It’s been a good read so far.
I did not! Well I knew of it but not the specifics, with Hickman I just sorta wait for his runs to finish up before deciding whether to get into them or not as… well he’s almost always conceptually great but but he has a habit of cutting his stays short in occasionally narratively frustrating ways.
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The Thousand-Year Sigh
Didn’t that last Avengers movie end with a lot of the side-characters getting "avengers assemble"d at the Avengers base? Am I mis-rembering that? What happened with all of them?
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Avenger movies are a’comin…
The whole idea of doing serialization of a world purely through movies is really showing more and more gaps. This works in comics due to regular installments and a wide suspension of disbelief.
With movies it takes years and a single character actor getting an ego can throw a wrench in the entire thing. Also stuff like an Iron Man actor ‘coming back’ when in fact we just saw him relative to the rest of the movies really throws a whole problem on the time gap.
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Looks like they want in on that Suicide Squad money
The MCU coasted a lot on “don’t worry, it’ll get explained/followed-up on later” in those early years, and if something didn’t actually get followed up on it didn’t matter because there were shiny new things to talk about/complain about.
I haven’t really watched any of it, but my impression has been they really ballooned after Endgame with the expansion into the streaming TV shows, and they want to keep making new and new characters. Which would probably be fine if they were written as standalone series, but everything is chained down to the “overarching continuity”. It doesn’t seem like there’s a strong central throughline or characters that people see the new adventures of every couple of years like MCU had with those original five or so people (I guess Kang was supposed to be it? Sort of?). Just lots and lots of constant New Stuff that is always teased as being important to the Old Stuff. But don’t worry, it’ll get explained/followed-up later
I feel like every time a new MCU show comes out people say it’s the best thing ever and by the end people pull back on that adulation a lot. Have any of them stood the test of time (i.e. the runtime of the show)?
It seems like Wandavision might be the one from what I hear
the Jessica Jones show was good but I forget whether that counts and I don’t think I watched the second season if there even was one
was that like ten years ago now huh
I can’t really speak for others, but I think S1 of Loki is worth watching if you have any interest in the MCU version of the character. I do think in general the post-Endgame stuff is still “Fans only” at best, whereas the earlier films did a bit more to appeal to people who weren’t already fully invested. Anyway, Loki works for me because it is a whole show focused on (IMO) the most interesting supporting character from any of the earlier movies, and you don’t really need to know much about Loki other than his appearances in the most popular MCU movies.
In fact, it may actually be better to watch it now than when it was originally released, because in its initial run its conclusion reads as a kind of back-door pilot for the foreverial foreclosed Kang saga. But now that all of that business has basically been swept under the rug, you can enjoy Kang as a character who appears in the last episode of the series and, basically, delivers a great monologue then just… goes away
the second season is also not as good for this reason, but if you watch s1 and are into it I guess it is probably fine.
Otherwise, all of the Disney+ stuff is… uh… inessential to put it lightly. Moon Knight is the most disconnected from the larger MCU, but is such a reimagining of that character that I don’t think it would really appeal to Moon Knight fans from the comics. But Oscar Isaac is pretty good in it, and Ethan Hawke seems to be having a good time slumming it.
I think Ms Marvel would probably appeal more to Ms Marvel comic fans, but feels less polished. It honestly seems like the most Canadian of all MCU properties even though it takes place in New Jersey. It feels kind of like a Wayne’s World situation to me, like just like you can imagine Mike Myers just sort of doing a find and replace for “Scarborough Ontario” to “Aurora Illinois,” Ms Marvel spiritually takes place in idk Brampton or something
most of the rest of them are basically indefensible i think.
I’ve largely fallen off my old MCU loving(tolerating) ways, but i’m still kind of hype for the new Daredevil series though. I’m a fuckin idiot
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oh yeah there’s a certain appeal to distinctly Canadian productions. like the jack reacher show looks exactly like they’re terrorizing suburban Ontario, it’s impossible to read any stakes into it
i’m sure it’s the other way around but loki’s time cops are so much worse realized than the same concept in umbrella academy that i don’t care that gerard way et al. probably lifted it from marvel comics in the first place
it’s just worse for being MCU instead of the “wes anderson x-men” youtube skit in general
I still cannot believe that the show Tracker is not, like, a CBC original. It just feels like it knows no one cares
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is this what umbrella academy is about??? I feel like I watched a good chunk of the first season and really could not get into it. I am sure it gets better but that is simply none of my business
yeah this is a good way of putting it. as a big Wes fan i think i found it offputting in the same way as the wes anderson tik tok meme.
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Jessica Jones S1 is still one of the best precisely because it does nothing to tie into The Continuity (they didn’t set up for that stupid Defenders shit til later), and S2 is markedly worse. The villain was S1’s engine.
I also like both Punisher seasons a lot based almost entirely around Ragin’ Jon Bernthal’s performance, though both seasons have very ill advised B/C plots.
Wandavision starts strong and basically gets worse with every episode as the Avengers mixture increases; the ending is purely risible. Is also based on emotional stakes that are almost contentless (Scarlet Witch’s love for Vision, a relationship that was established in like six lines over 40 hours of movies) but that’s just the buy-in for the suspension of disbelief so in a vacuum it’s not so bad. But yeah, ends up being a lot of overstuffed bullshit going nowhere. Some great scenes done dirty.
Moon Knight is actually really interesting for the first epsiode but gets even worse than Wandavision even quicker.
They really have no idea what they’re doing with these, except on like a C-suite branding level.
five (the old man who deaged) was an assassin working for the time cops to preserve the one true timeline (where the world ends) and goes off book. the second season revolves around the JFK assassination. the series is about a lot of things but breaking/mending the timeline is the main plot device
oh ya the netflix stuff is still ok, and i agree JJ s1 is the best of all of them
I have this very bad habit of ranting about how they cast Luke Cage specifically on the basis of how that character is written in Jessica Jones s1, and he’s great there, but just does not work at all with the tone of the Luke Cage show they made later. It’s honestly embarassing how often I have the opportunity to rant about this, you’d be surprised
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