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MCUniverse: Cat Scratch Fever edition.


Red Tiger

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I'm rewatching all the films in preparation for Endgame. Only 3 films in, so my takeaway is that The Incredible Hulk is weak-arse, and should have been ejected from continuity (like, what's even the point of keeping John Hurt around?), Iron Man is a very thin story saved by Downey Jr. and Iron Man 2 is a very weird soap opera that would have worked better if they'd dumped the villains (who are barely in it anyway) and just had 2 hours of Tony and Pepper and War Machine and Nick Fury and Natasha just talking and having some relationship drama, because that was way more fun.

My main takeaway three films in is that I'd forgotten how much scepticism there was that the MCU was going to work, and that really wasn't laid to rest until The Avengers came out.

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3 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

The latest ship in the MCU is apparently Captain Marvel and Valkyrie, with both actresses fanning the flames.

totally on board here :leaving:

I saw that yesterday. I watched a video with my son a while back that argued in any long running series every character should be bi. That way you can take the romances in whatever direction you find unfolding as you tell the story and bring in new characters, and of course have some awareness and ability to respond to the fan ships as well.

At first I felt like making every character bi was kind of a cop out, since it doesn't reflect reality where there are straight, gay and bi people. But from a practicality perspective it kind of makes sense. Though a similar tac would be to have a character's sexual orientation be completely unknown until you take their story in a romantic direction. Captain Marvel (in the movie) is an example of a character who's sexual orientation is completely unstated and unknown. While there is a good argument to say there is romantic coding for Carol and Maria's relationship, if platonic bromances can be a thing then surely sismances can also be a thing, so technically it doesn't mean shes gay. All we really know from the movie as it appears on screen is that she's not not gay. Or to grossly misuse a scientific analogy, she's in a Schrodinger's cat situation.

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3 hours ago, Werthead said:

I'm rewatching all the films in preparation for Endgame. Only 3 films in, so my takeaway is that The Incredible Hulk is weak-arse, and should have been ejected from continuity (like, what's even the point of keeping John Hurt around?), Iron Man is a very thin story saved by Downey Jr. and Iron Man 2 is a very weird soap opera that would have worked better if they'd dumped the villains (who are barely in it anyway) and just had 2 hours of Tony and Pepper and War Machine and Nick Fury and Natasha just talking and having some relationship drama, because that was way more fun.

My main takeaway three films in is that I'd forgotten how much scepticism there was that the MCU was going to work, and that really wasn't laid to rest until The Avengers came out.

My wife and I are doing a same, there is a noticeable jump in quality when we hit Winter Soldier.

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I’m rewatching some of the films, not all of them.  I still think Iron Man is really good, despite its small scope and relatively small budget.  The improvised dialogue is genius, whoever came up with that idea really made the movie.  It does have some weird beats that are fully comedic, like set up punchline, which I don’t think the rest of the films have. The plot makes very little sense (why is Obadiah Stane so evil for no real, practical reason?), this is something you see a lot in MCU.

Agreed that the Winter Soldier is a big step up in quality.  It’s the same screenwriters as the previous Cap film, so the Russos must have a lot to do with it.  It’s the most interesting movie thematically, it’s got a different structure with more action scenes (and the action scenes are done very well), it’s got big dramatic events that trigger lasting change.  It’s also got an even more nonsensical plot than any previous film (although they do manage to mask that successfully while you’re actually watching).  I mean, alien macguffin leads to alien invasion. Fine.  But here you’ve got an algorithm that predicts the future, a plan to apparently snipe all targets in an area, then fly to a different area, with no repercussions expected? (despite the fact it shows you the helicarriers are vulnerable to ordinary fighter jets) And a Star Wars style swap out one component from undefended central area of ship to completely scupper plan.

Some other general things I’ve noticed so far -

- Stark should get his company to stop putting his name on all their munitions, it would really save him a lot of bother, particularly in Iron Man and also in Avengers 2 where the child Maximoffs have to lie in the rubble of their collapsed home staring at an unexploded bomb with Stark written on the side.  Understandably they don’t warm to him for a while.

- Joss Whedon is great at dialogue, bad at plotting. How can I get Captain America and Iron Man to work together? I know, i’ll have one of ‘em push a big propeller round while the other one has to pull a lever to help him out.

- I don’t really mind the much derided Banner/Romanov romance.  It’s badly done but, apart from the almost 20 year age difference (which is probably supposed to be more like 10 for the characters) it sort of makes sense.

- Steve Rodgers is supposed to be a kid when he takes the serum, does it also age him 10 years?  He lives for two years of war and is then frozen, he should be like 23.  They make a lot out of him being an innocent in the first movie but he’s a lot more suave and sophisticated by the Winter Soldier, he must have got a lot of life experience in those 2 years.

- liked the fact it showed you Bucky as a sniper on overwatch during the first film, nice set up.

- I’ve seen this theory before but when he sees Peggy in Winter Soldier she’s talking about how he saved her husband. With the likely time travel shenanigans of Endgame, seems like she could well be talking about Steve himself. Or is her husband confirmed to be someone else?

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31 minutes ago, john said:

I’m rewatching some of the films, not all of them.  I still think Iron Man is really good, despite its small scope and relatively small budget.  The improvised dialogue is genius, whoever came up with that idea really made the movie.  It does have some weird beats that are fully comedic, like set up punchline, which I don’t think the rest of the films have. The plot makes very little sense (why is Obadiah Stane so evil for no real, practical reason?), this is something you see a lot in MCU.

Agreed that the Winter Soldier is a big step up in quality.  It’s the same screenwriters as the previous Cap film, so the Russos must have a lot to do with it.  It’s the most interesting movie thematically, it’s got a different structure with more action scenes (and the action scenes are done very well), it’s got big dramatic events that trigger lasting change.  It’s also got an even more nonsensical plot than any previous film (although they do manage to mask that successfully while you’re actually watching).  I mean, alien macguffin leads to alien invasion. Fine.  But here you’ve got an algorithm that predicts the future, a plan to apparently snipe all targets in an area, then fly to a different area, with no repercussions expected? (despite the fact it shows you the helicarriers are vulnerable to ordinary fighter jets) And a Star Wars style swap out one component from undefended central area of ship to completely scupper plan.

Some other general things I’ve noticed so far -

- Stark should get his company to stop putting his name on all their munitions, it would really save him a lot of bother, particularly in Iron Man and also in Avengers 2 where the child Maximoffs have to lie in the rubble of their collapsed home staring at an unexploded bomb with Stark written on the side.  Understandably they don’t warm to him for a while.

- Joss Whedon is great at dialogue, bad at plotting. How can I get Captain America and Iron Man to work together? I know, i’ll have one of ‘em push a big propeller round while the other one has to pull a lever to help him out.

- I don’t really mind the much derided Banner/Romanov romance.  It’s badly done but, apart from the almost 20 year age difference (which is probably supposed to be more like 10 for the characters) it sort of makes sense.

- Steve Rodgers is supposed to be a kid when he takes the serum, does it also age him 10 years?  He lives for two years of war and is then frozen, he should be like 23.  They make a lot out of him being an innocent in the first movie but he’s a lot more suave and sophisticated by the Winter Soldier, he must have got a lot of life experience in those 2 years.

- liked the fact it showed you Bucky as a sniper on overwatch during the first film, nice set up.

- I’ve seen this theory before but when he sees Peggy in Winter Soldier she’s talking about how he saved her husband. With the likely time travel shenanigans of Endgame, seems like she could well be talking about Steve himself. Or is her husband confirmed to be someone else?

I, too, am doing a re-watch of some of the movies, and I watched Winter Soldier last week. For some of your questions:

- Hydra's plot was to kill people that could cause them trouble, mainly that could stop the chaos they were hoping to unleash. No doubt there would have been consequences for the use of the helicarriers, but those consequences would have fallen on SHIELD, while Hydra would have remained hidden. Pierce says the world is at a tipping point, and all it needs is a push. So they start WW3, assassinate all the individuals that could restore order, and then rebuild the world. I grant you, the use of the helicarriers is just weird. Snipe people from 3000 ft with guns, instead of missiles, or actual have satellite platforms that could hit more people over a greater area. I have a feeling the writers had just finished watching Battlestar Galactica, and decided to go with something like that, but airships.

- Regarding Peggy's husband, I doubt it's Steve, though, as she talks about the time when Steve said a bunch of POWs from Hydra, and one of them later became her husband. It could be he was one of the other Howling Commandos. Of course, she could just be lying. Sharon Carter said Peggy kept a lot of secrets.

I've re-watched Civil War, and that one continues to improve in my eyes, too. I find Zemo's plot, despite some lucky breaks in it, to be quite well done. After all, Zemo was doing everything by himself, he didn't have a team, or the backup of a secret organization, or a government. No superpowers either, just his intellect and training.

 

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12 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I saw that yesterday. I watched a video with my son a while back that argued in any long running series every character should be bi. That way you can take the romances in whatever direction you find unfolding as you tell the story and bring in new characters, and of course have some awareness and ability to respond to the fan ships as well.

At first I felt like making every character bi was kind of a cop out, since it doesn't reflect reality where there are straight, gay and bi people. But from a practicality perspective it kind of makes sense. Though a similar tac would be to have a character's sexual orientation be completely unknown until you take their story in a romantic direction. Captain Marvel (in the movie) is an example of a character who's sexual orientation is completely unstated and unknown. While there is a good argument to say there is romantic coding for Carol and Maria's relationship, if platonic bromances can be a thing then surely sismances can also be a thing, so technically it doesn't mean shes gay. All we really know from the movie as it appears on screen is that she's not not gay. Or to grossly misuse a scientific analogy, she's in a Schrodinger's cat situation.

I would ship Carol and Valkyrie so bad. That said, while I wouldn't care if Carol was revealed to be some form of queer in the MCU, I do find it a little comedic that the time we get a movie which doesn't feature a male love interest for the female protag, the immediate takeaway is that the female protag must be gay. I think one of the things about Captain Marvel that truly made it a feminist film is the fact that it centered on a female friendship.

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In the Endgame trailer, the moment between Thor and Carol made some people ship them together. In Thor Ragnarok, there's some hints at a possible Thor-Valkyire hook up, so now people are shipping Carol and Valkyrie. hmm, maybe a love triangle? :leer:

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26 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

In the Endgame trailer, the moment between Thor and Carol made some people ship them together. In Thor Ragnarok, there's some hints at a possible Thor-Valkyire hook up, so now people are shipping Carol and Valkyrie. hmm, maybe a love triangle? :leer:

Obligatory

 

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If they make Thor get with Valkyrie I'll be very disappointed, but then I never read their relationship as flirty in that way anyway, and am fairly sure that she was meant to have been together with the woman who got killed saving her in her backstory (I think Thompson confirmed this afterwards, but not sure)?

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Thor should be caught watching hammer porn and then look sheepishly over at his axe and then start in with the guilty excuses.  "Well you can't do as much with an axe.  A hammer can hammer anything!  I'm sorry, okay?"  (Sobs.)

 

Carol should date weird aliens who have innate vibratory skills.   She should be like, I know women want me but come on, women don't even have tentacles.    This means there's potentially more to her relationship with Goose than they let on.

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I think Thor should get back with Jane Foster, call me old fashioned.  What’s up with Lady Sif anyway? Is she dead or snapped or what?

14 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

Carol should date weird aliens who have innate vibratory skills.   She should be like, I know women want me but come on, women don't even have tentacles.    This means there's pote tially more to her relationship with Goose than they let on.

He’s an alien but still a non sentient creature.  Bestiality’s a bit far even in the name of diversity.

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So Disney isn't ready for beastiality is what you're saying.   No shot of Stark being led off in handcuffs shouting, "I thought it was Sarah Jessica Parker!"    

Something else Disney isn't ready for but should totally happen:  bring Rosanne in to play The Living Tribunal.    

 

Sif was dead as of Ragnarok.  They should deal with that trilogy's ongoing issue , though, of love between immortals,  bringing Sif back in the process.  Do her feelings go unrequited forever?  How do gods cope with that?   Is there emotional growth from ones like her and Thor , or eternal fixedness without resolution.   Maybe put Jane Foster in the mix and have her be the catalyst for change between Sif and Thor, because Jane's lifetime is short so she'd want the Asgardians to figure it out so the Sif thing isn't looming over her relationship forever.  the two women talk it out like they've been avoiding/dreading, only to discover they empathize with each other....

How to bring Sif back?  I'd like to see a Thor / Enchantress storyline where she puts Thor under her spell to rule unopposed.   Infused with fake love, Thor resists by holding on to the real love memories he has of Jane, and remembers how Sif's genuine love made her act differently than the Enchantress' manipulative selfish actions., ...... until Enchantress detects how Thor is holding out on her and manifests as Jane and Sif to play upon Thor's mind and manipulate him to fall back into line feeling betrayed and depressed by his prior loves.   

Then, when later defeating Enchantress, the illusion magic shorts out and the real ladies are now left standing there alive again.   Sif sacrifices herself to finally break the Enchantress' hold by displaying real love.   Her soul is returning to some soul collector magic object/machine/vortex but Jane stops that process, because she is in a death trap too and can't fight her way out because she's not a fierce warrior like.... Sif..... so she invites/draws in the essence of Sif to lionize herself and save her and Thor both.   (Play the Lady Thor card here with Jane.)  The ladies' hybrid persona is then how the love triangle "happily" ends without being a physical 3 way, which Disney again isn't ready for.

Then Rosanne clangs her staff down and cackles wildly and the echoes carry down from her throne overlooking the cosmos.

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