MCUniverse - Nick hath no Fury like an MRA troll

[Maithanet]

4 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Infinity war stuck the landing, IMO. I think that Spider-Verse did too. Arguably Civil War did as well (especially since the big battle was NOT the end of the movie). I also thought the first Avengers ending was kind of garbage, but to each their own.  

I think what Infinity War does well and what almost none of the others did is end up with consequences and danger. The end result is always 'end of the world', and naturally we think that they will win and survive for sequels, so it's not about worrying about the risk to the people, it's simply a by-the-numbers on how they will stop the Bad Thing. 

IW made it different by, well, failing. Spider-Verse did it by having the ending be more about the personal growth of the characters, not the wham-bang of the finale. (BP almost did this, and if they had focused more on opening up Wakanda instead of the fight, I think they could have made it better). Essentially every superhero movie has prequel syndrome, where you know that the characters aren't going to die, the world isn't going to blow up, and things are going back to status quo, so there's nothing to worry about. Wonder Woman obviously has this in spades, as it was literally a prequel. 

I thought about including IW as a success, as I did like that ending.  But IW seems like it's almost in a category of it's own.  All the MCU borrows pieces from other films, but IW did it to such a preposterous degree that it was able to do some things that other movies weren't doing.  THe movie had too much CGI action, but that was actually a problem with the beginning and middle, whereas the setpiece at the end made more sense and had some interesting things going on. 

I haven't seen Spiderverse, and I wouldn't agree on Civil War sticking the landing.

I'm not sure I agree that the problem is that the heroes have to win.  I think you can establish the stakes and effectively make a climax even if you know that the world isn't in fact going to be destroyed.  Plenty of sci-fi movies do this, for example.  But there is always a temptation for comic book movies to just keep biggering and biggering and eventually the climax is just a huge CGI mess.  That's definitely what derailed BP and WW. 

[WarGalley]

47 minutes ago, DMC said:

You're obviously meant The Shadow.

Goodness. That plot summary is quite the read. I miss the 90s 

[polishgenius]

Yeah, I do feel like the reason a lot of superhero movies are let-downs come the end is that it's difficult to balance character and story with a really big action scene- not impossible, but really hard. Combine that with the fact that the actual direction of action scenes (CGI or otherwise) isn't at an especially high level in most blockbusters and it's a recipe for trouble. Even the Russos wobbled with Winter Soldier despite being really good at both those things (though Winter Soldier did it better than most anyway, there the main problem was really that the ending just felt incongruous with the spy-thrillerish tone of the rest of the film).

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

Because I feel like I would definitely say that about Winter Soldier, Dark Knight, Black Panther, Wonder Woman, Akira, GotG, etc.  Now, those are all still good movies, but they could have been something great, and they all couldn't quite stick the landing.  Considering the upper tier of comic book movies, the only ones that really delivered would be the first Avengers. 

I disagree with this on Dark Knight.  And GotG.  TDK's end was double-tiered and both made perfect sense and were foreshadowed.  In GotG's case, there was a clear MacGuffin, and the climax was a fight over the MacGuffin that the heroes won in a very entertaining way.  Don't see how that's not sticking the landing considering what they set out to do.

55 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Arguably Civil War did as well (especially since the big battle was NOT the end of the movie).

Yes.  Civil War promised Iron Man vs. Cap.  That's what we got.

[Kalbear]

46 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I thought about including IW as a success, as I did like that ending.  But IW seems like it's almost in a category of it's own.  All the MCU borrows pieces from other films, but IW did it to such a preposterous degree that it was able to do some things that other movies weren't doing.  THe movie had too much CGI action, but that was actually a problem with the beginning and middle, whereas the setpiece at the end made more sense and had some interesting things going on. 

It also started off with a massive escalation and kept going on that vein. One of the reasons it worked is that it established early that Bad Shit Could Happen, with Thanos kicking the Hulk's ass and then killing Loki. And then it kept going further and further. Will this stuff be resolved? Sure - but within the actual movie, the stakes were super high. 

46 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I'm not sure I agree that the problem is that the heroes have to win.  I think you can establish the stakes and effectively make a climax even if you know that the world isn't in fact going to be destroyed.  Plenty of sci-fi movies do this, for example.  But there is always a temptation for comic book movies to just keep biggering and biggering and eventually the climax is just a huge CGI mess.  That's definitely what derailed BP and WW. 

It's not just that the heroes have to win - it's that the heroes also largely have to remain unchanged. Again, this is a major reason Ragnarok works - we get deaths galore, we get massive change and massive stakes, and we get the heroes triumphing, but at great personal cost. At the end of that not only do you get a natural ending based on the movie, you get a movie that felt like it had weight and personal cost. 

And most of the Marvel movies don't. Most of the DC movies don't, either, for that matter. 

In addition to that, you have villains with little personal connection to the heroes, which matters. Thanos established this well. Hel did too. Robert Redford though? Not so much. Ares? Who the fuck cares about Ares? WW certainly doesn't, to the point that she doesn't even know who he is. I think this is one of the less rated things about IW - that Thanos, a guy who randomly was a cameo, all of a sudden got his own movie, and you cared about beating him and the other characters did too, and you felt it. He wasn't just a random superpowered goober - they gave him a good motivation, more speaking lines than basically anyone, and something of an arc of his own. 

Honestly, I think that if the final fight scene with T'Challa and Killmonger had been without powers - much like his coronation fight - and they ended it that way, it would have stuck the ending. These are people who had every reason to hate each other, and that first fight showed Killmonger's hate - what we needed to see more of was T'Challa's hate and anger and vengeance. We needed him to avenge his friend's death, his father's death, his uncle's death. It needed to be more personal of a fight. Instead of that we got a CGI cutscene that took all of that out. Give that fight to the Russos and frame it like they did Cap and Iron Man, and you stick the landing without changing a whole lot else. 

[polishgenius]

Tbh I think Black Panther's ending was fine- it didn't shine like some of the rest of the movie did but it was perfectly okay. My main issue with it was that it fell into that trap of multi-stranded action endings that it didn't really know how to cut between the strands properly and you just got a bunch of disconnected beat-em-'ups.

WW's ending was weird because it did in fact have a lot of the stuff we're talking about- high stakes, loss of major characters, WW failing miserably at some of what she was trying to do- but Ares being so bad both in connection to the plot and in cinematic presentation really killed it.

[The Mother of The Others]

[spoken in Al Sharpton voice:]

Be happier.  You guys.  You'll enjoy more things more often.   Lots of these movies being mentioned were great.   Ares was fine.   She just talked about him a bit much throughout the entire script... but the god's "performance" wasn't a mess.  It worked.  The battle with hydra's flying carriers did follow from the spy action and 'capped' the movie off quite nicely, the only reason it didn't "fit in" with the earlier spying format is because they'd stopped spying once all the cards were on the table.  Did we miss that?   .....Dark elves were perfectly acceptable ; Y'all just didn't accept them.  The stakes were perfectly high, and i didn't detect any betrayal of the mythic material.  Great score, too. 

Captain Marvel was fun, I'm happy. Again.   And I don't have to be super simple or daft to get that result so often.  I just keep my demands reasonable.   What is this imaginary movie it would take to please the unpleasable?   Just enjoy!   Break out of that pout, Gimli.   Films can only do so much, you have to do the smiling yourself.  Ain't no joker products here to paint that smile on for you.   Do it yourself!

[ steps down off of soap box, stoops lower , flips said box over, leans down to fart rather hard and vehemently into said box before turning it over again to trap and contain the majority of the stench for posterity.  ]

[The Anti-Targ]

$20 million for opening night (Thursday) which means on target for >$130million weekend. So far it looks like the trolls and the boycotters are having no effect.

[DaveSumm]

Not sure if I’ve ever put one of these together so I thought, why not now:

Captain America: Civil War

Avengers: Infinity War

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Spider-Man: Homecoming

The Avengers

Ant-Man

Thor: Ragnarok

Guardians of the Galaxy

Captain Marvel

Black Panther

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Captain America: The First Avenger

Iron Man

Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 2

Doctor Strange

Thor

Iron Man 3

Ant-Man and the Wasp

Iron Man 2

Thor: The Dark World

The Incredible Hulk

It’s so tough though, separating out how good the film is on its own merits vs how much I like the character or how important it is for the larger MCU. It feels a little harsh to IM2 and 3, considering they’ve got RDJ as Tony Stark which is clearly awesome. 

[Rhom]

You give IM3 a lot more credit than most as well.

[Heartofice]

Pretty much agree with that list.. Maybe Ragnarok could be higher but yeah. Makes you realise how many 'meh' movies Marvel have done.
 

On 3/9/2019 at 12:33 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

$20 million for opening night (Thursday) which means on target for >$130million weekend. So far it looks like the trolls and the boycotters are having no effect.

Have online trolls ever really had any serious effect on a movies box office?

[Jace, Extat]

7 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

.
 

Have online trolls ever really had any serious effect on a movies box office?

They've been carrying the DC movies for years.

[polishgenius]

3 hours ago, Rhom said:

You give IM3 a lot more credit than most as well.

Really? I know the people who hate it really hate it but I don't think the overall reception is bad.

It's the best Iron Man movie anyway so...

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, polishgenius said:

Really? I know the people who hate it really hate it but I don't think the overall reception is bad.

It's the best Iron Man movie anyway so...

When it came out a lot of people considered it to be quite brilliant, mainly due to it being pretty risky and who wrote it. I think it could have been a much better movie if they had just made it about something other than that Extremis rubbish and didn't just the silly fight at the end.

[The Anti-Targ]

I don't think I could rank all the MCU movies. But some I think need to be rated according to their time. Iron Man, for instance, I don't think should ever be outside anyone's top 10. Marvel Studios barely had an idea of a plan for an MCU and had not hit upon its winning formula. But Iron Man really launched the MCU and made everything we've got today possible. It deserves a top 10 place for its significance to the whole MCU venture, and it's a good movie in its own right. And RDJ was magnificent, and this movie brought him back to the fore as a star.

[Maithanet]

37 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I don't think I could rank all the MCU movies. But some I think need to be rated according to their time. Iron Man, for instance, I don't think should ever be outside anyone's top 10. Marvel Studios barely had an idea of a plan for an MCU and had not hit upon its winning formula. But Iron Man really launched the MCU and made everything we've got today possible. It deserves a top 10 place for its significance to the whole MCU venture, and it's a good movie in its own right. And RDJ was magnificent, and this movie brought him back to the fore as a star.

Agreed.  I'd rate them thusly:

The best of the MCU:  Avengers, Winter Soldier, Black Panther, GotG, Infinity War

Good entertainment:  Ant-Man, Ragnarok, Civil War, Iron Man

Average or forgettable efforts:  Captain America, GotG 2, Thor, Incredible Hulk

Flawed, boring, or poor films:  Avengers AoU, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3

Haven't bothered to see them:  everything else

[The Anti-Targ]

22 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Agreed.  I'd rate them thusly:

The best of the MCU:  Avengers, Winter Soldier, Black Panther, GotG, Age of Ultron

Good entertainment:  Ant-Man, Ragnarok, Civil War, Iron Man

Average or forgettable efforts:  Captain America, GotG 2, Thor, Incredible Hulk

Flawed, boring, or poor films:  Avengers AoU, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3

Haven't bothered to see them:  everything else

I think you have Age of Ultron twice. I assume the first mention was meant to be Infinity War?

[Maithanet]

2 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I think you have Age of Ultron twice. I assume the first mention was meant to be Infinity War?

That is correct.  I'll fix it. 

[Kalbear]

I wouldn't say GotG 2 was particularly forgettable - it was quite entertaining, had an awesome soundtrack, and even set up IW. 

Also, if you have a 4k TV it is amazeballs.

[DaveSumm]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I don't think I could rank all the MCU movies. But some I think need to be rated according to their time. Iron Man, for instance, I don't think should ever be outside anyone's top 10. Marvel Studios barely had an idea of a plan for an MCU and had not hit upon its winning formula. But Iron Man really launched the MCU and made everything we've got today possible. It deserves a top 10 place for its significance to the whole MCU venture, and it's a good movie in its own right. And RDJ was magnificent, and this movie brought him back to the fore as a star.

I just had the time and fancied attempting it, to be quite honest everything from 6 to 15 is as good as random, and I’m not actually sure Infinity War deserves to be so high as it doesn’t really function as a film in its own right. And I had no idea where to put Iron Man for the reasons you describe. Essentially, if you were banned from watching all but one ever again, which one do you pick? What about 2? That’s how I tried to answer it.