I'm done with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I followed it loyally since the first Iron Man, but Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was the last hurrah for me. I loved it and I want to leave the MCU with a good taste in my mouth.
You see, following the continuity any further will force me to watch Quantumania, and I'm just not going to do it. The Eternals was bad enough. Those wankers are never getting to abuse my eyeballs or intelligence again.
@musicman
Speaking of The Flash, I haven't been as disappointed with the screen treatment of one of my favourite SHs since No Way Home. I love Tom Holland's take on Peter Parker, but Maguire's films were like 60s TV Batman and Garfield's were just boring. Watching Sony mix the 3 is like watching someone mix your favourite meal with dogfood. Even without the dogfood mixed in, it will never taste the same again.
@strypey I don't understand how you got there. This is movie 3 in Ant Man series. It's not an answer to anything. I haven't seen The Flash but the trailers are nothing alike. There's no characters for 30 years ago. No alternate realities. I mean the MCU has that of course, but they don't show up in Ant Man. Kang alludes to them but they simply play no part in the movie.
Oh maybe you are talking about the short segment where he goes sub-quantum. That section is probably way weirder than Flash
@strypey quantumania is weird as hell and it's easy to see why it didn't do well at the box office. Also, the ending could have been better but I won't say how in case you decide to see it.
The idea that marvel needs to answer to any DC at this point is frankly a laughable starting point.
That said I bet if you skip Quantumania and just watch Loki you won't miss much. I mean hard to know exactly what's happening but lots of Kang action for sure.
@musicman
> The idea that marvel needs to answer to any DC at this point
That's my point. From the trailer and what I've heard and read, The Flash looks like an utter trashfire of bad ideas, fan service, and half-finished effects. Exactly the impression I get of Quantumania.
In fact, just like the theatrical release of the Justice League. For the record, the Snyder cut is still a flawed film and way too long, but still sooo much better.
True of WandaVision too. It started out so strong. Then it all just fell into a puddle at the end : (
> just watch Loki
Yeah I did. It had some funny moments and some good ideas, and it could have been trimmed down into a long but good movie. But as a series it was so padded with cruft, and ill-thought-out "subverting expectations" that it ended up as unwatchable as The Last Jedi : (
@strypey Loki is a 92% on rotten tomatoes, so you are way in the minority there. I think maybe you just don't like the multiple timelines, which I always wondered if people were going to be able to stick with that.
@strypey hard disagree. Secret Invasion is likely to have huge implications. Also, actually Quantumania in a way is huge it's just it be summed up in one line: the Kang that was keeping the other Kang at bay reportedly dies.
Maybe stuff in the sub-quantum realm will come back in an unexpected way but I don't see it. Maybe I'll change my mind after Loki
@musicman
> Secret Invasion is likely to have huge implications.
I watched the Honest Trailer today. Hard pass. Honestly, I'm done. The Infinity Saga was enough for me. I'm superheroed out for at least a decade (except for The Boys of course ; )
Weird is not the problem. Embarrassing self-parody is the problem. TBH the only thing I needed to see in the trailer to know this wasn't for me was what they did to MODOK. Oh the humanity! Hard pass.
@musicman
> weird is going to be a pass for the people that are still on X
Curious to know why you think so. If they coped with Dr Strange (both of them, but especially Multivitamin of Mudness), AntMan (1 and 2), the Guardians (all 3), WandaVision, Loki, and No Way Home, what's so weird about Quantumania that it finally pushed the weirdometer beyond acceptable limits?
@strypey the creatures of the Quantum realm are way weirder than any of those. I mean sure MoM has a world that was paint but you stayed there for literally like two seconds. Pretty much the entire movie takes place in the Quantum Realm.
Maybe "weird" isnt the right word, but the entire landscape being CGI might have made it too cartoony for some.
Also, I think it might be partially about expectations. Dr. Strange is right there in the name.
@strypey it's visually way different than anything you've mentioned. Still, the characters in the Quantum realm are weird. In a way, I think they did a great job. Why should the creatures of the Quantum realm be anything like the creatures of earth? I'm just saying I think that probably hurt the normie appeal
@strypey I asked my wife what she thought just to make sure I wasn't crazy and she said "yes, it's weirder than most of them, but not as weird as Moon Knight". She actually said "mummy thing" but yeah, Moon Knight.
Don't get me wrong, by all of this, it probably fairly earns it's 45% critic score, 82% audience. There's a selection bias on who is seeing it in the first place.
I'm probably more interested in the comic-book-as-a-series-of-movies experiment than I am the movies themselves.
@musicman
> I'm probably more interested in the comic-book-as-a-series-of-movies experiment than I am the movies themselves
That's an interesting point. Imagine if Synder had been given a series of movies to do Watchmen (WCU) or the Wachowskis had been given a series to do V for Vendetta (VCU?).
@musicman But in some ways I find movie series less interesting than the potential of a series of 8-12 episode seasons, FletNix style.
I mean, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are an amazing body of work. If it wasn't for the lousy final season (or two), Game of Thrones would be too. Still is if you're willing to do without an ending. But if the quality had been maintained to the end, it would have been even more amazing than the Lord of the Rings trilogy (not The Hobbit movies, they sucked).
@strypey there's probably a certain cadence that works. Like if the individual characters had their own TV series but then the Avengers had movies or something. The financial realities are going to keep that from happening though they got Loki and Secret Wars series.
Even if there isn't a cadence you still have to have a movie's worth plot in a movie, which I think is difficult to introduce characters and come to resolution. Like, Eternals definitely should have been a series
@strypey I'm going to refrain from further commentary on Eternals until I have seen GotG 3...which could be a while since my wife signed up for a month of Max. Our latest movies have been Shazam 2 (Shazam 1 was on cable so we watched that not long ago after finishing Secret Wars) and Black Adam. DC has obviously had some successes in individual movies, but their attempt at a universe seems to have sputtered into a 5 second one-liner...
@musicman
> DC has obviously had some successes in individual movies, but their attempt at a universe seems to have sputtered into a 5 second one-liner
Ae, it's kind of the opposite of the MCU. A smorgasbord of lame prequel-itis, with the odd gem (eg Wonder Woman, Doom Patrol, The Suicide Squad). I'm hopeful that James Gunn might manage to whip the DCU into shape, in which case maybe I will keep going to see the odd superhero movie at the cinema.
@strypey imagine if MoM had spent the entire movie in the space where the monsters are chasing Chavez in Strange's dream and I think you have a pretty good idea of the visual aesthetic of Quantumania. Personally, I thought it looked great, but Marvel has never done anything close to that scale before
Quantumania was ... not to bad actually. I mean, it's nothing great ... parts of it are super dumb ... the guy with the holes and the guy with the gears was cool. The dialogue around them was ... tolerable.
I stopped caring around No Way Home. I don't see how it got such high ratings. It felt so boring and dumb. I had seen all but one of those spidermen actors and I still didn't get tricked by the nostalgia into thinking it was a good movie.
That was the last one I paid for in the theater. I pirated WandaVision. Terrible, but I couldn't stop watching. Watched one of Loki. Bad. Dr. Strange Multiverse was kinda neat, but it would have made zero sense without watching a season long Wanda Vision ... also, it made zero sense even watching Wanda Vision.
I didn't pay for any of it and I still feel ripped off. It's all terrible. I hope the age of super hero movies ends for a good decade.
Totally understandable, but you're missing out. 2 was barely watchable (unlike 1 which was a trashfire), but 3-4 are heaps better. Particularly because (minor spoiler) they write themselves out of the limitations of the prequel situation...
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