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

When are we getting an animated Power Pack show on Disney XD

If it was stylized to look like Bogdanove's art, I'd be down 1000%.

It's spelled 'Brigman'

Also this is dope news

Although Marvel seems to be widening the relational gulf between their movies and their TV projects, I guess this would still be the place to post the Cloak & Dagger trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5hrFVQiGyk

It's a little weird that Dabney Coleman is seemingly uninvolved, but I'll take it nonetheless.

BREAKING: 21st Century Fox has been holding talks to sell most of the company to Disney, sources say. https://t.co/JRf6Ly3hs6

— CNBC (@CNBC) November 6, 2017

oh I guess Bloomberg are saying the deal is dead now

so much for Dr Doom getting a proper treatment

Marvel did such a great job with the leased Spider-Man and Wolverine movies, I wouldn't give up hope.

Homecoming was pretty good. I didn't think Logan was a Marvel Studios production?

It wasn't

Haha, that's totally right. Man, Logan might be the only of all the Marvel movies I want to see again.

Logan was much better than I anticipated. Stewart really made the movie.

I thought Logan was loathsome, self-consciously grim & gritty trash

a really dispiriting movie

It was overly bloody but I don't think it was trash

I find the lack of blood in the MCU, while understandable, more disturbing and dispiriting than the more explicit stuff I saw in Logan. So many people bloodlessly impaled in the new Thor. These movies are non-stop violence, minus the bloody horror. Kind of perverse. Whether the violence had anything to do with the emotional punch of Logan, I dunno. But it did a better job of showing the cost of a life of violence than Iron Man and Captain America punching each other.

The new Thor is pretty much a comedy so I'm not surprised by the minimal blood. Also, PG-13 vs R.

I feel like if you are watching a Marvel or DC movie expecting to see the cost of a life of violence, you are in the wrong movie.

incorrect. you could sit through Man of Steel and Batman v Superman.

I don't expect to see that stuff, because these are movies for kids, first and foremost. It's just something I've thought about, and certainly something that helps me pinpoint why all these movies about doomsday or the end of the world or mass extinction events initiated by arch villains or killer robots just feel like such low stakes stories. (It doesn't help that there have been so many of these, more good than bad, imo). I definitely don't want them to go the gloomy DC route, and they're not going to go that way (although if the Thanos plot plays out anywhere close to what's expected over the course of a two part epic ... ). I grew up reading these stories (though not close to the extent of some of you) and I do recall lots of pathos and violence and threats and darkness in a way that drove the story. In these films all those things are sort of sanitized in an almost surreal way. It's not unique to these movies by any stretch, of course. But when a major character in this movie picks up a pair of machine guns and just starts shooting, I must admit that for the first time in a long time, innocuous though the scene may have been even in the context of a movie this fun, it made me a little queasy in the context of current events.

That's a scene directly from the source material, though.

I dunno if glossing over the effects of violence is that bad because most culture that does focus on the immediate physical effects of violence ends up stylizing those effects, making them part of the draw, in a way that is I'd guess even more damaging.

Of course those movies don't tend to show a realistic portrait of the physical and psychological effects of violence either, because those are horrible and nobody wants to think about them in an action movie.

Not saying this means the issue has no solution but it does seem an uphill battle.

This might be o/t but since at least 9/11 I've had lots of trouble not being taken out of the moment by these superhero movies where entire metropolises are levelled by supervillains/heroes as some kind of collateral damage. Like, human beings presumably lived or worked in those buildings. I know The Avengers series (and, to a less convincing and more ham-fisted degree) the recent Superman movies have engaged with this somehow, but, still.

My takeaway from a lifetime of reading superhero comics is that the answer to "what if superheroes existed in real life?" can only ever be "it would be terrifying and horrible"; some books made that point well, a whole bunch more used it as an excuse for reveling in sadism, but in the end the only way to stay a fan of the genre is to just leave that question be, I think. Which is not to say everyone can or should have to do that.

I disagree (though of course ymmv). I think many of the best comics stories - like movies, or books, or TV shows in any violent genre - have addressed the moral/ethical/philosophical quandaries of violence, and that from the start is partly what has earned comics respect, though especially in the more modern graphic novel era. But I think that stuff has to be suppressed on a more mainstream level, or at least seriously counterbalanced, by more innocuous stuff, or (as it is often termed) "cartoon violence" or "comic book violence," a distinction that robs the violence of its real world implications, like a frying pan to the face or hundreds of faceless stormtroopers being decimated with lasers. Vs. buildings and cities being destroyed. Obviously the movies gravitate toward the latter, for the sake of spectacle, but take the new Thor. Without question, the world destroying stuff is much less compelling and entertaining than Thor and Hulk hitting each other. The flip side might be the TV Daredevil/Jones/Luke Cage world, which is as grim as anything in the real world, and seems to be by far the bloodiest, most sadistic and (to me) most disturbingly violent approach the MCU has explored yet. Daredevil was the first MCU property I had to warn parents away from.

Oh my goodness, yes, keep yr kids away from the Netflix series (ironically the most easily-accessible of the lot), particularly the two seasons of Daredevil. Kingpin and the Punisher wreak some gruesome havoc.

I think there's plenty of ethical/moral/philosophical questions that are routinely tackled in the superhero genre, but they do not incide on violence itself as much as questions of power and responsibility (as Spidey would have it); heroes failing to save someone, loved ones being put in danger, etc. This feels to me fundamentally different from what, say, a crime novel or a revenge movie have to say about violence, because the actual dynamics of violence are never truly examined. Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns aside (and really it's arguable to what extent the latter truly critiques violence), I feel like most attempts to do so in the modern era have failed, turned incoherent or, as I said above, used the question as a hook to then wallow in violence w/o actually having anything to say on the subject. I think Marvel has taken a concious decision to move away from that kind of project in its comics of the last decade or so, and the MCU follows suit.

I'm just saying, if you want a comic book movie that functions as a mediation on the ramifications of living a life a violence, you are likely to be more interested in A History of Violence than you are Thor: Ragnarok; as D_Rf says, violence in the MCU is a tool used to create scenarios that explore other themes and is rendered the way it is partially to appeal to a wider audience and partially to not distract the viewer from the story that is being presented.

(I haven't seen Logan yet but, given the character, it makes sense to delve into the ramifications of a violent life with a character whose existence is driven by berserker rage and the ability to shrug off near-fatal injuries and what happens when that character's healing abilities falter.)

Logan is explicitly about violence (not unlike, say, a movie like Unforgiven, or The Searchers), and may be in my estimation the best and most emotionally resonant of all these movies. Like I said, maybe that's just a coincidence. And I'm not saying I want that from all or even most MCU movies, just saying that it at least partly explains why all these movies are starting to feel like running in place to me. Seemingly indestructible beings somehow overcoming other seemingly indestructible beings with minimal repercussions. And I stand by my observation that given the only thing distinguishing the sadistic violence in these movies from their R equivalents is actual blood, the results are pretty surreal. As if a lifeless corpse impaled on a giant spear is less disturbing minus the dripping blood. I'm not a prig, I just think they want it both ways (per the maximum profit maxim), but if they're going to be hyper-violent anyway they might as well better explore those themes. I'm not saying this would make them superior entertainments, but it might make them better movies, ones worth watching more than once.

(I haven't seen Thor: Ragnarok yet, either)

it's a lot funnier than Logan

This doesn't surprise me!

I'm just saying, if you want a comic book movie that functions as a mediation on the ramifications of living a life a violence, you are likely to be more interested in A History of Violence than you are Thor

Haha in fairness, I haven't seen or read that either.

Hi dere, I am DJP and today I will talk out of my ass about movies I haven't seen yet.

i like all the MCU stuff - and the CW DC shows for that matter - when they create the look, tone and feel of the superhero comics of yore. It's pretty simple but when they're as fun as the stuff I grew up reading, it's more or less all I'm in it for. To that end the Cap movies and the Flash show have been pretty great for this. I started strong on DD and the Netflix stuff but I kind of waded through the second series of DD, never finished Luke Cage, and put up with 1 ep of the Defenders.

Logan annoyed me as an X-Men movie, because it was like “yeah yeah yeah superheroes but what if he’s just REAL sad”

Granted, the last few X Men movies havent been great (or any of them) & the shift in tone was a nice change. But imo Logan felt like a movie made by ppl who could give a shit about mutants etc. Like the Star Trek remakes: JJ’s like “ehh science fiction schmience fiction, let’s just make it look cool”

My point being that Logan’s an outlier (ugh i hate that word but i cant think of a replacement), with good reason.

I watch superhero movies ~because~ they’re superhero movies ie fantastical &/or heightened reality & non-bloody violence without a lot of real world consequence ... if i wanted NOT that then that’s what other movies are for.
I don’t *want* blood and consequences! I want the bad guys to get kapowed into space & the good guys to do the kapowing.

It’s like trying to make Cap’n Crunch cereal healthy. The whole reason it exists is that isn’t.

idk. pvmic i guess?

I feel like we're in this for the same reasons.
What made the first X-men movie so satisfying (in retrospect, not to say good) was that when Cyclops shot a beam it sent Sabretooth FLYING - just as I had seen Byrne and others draw countless times.

Logan annoyed me as an X-Men movie, because it was like “yeah yeah yeah superheroes but what if he’s just REAL sad”

Hope you're strapped in for the next X-Men movie (New Mutants) which looks like 'yeah yeah yeah superheroes but what if it's horror instead of superheroes'

it also looks like some extremely shoddy straight to video horseshit

It looks like Stranger X-Things

Logan reminded me of a lot of the comics I read as a kid, with the protagonist isolated, hiding and persecuted.

Hope you're strapped in for the next X-Men movie (New Mutants) which looks like 'yeah yeah yeah superheroes but what if it's horror instead of superheroes'

It'll still be better than the Gifted (I know, I know, tv, but...) which is 'yeah yeah yeah Tomorrow People bombed but what if it's X-Men instead of obscure 70s british show'.

The difficulty, made even harder by Logan being so well received, is to stop Logan being like Watchmen/DKR/B:Year1/Longbow Hunters and ushering in the Dark Age of comics movies.

When people start muttering "superhero movies aren't just for kids any more!" it's the end.

Logan's only the fourth most successful X-Men film though, with Deadpool on the top - I'm totally behind a Profane Age.

New Mutants looks badass aside from the change to Cecilia Reyes

The difficulty, made even harder by Logan being so well received, is to stop Logan being like Watchmen/DKR/B:Year1/Longbow Hunters and ushering in the Dark Age of comics movies.

The Dark Knight came out a decade ago!

I was uncertain about New Mutants until I read that it's apparently adapting the Demon Bear storyline and now I'm like 'yes, please'. Plus a lot of the casting seems really solid.

the demon bear part is what makes me most worried tbh - the risk of creating a horrendously stereotypical portrayal of native americans seems v high

Hopefully the film will feature the characters of Tom Corsi and Sharon Friedlander and set your mind at ease.

They did at least cast a Native American actress as Dani Moonstar. That's a promising sign.