MCU: a very special Hawkeye Christmas…

[polishgenius]

The TV shows understand this better, probably because massive CGI was never really on the budget- the finale of Loki is a half-hour monologue and Hawkeye sticks to simpler action scenes and most of the best stuff is dialogue between the leads and also Florence Pugh. 


The way I'd glibly summarise it is that Marvel have a formula that prevents them from ever making the Hobbit but it also makes it very hard for them to ever make Lord of the Rings (insert the Prequels/OT Star Wars here if that's more your jam). 

[Heartofice]

That is true. At the very least it’s a mechanism to prevent them every having a total disaster of a movie. That’s always a possibility when handing the keys to a newbie director. They might have seen how the Fantastic 4 and Amazing Spider-Man movies, amongst others, fell on their ass cos they didn’t have a process. 
 

It just leads to a lot of meh.

[john]

The Fast and the Furious franchise have been improving their craft in their chosen direction as well. Most action films in general are better than they used to be, which is great when you like this direction.

Marvel though doesn’t choose a direction, they have the formula and then they spread it all around these different types of films. That also means they have more success and from that in theory they have at least the incentive to try and make something really interesting one day. I’d like to think they could at least match Lord of the Rings sometime though, it’s good but it’s not that good.

[Kalbear]

The best part about Shang Chi was the thread from a SF bus driver about the bus scene. 

[Rhom]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Civil war also didn’t end on one big CGI battle but a more personal fight.

It shows you don’t need big flashy cgi moments to be good . The best moments in almost all Marvel moments are the smaller ones 

This is where I felt Shang-Chi failed.  They were headed towards a personal confrontation between father and son.  And in the end they swerved to Godzilla vs Mothra.   

I think you could have kept 98% of the movie exactly same and had the climactic fight be that personal battle and I think it would have made the movie vastly better.

[sifth]

Just now, Rhom said:

This is where I felt Shang-Chi failed.  They were headed towards a personal confrontation between father and son.  And in the end they swerved to Godzilla vs Mothra.   

I think you could have kept 98% of the movie exactly same and had the climactic fight be that personal battle and I think it would have made the movie vastly better.

Also how the main villain dies doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The dragon is draining the life from him.................you know that thing The Mandarin has an unlimited amount of, so long as he has the rings on. I also never understood why Shang-Chi had to be the one to defeat his father, when his aunt was clearly a more experienced fighter who already knew the technique to remove the rings. I know, I know, I'm being the no fun police, but I can't turn off the logical part of my brain, when too many things in a movie don't make sense, ha ha ha

[Corvinus85]

3 minutes ago, sifth said:

Also how the main villain dies doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The dragon is draining the life from him.................you know that thing The Mandarin has an unlimited amount of, so long as he has the rings on. I also never understood why Shang-Chi had to be the one to defeat his father, when his aunt was clearly a more experienced fighter who already knew the technique to remove the rings. I know, I know, I'm being the no fun police, but I can't turn off the logical part of my brain, when too many things in a movie don't make sense, ha ha ha

I thought the monster was taking souls, not draining life. There is a distinction.

[sifth]

2 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I thought the monster was taking souls, not draining life. There is a distinction.

I thought it drained life, but it's been a while since I've seen the film. Like Black Widow, this was one of those MCU films, that I mentally couldn't wait to end, because too many things were hurting my head.

edit:

MCU: wiki says it was sucking his life force, so take that for what you will.

[Corvinus85]

7 minutes ago, sifth said:

I thought it drained life, but it's been a while since I've seen the film. Like Black Widow, this was one of those MCU films, that I mentally couldn't wait to end, because too many things were hurting my head.

edit:

MCU: wiki says it was sucking his life force, so take that for what you will.

Those creatures are called Soul Eaters and on the wiki I see references to souls being consumed. The papa Soul Eater is called the Dweller-in-Darkness. Ire-watched the movie on Disney+ when it was released and I recall them mentioning soul sucking.

[sifth]

5 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Those creatures are called Soul Eaters and on the wiki I see references to souls being consumed. The papa Soul Eater is called the Dweller-in-Darkness. Ire-watched the movie on Disney+ when it was released and I recall them mentioning soul sucking.

I mean the wiki says big M has his life force sucked from him, so that’s what I assumed was going on. I’m still calling BS though since those rings were suppose to make the wearer immortal. They should have had the dragon kill him, after he lost the rings.

[DMC]

5 hours ago, mormont said:

Not sure why people grumble about it in Marvel's case, but there we go.

 

Well, the sheer volume/rate is an obvious difference.  There's been, what, 27 MCU films over 13 years?  That's a lot of watching the same template.

[Heartofice]

Just started watching Eternals on Disney + and it has all the flaws we talked about above, but it's worse because it so far has none of the spark that even Shang Chi had. Its just utterly meh and grey. 

[SpaceChampion]

Shang Chi had a similar structure to the first Thor movie.  Shang Chi did it better.  Both are archetypally female "Maiden Arcs" where the protagonist has to individuate their ego from their Authority figure, while avoiding a soul-sucking fate as represented by a Predator.

In Thor, Odin is the Authority disappointed with Thor's immaturity and questioning his worthiness for the throne.  The automaton Destroyer is literally  a soulless Predator sent by Loki to kill Thor.

In Shang Chi, the Mandarin is the Authority disappointed with Shang Chi's unwillingness to adopt his values.  The Dweller in the Darkness is literally a soul-sucking Predator that the Mandarin is trying to free.

They're not similar because of formula, they are because stories work only in certain ways.  I think the only other MCU movie that might have a Maiden arc is Captain Marvel.

Actually, I think Bucky's storyline in Winter Soldier is a Maiden Arc too.  It's just told from Steve Roger's point of view, who in all his films are flats arcs influencing other characters on their journeys.  Steve's arc is a Parent arc.

 

Eternals is a Mage Arc structure.  There isn't any other MCU movie with that yet, but I expect Multiverse of Madness to be one.  The best comparison would be Doctor Who, the only Mage arc series in popular culture.

Loki is probably a Mage Arc.

Mage Arcs focus on an Evil Influence that represents a weakness in everyone, or in the system that influences everyone, and that leads to the Mage to a Death Choice.  In Eternals it's the choice whether to prevent a cosmic being from hatching or allow the Earth to be destroyed.  The Mage's job is to thread the needle to save everyone, or if unable to do that, choose the least damaging / fewest casualties option.

 

 

[Werthead]

Eternals is interesting and it certainly feels like they were kind of going in a different direction to some of the other films. They clearly wanted to dial down the wit and snark. There's still some gags and #bants, but it's nothing like what you get in other MCU movies, and there's a more serious tone. There's also the idea of an internal struggle: establish the new team of characters and have one of the apparent heroes turn out to be the main real bad guy, so the personal stakes are higher because it's more about an internal family squabble. There is a global aspect to the threat, but despite the giant corpse that's now sticking out of the Indian Ocean (I kept waiting for it to disintegrate, but nope, that seems to be a permanent thing now), the real fight was just between the team-members.

So that all worked better apart from the big problem that the film couldn't introduce 10 characters at once, use lavish flashbacks to set them all up and have the big ending, even by making the film half an hour longer than the norm. Eternals feels like it should really have been Eternals 2, with an earlier film where all 10 work together to defeat some intermediate or lesser threat with more focus on developing each character, then in Eternals 2 we get the real story so the heel turn hurts harder.

Also, I'm guessing that they didn't kill their most powerful member and one of the more interesting characters? We don't see him burn up in the Sun and I'm assuming the Celestial might have just plucked him out of there at the last minute the same way he grabbed the others.

Nice post credits sequence though. 

Spoiler

Blade!

 

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Also, I'm guessing that they didn't kill their most powerful member and one of the more interesting characters? We don't see him burn up in the Sun and I'm assuming the Celestial might have just plucked him out of there at the last minute the same way he grabbed the others.

The way they established the forge and the bank of memories somewhere seemed like setup for the sequel. I assume they can all just be rebuilt and download their memories. 

I thought the movie was fine. Though yeah, long I wouldn't have wanted to see it in a theater. There was one joke I thought was really lame but I've already forgotten what it was. 

Oh and to nitpick I didn't get the Thor/Odin stuff? Otherwise it seems like they were restricted to earth, but Phastos fought on the ice giant's planet? They can't get involved in human conflicts but can get involved in alien ones? 

[sifth]

I actually didn't hate Eternals which shocked me, considering I really didn't like Black Widow and Shang Chi. That being said, Eternals would have worked much, much better as a tv show, there just wasn't enough time to establish all the characters, make us care about them. There's also some logic questions that hurt my brain to think about; like if all of the Eternals are created to be super beings to fight Deviants, why were some created with physical disabilities? I also don't understand anything about the Deviant villain, the character seems to only exist, so the heroes would have something to punch until the big twist. Speaking of the twist, it sort of reminded me of Hans from Frozen; where they just randomly chose to make a nice person a villain because "plot twist". All that being said, I actually rather liked this movie and it's in large part because of the plot twist, even though I don't like how the movie pulled it off, it still gave us a conflict which was good vs good, which is something that I always find more interesting over good vs evil. I just wish we got to know these characters a little better.

[polishgenius]

I forgot I was gonna watch Eternals today coz I was busy raving about Joe Calzaghe. Oh well.

The first twenty minutes that I did get through didn't grip me, nice ideas but awkward on-the-nose writing, but I'll keep it up tomorrow, see how I go. Even though I already do know most of what happens. 

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, sifth said:

I actually didn't hate Eternals which shocked me, considering I really didn't like Black Widow and Shang Chi. That being said, Eternals would have worked much, much better as a tv show, there just wasn't enough time to establish all the characters, make us care about them. There's also some logic questions that hurt my brain to think about; like if all of the Eternals are created to be super beings to fight Deviants, why were some created with physical disabilities? I also don't understand anything about the Deviant villain, the character seems to only exist, so the heroes would have something to punch until the big twist. Speaking of the twist, it sort of reminded me of Hans from Frozen; where they just randomly chose to make a nice person a villain because "plot twist". All that being said, I actually rather liked this movie and it's in large part because of the plot twist, even though I don't like how the movie pulled it off, it still gave us a conflict which was good vs good, which is something that I always find more interesting over good vs evil. I just wish we got to know these characters a little better.

I thought his motives were good enough to make him into the villain without it being out of the blue, as some of his characteristics were somewhat shown throughout the movie. Similar to the character who ends being the main hero, though we're more told than shown about her motivations.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

Oh and to nitpick I didn't get the Thor/Odin stuff? Otherwise it seems like they were restricted to earth, but Phastos fought on the ice giant's planet? They can't get involved in human conflicts but can get involved in alien ones? 

No, they were referencing fighting in the same battle we saw on Earth at the start of Thor 1 (and where the Asgardian colony was built in Endgame).

I'm assuming because the Eternals knew and, from the sounds of it, were tight with the Asgardians they might have been able to go off-world briefly, but I suspect that was a violation of their orders to stay on Earth and kill the Deviants.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Just finished Eternals.  It has some slow parts but as Wert pointed out it was a very personal story given the scale and scope of the threat.  I have to wonder where in the timeline of the films and TV shows this falls.  
 

Spoiler

The dead Tiamat in the Indian Ocean and Arshim’s appearance near Earth are events everyone everywhere should be taking about.  Therefore the “present day” has to be set after the ends of all the TV Shows, Shang-Chi, and No Way Home.  

Right?