Continuing my MCU rewatch

Maybe so but the people I know who have worked with him are, to put it kindly, not fans.

I'm convinced Marvel did not tell Sony about the Snap - which is why it became known as the "Blip" which is such a dumb word with zero weight for a monumental, five-year-long, universe-shattering event. I think the fundraiser in the opening was totally VFX'd in Post to be about the Blip and ADR'd to match. And Sony refused to move the release date, which once again did not help the overall MCU story (see also: NWH).

I really enjoy the Holland movies and the cast and the week before this movie came out, I had been really good avoiding spoilers. I was getting a haircut and an ad came on and before I could look away it was MJ on the bridge saying, with subtitles, "so you're Spider-Man" followed by his reaction. RUINED that moment.

This is the denouement of the Infinity Saga, but I would argue it should end with GOTGv3. That movie was supposed to come next and if people hadn't been stupid, it would have released Feb/March 2020 - right before the pandemic. The themes of that movie make it feel like a more definitive ending for the Infinity Saga and wraps up characters, and so in my head canon it goes next.

I forgot Black Widow... hmmmmm.

Sidenote - I said the word "denouement" out loud recently and my friend just laughed her ass off at my pronunciation which was... not right. It sounded awful as I said it and I realized I was wrong, but it made her day.
 
Schizm said:
This is the denouement of the Infinity Saga, but I would argue it should end with GOTGv3.
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You may have to talk me through this. I love GotGv3, but don't see how it capstones the Infinity Saga. Sure it wraps up character stories, but doesn't really reflect on the Snap other than kind of through a time travelly Gamora.

Black Widow *should* have been part of the Infinity Saga, and it's a real shame they sat on it for so long. But, as a flashback movie that introduces characters for Thunderbolts, I'm okay with it being in Phase 4. Same with Falcon & WS. Although it deals with fallout from the Snap, I think it's real value is introducing Walker and (hopefully) Eli Bradley.
 
I don't have a problem with the Blip being an alt name for the Snap, I am sure there were a lot of names and theories as to what happened, and I wonder if most people believed it was some dude with a gauntlet with magic stones that did it. You have to wonder how planets who had no idea who Thanos was reacted, both when it happened and five years later when it unhappened.

But now I need to rewatch the opening to see if I agree that much was added in post to reference it.
 
fac said:
But now I need to rewatch the opening to see if I agree that much was added in post to reference it
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I really doubt that. It's too ingrained in the plot. Peter's main rival with MJ was from grades below him but is now older and dashing. His teacher's wife pretended to be dusted to ghost him for five years. I don't get it.
 
I'm okay with "blip." It emphasizes the common person's incomplete view of what happened. Now, in Hawkeye, there's "Thanos was right" graffiti, so some information must be out there. It didn't occur to me at the time to pay attention to how much Cap said on the subject to his support group.

There's nothing visibly Blip-related at the fundraiser, and the only time it's mentioned is in a very wide, easily VO'd shot, and a couple closeups that are easy pick up shots because there's no extras visible. It's also possible that Brad was just a cute dude at school hitting on MJ until they added two lines saying he used to be a freshman.

The only reason I'm not entirely convinced is the scene where the marching band disappears and reappears on the basketball court. Those shots feel labor-intensive since they require crowds, stuntwork, and VFX.
 
Fletch said:
You may have to talk me through this. I love GotGv3, but don't see how it capstones the Infinity Saga. Sure it wraps up character stories, but doesn't really reflect on the Snap other than kind of through a time travelly Gamora.

Black Widow *should* have been part of the Infinity Saga, and it's a real shame they sat on it for so long. But, as a flashback movie that introduces characters for Thunderbolts, I'm okay with it being in Phase 4. Same with Falcon & WS. Although it deals with fallout from the Snap, I think it's real value is introducing Walker and (hopefully) Eli Bradley.
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GOTGv3 - the entire theme of healing from trauma, finding camaraderie and then going separate ways when you've healed. Also, it caps characters who were tangibly destroyed by Thanos. I think it's very relevant as an epilogue and maybe that line would have been more clear had it been released on time.

It's also fine in Phase 4, but it feels completely disconnected from everything else going on - not a complaint. Just feels like the end of the Infinity Saga to me.

Widow is both - I kinda want to sub it in to the rotation, but But since they went with the plane ending, it should just slot in. But that alt ending is a beautiful capper.
 
Schizm said:
It's also fine in Phase 4, but it feels completely disconnected from everything else going on - not a complaint. Just feels like the end of the Infinity Saga to me.
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I can see where you're coming from. I actually like GotG (and Dr. Strange and Spider-Man) serving as sort of continuity bridges from the Infinity Saga to Multiverse, but I can see how Vol. 3 doesn't actually add to the Multiverse story.

Schizm said:
Widow is both - I kinda want to sub it in to the rotation, but But since they went with the plane ending, it should just slot in. But that alt ending is a beautiful capper.
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I actually did secretly watch Black Widow after Civil War in my rewatch, but didn't notice that it added or subtracted anything from the experience. I'd already seen it, of course, so that window was already closed to me. Just kind of a shame they didn't release it in real time. If nothing else, it would've emphasized how broken up the Avengers were after Civil War heading into Infinity War. All we really got was that "I guess this guy's a war criminal now, but whatever" gag in Spider-Man.
 
Aaaaaand we've done it. We've gotten through the entire Infinity Saga (minus Agent Carter because who has that kind of time?) It started over at Fwoosh, but it only took me eight months to finish. That's a little faster than I was expecting, especially since I got a little burned out there at the end.

I don't feel like the second half as a whole was as strong as the first. That may've been because of that fatigue I was feeling, but I think, as they became more focused on telling a big saga, the movies became a little more same-y, without the focused thematic storytelling of, say, Winter Soldier or Ant-Man.

Giving them all an arbitrary "enjoyment" ranking that may change the next time I think about it, I stack the entire Saga like this:

1. Captain America: Winter Soldier
2. Avengers: Infinity War
3. Captain America: Civil War
4. Iron Man 2
5. Avengers
6. Iron Man
7. Avengers: Endgame
8. Guardians of the Galaxy
9. Captain America: First Avenger
10. Spider-Man: Far From Home
11. Incredible Hulk
12. Ant-Man
13. Ant-Man and the Wasp
14. Avengers: Age of Ultron
15. Thor: Dark World
16. Spider-Man: Homecoming
17. Thor: Ragnarok
18. GotG vol. 2
19. Dr. Strange
20. Black Panther
21. Iron Man 3
22. Thor
23. Captain Marvel

I'm not sure if I'm going to continue on with a dedicated Multiverse rewatch. The whole reason I started this one was out of dissatisfaction with the more recent movies and an interest in going back and watching the ones that I did really enjoy.

Some of the Multiverse movies I've only seen once, though, so it might be worth giving them a second shot. At the same time, there's a reason I saw some of them only once.

If anything, I'd probably do a Saga critique as part of a "this is how *I* would've done it" pitch series like I talked about in that earlier Headcanon thread, but I know some people find that kind of armchair producing disrespectful.

I guess chime in if you want me to continue movie breakdowns for Phase 4+, and if you have any strong feelings about fanfic movie changes like I'm inclined to do.
 
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I've been enjoying this and think continuing to Phase 4/5 for at least the stories that sort of flow more directly out of the aftermath of Endgame and other Phase 1-3 stories (Black Widow, WandaVision + Dr Strange 3, Falcon and Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, Thor 4, GotG3, Secret Invasion) and resolve (possibly) some character story arcs might be interesting. Of course now you also get into the Disney+ shows as well as the films so it is a big undertaking.

So I'd be for it, but I can also see waiting to revisit until after Secret Wars to see get the full picture of Phases 4 to 6. I'd also be interested in your Saga critique.
 
Fletch said:
I don't feel like the second half as a whole was as strong as the first. That may've been because of that fatigue I was feeling, but I think, as they became more focused on telling a big saga, the movies became a little more same-y, without the focused thematic storytelling of, say, Winter Soldier or Ant-Man.
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I agree, that became a problem when it felt a bit like arranging the characters and set up to feed into Infinity War.

I think if I tried to rank them it would be more in buckets - I am not sure any film was that bad so hard to have a "lowest ranked" and also not sure if I could pick among a few for the top film. Probably four buckets of "Great", "Good", "Fair" and "Poor".
 
I like talking about "old" media because it still matters - and the conversations mature as the media itself does. The way we throw away media today drives me nuts - very much as wasteful as fast fashion.

We've all offered thoughts of what we'd tweak along the way already, but a new thread dedicated to a brainstorm sounds interesting.

Or, we just end it with the Black Widow alt ending and let it go out on a beautiful grace note.
 
WandaVision

Alright then, continuing my rewatch into Phase 4 is actually pretty painless, because I absolutely love WandaVision. It was so weird and captivating. While I've praised the way the original Avengers (mostly) got conclusions in Endgame, she was a late-comer who deserved to have her story continue and bridge us into the next Saga.

Perhaps more importantly, it was the debut MCU series on Disney+, and absolutely took full advantage of the new medium. A weekly series that really allowed the mysteries to cook, framed in a bizarre mimicry of actual TV shows. It's one of the few MCU shows that could only work as an episodic series.

I have some big thoughts on this show, so I'll skip 13 points format. I'm not sure if that'll return for future episodic shows. For now you get larger bullet sections.

  1. The pacing on the show was great. The early episodes ran as nearly straight homages to classic sitcoms, but with ever-increasing encroachments from the "real world" so that the premise never got stale. Then, at the half-way point in episode 4, we get an outside view of what's happening that gives us some context, even if it doesn't give real answers. From there on out, the sitcom concept was used as a tool, like when Wanda tried to end the conversation by rolling credits. It just never had a chance to get old.

  2. The cinematography is also used well. They match the camera stylings of the source sitcom so well that you get kind of comfortable with it. Then there's a genre-breaking close up or camera angle change or just an aspect ratio change and it feels so sinister. The format itself is part of the story telling.

  3. I wouldn't have thought of putting Darcy and Jimmy on a team together, but I love it. Monica's a little flat in comparison, but that might be because she had such a great introduction as Geraldine in the Hex and didn't quite live up to that energy.

  4. Of course Kathryn Hahn is a treasure. I don't know if I would've guessed she was Agatha Harkness if I hadn't seen online suggestions of it. I was pretty disappointed that she was turned into a villain, though, but I would later go on to enjoy Agatha All Along and have since forgiven them. Haywood and the white Vision was a cool, if sudden, addition. I think I would've liked more mystery leading up to the revelation since that's supposedly his big crime that he gets arrested for. Like, Darcy uncovers earlier that Wanda didn't take Vision's body, so we have time to question why he lied about that.

  5. Ralph gets his own entry because he's the second-most hated part of the show. I love the idea of "she recast Pietro!" but bringing in Fox's Quicksilver to be our new Quicksilver was a really unnecessary stunt casting in what was, until now, a seemingly solvable mystery. The only thing Evan Peter's casting did was add a big "try and figure this out, effing nerds!" to the show. Especially since we knew we were coming into the Multiverse Saga and drew some conclusions based on that.

  6. Aside from Ralph, though, I had quite a bit of fun with all the show's red herrings, even changing my theory on who was responsible a couple times before the final episodes. With a week between each episode, I had a lot of time to theorycraft. It was a little frustrating that not everything was paid off, but that didn't subtract from the final reveal for me. Things like "for the children" being repeated so much (and Vision's direct question about why there are no other children in Westview). My official theory became that some other entity had engineered Wanda into this scenario in order to take the children of Wanda and Vision. My lead suspect was Nicolas Scratch, Agatha's father from the comics who I assumed had been trapped in bunny form by Agatha as Senor Scratchy. I'd even considered that he might've been Jimmy's Witness Protection guy. Let's just say I had a whooooole theory.

  7. But my most hated part of the show was the last few minutes where Monica, who is somehow now Wanda's best friend, says "they'll never know what you sacrificed for them." And Wanda just walks away like she's a hero for freeing her mind slaves. Trapping Agatha in her own mind? Awesome. Heartfelt goodbye to her family? Excellent. Not even an attempt to apologize for torturing 2,000 people? It's the goofy head on the cartoon Gidorah meme I don't feel like making right now. What a lackluster way to end such a great series.

  8. Final note is that Wanda's big, fuck-all Sokovian fortune teller headdress looked *so* good. Obviously a bit under-designed, but it proved that an impressive crown can work. The little horned tiara we got at the end was pathetic in comparison. Give us a crown, you coward's! On that same subject, I'd also like to have seen more shade diversity in white Vision's look. The all-white looks really flat on screen. Maybe if they'd made his skin a pale grey to match his dead look, then the cape, costume and head plates(?) could be all-white without losing features. While I'm at it, Monica's final outfit was barely an afterthought. Especially after all the effort they put into that aerospace engineer super moontruck sequence just to explain why she was in a special outfit.
I don't think I've enjoyed any other Disney+ series as much as I enjoyed WandaVision. It was so perfectly timed and executed and designed specifically for the weekly format. Lighting in a bottle.
 
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I'm of two minds on WandaVision - on one hand, I really like it. On the other, I despise the storytelling design and that's all because of the Mystery Box.

There is a level to which I enjoy figuring things out on TV shows, but this version of that game just hid Wanda's real motivations from the audience for so long - and her real motivation is incredibly relatable (and obvious). She's GRIEVING. Her lover, her brother, her own death and resurrection, her comrades, her hometown.

That's a fantastic emotional base for her to say fuck it and just use her reality-warping powers to create her own reality from the sitcoms of her youth - it's what half of those watching Netflix are doing by rewatching Gilmore Girls ad nauseum right now. But instead of letting us enjoy the ride with her and be happy for her that she finally found some relief, the audience is never on her side emotionally because we are trying to solve the riddle. When her shows get interrupted by the real world, wouldn't it be more interesting if we are on Wanda's side and RESENT those interruptions to her happiness?

Then as things start to unravel we see her actively reset the sitcom to try again and that's what motivates the era changes. Instead of trying to hide that information, we somewhat look forward to it, even though it costs her.

And then as the actual reality of what she's done dawns on her - the enslavement of actual people - she runs from that truth and doubles down on her fake reality, choosing to become a monster. Or, once she realizes what she's doing, she tries to bring down the hex, but can't bc of Agatha or something, which leads in to the finale. Both of these are better options - they create an emotional arc I understand and empathize with.

I would have loved to see what this show would have looked like without COVID forcing rewrites - like Darcy barely being in the finale, or what the fight with Senor Scratchy in the basement was all about.

Also, this still bugs me - where did the deed for the house come from? It sets everything in motion. She looks surprised when she sees it in the car. I wish we had started the show with her asking for Vision's body in episode 8 and watched her as she gives in to grief and creates her world.

There's also that Elizabeth Olsen is a great actor but not really a funny actor - I'm really curious how her new romantic comedy with Miles Teller is going to work. So the sitcom scenes don't work as well as they should, but that's also kinda on purpose. Again, if we knew from the start how much Wanda *wanted* to be in this world, the incongruence becomes a lot more meaningful - we want her to succeed in a sitcom.

Agatha All Along fixes all of these storytelling problems, BTW. We're thrown into a situation in-progress, but then we get let in on the game by the end of episode 1, while still trying to solve the mystery, which has a satisfying and audience- and character-respecting conclusion.

Final note: there's also the fact that in Marvel's first two female-fronted projects, both lead women are brainwashed. Followed up by Natasha finally getting a spotlight as a formerly-brainwashed woman whose entire plot is to save other brainwashed women from brainwashing. Like - WTF, Marvel? Women aren't interesting unless they don't have control of their own minds? It's a VERY offputting storytelling device.
 
Schizm said:
Final note: there's also the fact that in Marvel's first two female-fronted projects, both lead women are brainwashed. Followed up by Natasha finally getting a spotlight as a formerly-brainwashed woman whose entire plot is to save other brainwashed women from brainwashing. Like - WTF, Marvel? Women aren't interesting unless they don't have control of their own minds? It's a VERY offputting storytelling device.
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THIS.
 
Fletch said:
  • Ralph gets his own entry because he's the second-most hated part of the show. I love the idea of "she recast Pietro!" but bringing in Fox's Quicksilver to be our new Quicksilver was a really unnecessary stunt casting in what was, until now, a seemingly solvable mystery. The only thing Evan Peter's casting did was add a big "try and figure this out, effing nerds!" to the show. Especially since we knew we were coming into the Multiverse Saga and drew some conclusions based on that.
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I think knowing that the X-Men and the multiverse stuff were on the table is what really swamped the whole Ralph thing - it is possible they cast it more as a joke before it actually became a semi-plausible first hint of the X-Men and multiverse shenanigans to the minds of the audience, and miscalculated.

I felt it could have been redeemed if Peters cameoed in Multiverse of Madness and you got the sense Wanda had picked up on him the same way she picked up who the kids were (and looked like) from the other universe, like it seeped through to her subconsciously.

Fletch said:
  • But my most hated part of the show was the last few minutes where Monica, who is somehow now Wanda's best friend, says "they'll never know what you sacrificed for them." And Wanda just walks away like she's a hero for freeing her mind slaves.
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Yeah, that really damaged the show to me - I wonder if they got scared thinking about how egregious her behavior was and wanted to downplay it, or if they were trying to leave some mystery about her role in MoM by sugarcoating it. Monica being the voice of the audience up to that point really made that line a problem I felt. It didn't help MoM either when she becomes a murdering crazy person to not have leaned into her "I am not bound by nor do I care about morality but want the life I feel I deserve given the pain that has happened"... I hadn't really thought about it, but I am not sure they played up her loss being permanent compared ti the other Snap folks coming back - so many people got their loved ones back, and she had to watch that, but not her.

The third thing I disliked was the whole Haywood shooting at the kids thing. His character would have been more interesting if he was less evil and more pragmatic about the need to figure out what they could salvage from Vision and had reasonable intentions (from the point of view of there being a super powerful android available to you as national security group) and was not deranged.

Show was truly great for about 7 1/2 episodes, even with Ralph, but walked away from its more interesting questions at the end in favor of witch-fu and mustache twirling and trying to make excuses for Wanda's behavior.
 
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