Marvel Cinematic Universe General Discussion 5: Getting some Strange

[Rhom]

I'm not sure what our spoiler policy in this thread is, so I will err on the side of caution here.

Regarding the state of the Avengers post Civil War and the ramifications for solo movies (specifically Antman and the Wasp)

Spoiler

With Cap's Avengers hiding out in Wakanda, I can buy that Cap, Falcon, and Wanda could slip out and save the world when need be; but how will Scott get away to head his own sequel film?

 

[williamjm]

15 hours ago, The Mother of The Others said:

Why does the Dark Elf get no respect as a villain?   What were people hoping to see different from Ecclesiast...icson?  (the villain guy with the long name).   What was the big letdown?  Wasn't he actually threatening the entire multiverse?????   That's the highest the stakes have even been in these movies.  He did scarier stuff than Thanos.   But none of that matters unless he's also a musclebound asskicker? 

Maybe it'll change at some point in the future films, but at the moment I wouldn't say being a more interesting villain than Thanos is a particularly high bar to clear. At least Ecclestone's character didn't sit around all the time. I agree with Black Bear's complaint about his that he basically has no discernible personality, it's probably saying something about how memorable his character was that none of us appear to be able to remember his name.

It's a pity because I think Ecclestone is a really good actor when given a decent role, but he's on autopilot here.

[The Mother of The Others]

Re: Antman.   Come on.  For sneaking around the world he'd have the easiest time of anyone.  He can board any plane without waiting in the TSA line. 

Re: Selvig.   Eccentric Genius stuff was how I took that plotline.   We must continue to have jokes.  If everything becomes a protected class, that's lovely in one sense, but we've died in another sense.  I had a great uncle who was Norweigan and lost a leg in the battle of the bulge, but that didn't stop him from constantly taking off his pants, in fact in some ways it made it easier!  See?  Horrible thing, yet humor found.  Sorry if the personal connection to the subject kept you from laughing at the Selvig material.  Yet, must we not find mirth amidst this vale of tears?

Re: Dark Elf's lack of Charisma--

Okay, granted.   Try this, though: you Anti-Elfists may be unhappy with his performance because you're looking for something from him that you Shouldn't Be Looking For.   Why would he be charismatic?   Why would he make it personal for you?   He's not emotionally involved with our universe like the blue villain form Guardians of the Galaxy was.  Dark Elf Guy hails from another order of existence far removed from ours, so we Shouldn't find ourselves feeling empathy for him, because he's just too alien for that.   And his attack was so large scale (like if our sun went nova) that it wouldn't be personal.  It'd be a cosmic scale disaster that wouldn't target us with malice but with Indifference.   We were bugs that had infested his universe with Light and Star-flake Dandruff Matter; he was merely calling the Orkin exterminator to get rid of us with a Darkness Shampoo.  He wasn't going to bother raging against us as if we were his equals or rivals or whatever.   Do you get all worked up when ants get too close to your living space?   Or do you just have a few choice words for them and then get a can of ant spray?

[Jon AS]

1 hour ago, williamjm said:

Maybe it'll change at some point in the future films, but at the moment I wouldn't say being a more interesting villain than Thanos is a particularly high bar to clear. At least Ecclestone's character didn't sit around all the time. I agree with Black Bear's complaint about his that he basically has no discernible personality, it's probably saying something about how memorable his character was that none of us appear to be able to remember his name.

I do know his name, but only because it's the same as the king of the dark elves in Warhammer. A solid 30 seconds of googling has failed to reveal whether both companies were drawing on the same source material or whether one was ripping the other off.

17 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

Why would he be charismatic?

Because he's the antagonist in an action movie. We know he's not going to succeed because we know how these films work (particularly since his goal is to destroy the universe), so making him charismatic is the only way to make us care about the character. The complete failure to do anything with him is a major flaw in the movie.

[The BlackBear]

You want to make him alien and strange sure, make him alien and strange, anything but flat.

Strangely I do remember his name, Malekith.

[The Mother of The Others]

47 minutes ago, Jon AS said:

 making him charismatic is the only way to make us care about the character.   ...a major flaw in the movie.

It is a tricky choice for the storyteller, to go with the truly alien as the antagonist, and it's a hurdle for the audience to get past, too, as you've noted.   Because the truly alien DOESN'T create a emotional response in the audience like stage actors usually try for.  That's why Star Trek "aliens" are merely humans with only slightly tweaked facial features, because (in addition to having no budget for much more than that) they figured out that the audience stayed tuned in more when they could "identify" with these aliens.  But in truth Star Trek wasn't giving us aliens anymore, it was more a weekly story of Politics, clashes with other Relatable races, a metaphor for how we get along with other tribes of humanity.   Hence more relevant than stories about the truly alien, which would have gotten them cancelled after almost no viewers would connect with that.  When you dare to tell stories of the truly alien, that's when the average viewer has a hard time feeling affected by the drama, because drama is the art of relatable Human stories.  

 

So Thor 2 took a shot at something farther afield, which is braver in my book.   I believe both of these things are true about Thor 2: their dark elf was Bad For The Movie while at the same time his character was Properly Played as aloof and Other, with no real sense of Affect.  Because there rightly was no bridge to connect his motivations with ours to create sympathy or shared experience.  We would see him as only a cold malignance.  So play him cold, I say.  Maybe they didn't go far enough along that path to make it clear what they were doing, maybe Malekith was still too similar to a starchild species so people expected him to do the usual dog and pony show like a villain should, and that's why he's seen as falling flat, Blackbear.   What actually bothered me more than his stony performance was how the Dark Elves' spaceship was too similar to other spaceships made by "our" kind of life forms.   Some of that can be chalked up to convergent evolution.  Ocean life that wants to swim and thrive may end up looking a lot like sharks no matter what planet they're from.    Or since they were older we perhaps took inspiration from their model of how to travel through space.

[Jack Bauer 24]

Just watched Thor. Probably my least favorite of Phase I so far, but still enjoyed it. Captain America: First Avenger up next.

[Mladen]

So apparently, some of them stopped pretending they are in the same Universe:

http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2016/05/chloe-bennet-says-marvel-dont-seem-to-care-about-agents-of-s-h-i-e-l-d/

[Rhom]

Quote

Joss Whedon, co-creator of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., has previously spoke about the show’s place in the MCU, stating that “the entire series is just a fever dream” and “as far as I’m concerned in the films, [Coulson] is dead.”

I hadn't heard that before.

[The Anti-Targ]

IMO if AoS had been a much more popular product then some cross over from show to movie might have happened. Clearly there are connections from the movies into the show, particularly the events of Winter Soldier and Avengers 1. I think it's more possible for the Netflix stuff to bleed into the MCU. But because so far those characters have been very localised to parts of NYC it's easier to sequester them if they want to keep them at arms length. But with AoS having a global presence it makes not having them even be referenced in the movies a bit surreal.

[Jack Bauer 24]

Watched Captain America: First Avenger last night. Really enjoyed it. 

[Jack Bauer 24]

http://m.hitfix.com/the-dartboard/this-is-the-worst-thing-about-iron-man-3-she-saidshe-said

Anyone see this?

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Jack Bauer 24 said:

Watched Captain America: First Avenger last night. Really enjoyed it. 

While for a lot of people Captain America as a comic character is quite meh, they did a good job with him in his intro movie, and pretty much made him a crowd favourite. Which made it easier for people to overlook some of the serious ideological flaws of his position in Civil War. Basically his arguments for not agreeing to oversight are so shallow that really for most of the audience he wins their vote because he's the nice guy with perfect teeth you'd let your daughter date. I heard one youtuber say he's team Steve because Tony has turned into a corporate schill. Though that's kinda odd, because mostly corporate schills are anti-govt oversight.

[mormont]

5 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

IMO if AoS had been a much more popular product then some cross over from show to movie might have happened. Clearly there are connections from the movies into the show, particularly the events of Winter Soldier and Avengers 1. I think it's more possible for the Netflix stuff to bleed into the MCU. But because so far those characters have been very localised to parts of NYC it's easier to sequester them if they want to keep them at arms length. But with AoS having a global presence it makes not having them even be referenced in the movies a bit surreal.

I dunno. I think it's a bit more than that: the practical problems of making the TV shows and movies link up are huge, as I understand it. You'd need to start off planning how to do it years in advance even for a minor crossover. And there's just no incentive for the movies to go to that trouble. The TV audiences aren't big enough, and even if they were, who's going to decide not to watch an Avengers movie because Daredevil or Quake isn't in it?

[Rhom]

4 hours ago, mormont said:

I dunno. I think it's a bit more than that: the practical problems of making the TV shows and movies link up are huge, as I understand it. You'd need to start off planning how to do it years in advance even for a minor crossover. And there's just no incentive for the movies to go to that trouble. The TV audiences aren't big enough, and even if they were, who's going to decide not to watch an Avengers movie because Daredevil or Quake isn't in it?

I don't think anyone would skip an Avengers movie... however, if DD or Quake had a brief cameo in a movie like that, it would be a dramatic boost to the TV ratings.  IMO.   

[Mladen]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

I don't think anyone would skip an Avengers movie... however, if DD or Quake had a brief cameo in a movie like that, it would be a dramatic boost to the TV ratings.  IMO.   

And no one is denying that it would be significant boost, but what do those characters bring to the movies? Honestly, why should movies make space for any of the Agents of SHIELD or Hell's Kitchen gang if the only result will be something irrelevant to them. At this point, I do feel that MCU needs a good reasoning to include those characters, especially story-wise, because the argument of TV shows getting dramatic boost in ratings doesn't work for the movie side of the Marvel studios.

[DaveSumm]

It all stems from the fact that they used SHIELD and Coulson in their flagship MCU TV show, and so there's the constant inconsistency of why he won't tell them he's alive, why Fury told Cap he'd scrapped SHIELD then secretly renewed it. Essentially, the team is stuck being a secret organisation otherwise Cap would immediately say "woah, I thought we scrapped this?! Are we sure HYDRA's not involved? Who's running this?", to which the answers are "No that was BS, oh, HYDRA, yea, they're actually way more of a threat than they were when you fought them, and that friend of yours you thought was dead". That's too much revelation to cram in to a Cap / Avengers movie, and Chris Evans isn't gonna be on AoS anytime soon, so I guess they're forever stuck on opposite sides of the fence.

[mormont]

2 hours ago, Rhom said:

I don't think anyone would skip an Avengers movie... however, if DD or Quake had a brief cameo in a movie like that, it would be a dramatic boost to the TV ratings.  IMO.   

Sure. But the movie division has given no sign that it gives a hoot about the TV ratings. Sad, but true.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

It all stems from the fact that they used SHIELD and Coulson in their flagship MCU TV show, and so there's the constant inconsistency of why he won't tell them he's alive, why Fury told Cap he'd scrapped SHIELD then secretly renewed it. Essentially, the team is stuck being a secret organisation otherwise Cap would immediately say "woah, I thought we scrapped this?! Are we sure HYDRA's not involved? Who's running this?", to which the answers are "No that was BS, oh, HYDRA, yea, they're actually way more of a threat than they were when you fought them, and that friend of yours you thought was dead". That's too much revelation to cram in to a Cap / Avengers movie, and Chris Evans isn't gonna be on AoS anytime soon, so I guess they're forever stuck on opposite sides of the fence.

ha, good points. I hadn't really thought about how the movieverse was affecting the tv-verse. AoS is sort of screwed really, because its totally beholden to events in the movies and can't really go off and do its own thing. It worked at first, Winter Solider saved AoS IMO. But now I guess its hard to see the two in the same universe, for reasons you mentioned. To be honest I stopped watching the show a long time ago, it improved but then ran out of steam.

[DaveSumm]

Perhaps they should have made Coulson's team a 'Section 31' esque covert ops team within SHIELD from the start, then the secrecy is built into it. So covert that it evaded Hydra's notice and so Fury deemed it fit to continue, unlike the rest of SHIELD. 

I can accept it's tricky to make these things work, what with movies being planned years in advance and AoS scripts working on an annual basis I assume, but it'd be nice if they even tried to look like they were trying. I don't recall any counter-statement to Whedon's fever dream one, even a half arsed corporate 'we still absolutely believe in the show...' blah blah.