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

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

is there a Logan thread? search is down and I couldn't find one by googling

I did search for one earlier but couldn't find one either. That's why I decided to ruin this thread.

I think it was being discussed in the "which of these franchises are you looking forward to least" thread.

MCU docket for this year = Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, Spiderman: Homecoming, and Thor: Ragnarok?

maybe bump the The Wolverine thread?

Hard for me to remember them all at this point, but I think Logan might be the best comic book movie yet. At the very least, it really captures what I remember from reading a lot of those X-Men Comics as a kid, the violence, the desperation, the apocalyptic dread.

Haven't been compelled to see the previous Wolverine joints but y'all are swaying me.

I hated this movie

way too long, reveled in its violence while trying to convey Its Toll, half-asses the dystopia stuff *and* the western angle, lazy expository dialogue, monotonous fight scenes, general unearned air of self-seriousnessness

What with all the dystopic possible futures from the comics, is the Old Man Logan future a possible one or the canon future? I don't know why it matters to me, other than as a kid, I remember the Days of Future Past was THE future, and the X-Men tension was trying to change it while events (Rachel Summers, Ahab, Nimrod) kept occurring to bring it about.

Xpost Huh. Hated?

I thought all the things you complained about were done just about right. It's a small scale, insular end of the a road movie.As for the violence? Come on.

xxpost There have been approximately 3,962 depictions of possible Marvel Universe futures since Days of Future Past happened.

And that's if you mean the movie!

It's a small scale, insular end of the a road movie.

it also half assed being "small scale" by never fucking ending

WTF are you talking about, it ended exactly when it should have ended.

I really thought the climax was going to be at the house, little did I know we had another 40 minutes ft. the worst child actors ever still to go (the main girl was v good tho)

Yeah, the kids were not alright. But Jackman, and Stewart were career best.

Is this possibly the first kid actors you've seen, Simon?

the last wolverine movie was really great too. haven't seen Logan yet, very much want to.

the last wolverine movie was terrible idk what you saw

I'm talking about the Wolverine and not XMen Origins: Wolverine.

I know. it was awful and set a very low bar but credit where credit is due imho this is the first Mangold joint that actually hits what it's aiming for

i thought The Wolverine was pretty serviceable, maybe even good! Logan is definitely better though

So Sony are working on Venom and Black Cat & Silver Sable movies

they just won't learn will they

Ha, such bottom of the barrel characters - except venom I guess, but how on earth is he going to carry a movie?

way too long, reveled in its violence while trying to convey Its Toll, half-asses the dystopia stuff *and* the western angle, lazy expository dialogue, monotonous fight scenes, general unearned air of self-seriousnessness

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Thursday, 9 March 2017 18:37 (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

100%

The reviews that state that "this isn't just a great superhero movie, it's a great movie" or w/e are totally incorrect.

Even for a superhero movie, this was shit.