so that it's also and Infinity Gem, like they did with the Cosmic Cube in the Cap movie.

my dr strange background knowledge is super weak, but I just noticed that theres no green or orange infinity gem yet.

Well the two Gems we still haven't seen are the Time and Soul Gem. Time Gem wouldn't really jibe with the Eye of Agamotto, but since it doesn't seem that likely Adam Warlock (the owner of the Soul Gem in the comics) will appear in the movies, I guess the Eye could contain the Soul Gem? IIRC, one of the Eye's powers in the comics is that it cuts through illusions and reveals your true self, which would fit that particular Gem.

Never fear Tuomas, the infinity gem question is answered in extremely unsubtle fashion in the film

Inhumans show coming next fall on ABC. Which is a more elegant solution than a movie at this point, I guess, given the fact that the Inhumans have been heavily featured throughout AoS's run.

(Presumably this will feature the royal family et al but who knows, really.)

ABC is growing its comic book empire with Marvel’s The Inhumans, a live-action drama slated to air on the network next fall.

The new, eight-episode series will explore the never-before-told epic adventure of Black Bolt and the royal family.

AoS circling the drain and heading for cancellation.

which is a shame, cuz it's quietly grown into a pretty fun show

I don't know, Ghost Rider feels like it's stuck in the wrong show - should have been part of the Netflix stable.

i was skeptical about ghost rider but i think his introduction has taken the show in an interesting new direction

also his car is cool as fuck (and i'm not a car guy at all)

it's still weird to me tho that coulson, who was such a charismatic supporting character in the movies, has turned out to be the flattest, most boring chararacter on the show.

Yeah, that's the weirdest bit - the show was essentially created to be the Phil Coulson Fun Times Spin Off Hour and Clark Gregg has basically been written out of his own show.

The programme was best when tied into the Cinematic Universe; it was limping along until the massive Winter Soldier tie in, and the way the reveal panned out on the TV show at the smae time the movie was in theatres was inspired. Then, when Inhumans was still a slated picture and Marvel were pushing them hard to avoid X-Men rights it threw its weight behind developing that concept so the movie audience would be ready for it. But now that's gone, it feels like a promo show rather than its own entity.

Ghost Rider was a great idea, has been brilliantly realised, and works perfectly for this plotline. But is the Darkhold really a SHIELD plotline? It'd be much better served in the Netflix universe.

It also suffers badly from power escalation.

If you establish that Fitz and Simmons are such brilliant scientists that they can build/solve any threat with SCIENCE then where's the threat? (Hence bottle episodes like the Watchdogs using EMP.)

If people routinely die and come back to life - Coulson through Tahiti, Mei, Simmons (by default on alien planet), feel like it's happened to Mac, Hunter etc - then what are LMDs even for?

There's more but I feel like it's being picky.

can't really argue with any of that - it's definitely flawed but i'm still getting something out of it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i think the main problem with coulson is clark gregg, honestly - while he was great in short doses in the movies he doesn't seem to be able to inject much depth into the character, despite having a fair number of scenes where he had the opportunity to do so

Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying it more than e.g. Arrow but I won't really miss it when it's gone.

I also don't care about Daisy at all.

Every Frame a Painting takes on the music of the MCU, temp music, and the lack of risk-taking by blockbuster composers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vfqkvwW2fs

From the Rogue One thread where this all came up for some reason:

I think that the MCU look was calculated so that people would talk about the characters and the stories and the action, and that every review wouldn't spend a bunch of time discussing how distracting the look was. The characters are all heavily saturated primary colors, doing outlandish things all the time. Remember that the first Iron Man movie was a huge gamble and the way the MCU has panned out only really felt like a "sure thing" after Joss Whedon actually managed to not fuck up the first Avengers movie. Intentionally conservative color calibration and muted contrast makes sense to me in that context.

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, November 29, 2016 4:20 PM (0 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So too with the bland scores. Nowadays when the whole MCU enterprise seems like a sure thing, these choices seem like missed opportunities, but it wasn't that long ago it was all one or two bad decisions away from collapsing.

I turned that off when it became clear that that dude could not, in fact, sing any music from Star Wars.

yes I'm a dick

good video Phil

There's a good response video that basically says, "Temp tracking has been going on since the inception of sound film, the real problem is The Buggles." (Kind of.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcXsH88XlKM

He's blaming Hans Zimmer and computer software. Some of his points seem right (particularly the early/90's trends of making orchestra hits and percussion that software was better at creating) but much of it I'm leaning away from (comparing Star Wars' genre pastiche overture to the blatant copying of temp tracking is a bit of a stretch).

That's a great piece. I think his key point is that texture has superseded melody - so today's unoriginality isn't as hummable as the unoriginality of yesteryear. I think a lot of modern scores are still quite memorable, but certainly not anything you'd whistle.

That I'll agree with

And the fact that the director and the studio get to fiddle with the score as it's being built has got to be a disaster for catchy, interesting tunes. Imagine coming up with a brilliant fanfare and being told it has to be cut off before it resolves, because reasons. Better to not bother.

I can't think of any movie score with tunes I could hum since LOTR probably.

Harry Potter theme?

pirates of the caribbean?

Anyway, I liked that video essay but not entirely sure I agree with much of it. If I knew a bit more about classical music I would I guess suggest that a lot of contemporary scores draw from the discord and dissonance of 20th century+ composers and less more traditionally melodic composers. Which is another way of saying that that film essay is sort of the "rockism" argument applied to film - modern film composing is less legit because it's been spliced and edited and reorganized with fake instruments/computers (and of course the issue of originality has already been conceded).

All I know is that for all his infractions, Zimmer's scores for "The Thin Red Line" and "Interstellar" are among my faves of recent decades. If wikipedia is to be believed, Zimmer recorded six hours of music for the former at the request of Malick before filming began, which is sort of how Morricone worked (works?); Leone would edit his films to the music, which is the opposite of how Zimmer and the directors seem to be working in that clip. Maybe flipping things around like that helps?

Would have loved to hear a comparison of Zimmer and Elfman, who obviously came to their work from very similar backgrounds.

Harry Potter theme?

Contemporanous to LOTR I'd say.

pirates of the caribbean?

No idea how the theme goes but have only seen the first two films once each.

miles morales confirmed as the lead in miller and lord's animated spider-man movie!

Logan was actually way better than I expected. Enjoyed it more than any of the marvel movies I've seen.

Kind of like the Unforgiven of superhero movies (not completely, but that general kind of vibe is there)

not MCU! but yeah, i liked it.

I know it's not MCU, but there's no "Rolling X-Men Cinematic Universe thread (+ a poll: Classic or Dud?)" thread and I didn't feel like starting a new thread just for this.

Anyway, yeah, this was good. Actually felt like there was something at stake, unlike the Marvel movies, where I never really cared that much how things actually turned out.

can't even believe u guys are talking about Logan in the MCU thread, like saying Kickers Inc. took place on earth-616, so embarrassed for u right now