Marvel: The Echo of Profitability

[sifth]

So I finally saw The Marvels. I have to admit, I didn't hate it, but dam was that film a mess. Everything from editing, to pacing, to CGI. I also found the villain to be the only sympathetic character in the film. Carol literally starts a civil war that nearly destroys a planet, and does nothing about it until the villain of the film guilt trips her into doing it; this person is suppose to be a hero, lol

Also the reshoots in this film I could spot a mile away; looking at you Valkyrie, looking at you singing world. Some pretty bad music as well, especially during the opening fight scene. 

All that aside, I didn't find this film boring or insulting, like I did the first one, so that's a plus. Also Carol actually came off as more likeable, so that too is a plus. Truth be told, Monica and Kamala were the far more interesting characters for me, simply because they seemed to have more humanity in them.

[Rhom]

Watched all five Echo episodes yesterday.  I enjoyed them well enough.  I liked that they didn't feel like they were needing to set up anything else, but there was still enough connectivity that you knew it was part of a bigger world.  Not sure I understood why they went with a James Bond style opening credit sequence, but I enjoyed it for what it was.

Not sure where I would rank it on the tiers of D+ shows, but it definitely didn't feel overbloated and unnecessary.

[Heartofice]

Despite my own misgivings I watched the first couple of episodes of Echo. I don’t think I will bother continuing. It was fine, in a way a lot of Marvel stuff is never any better than fine. 
 

The leaked fight between Echo and Daredevil wasn’t quite so bad when viewed in full, but it does feel like everything is just a rehearsal and a performance, rather than a fight. 
 

Having not watched much of Hawkeye that first episode just felt really choppy and made little sense at times. It was almost just a montage of stuff that happened. 
 

So overall, not terrible but just a big old ‘whatever’. It’s not doing much that’s new or interesting, it’s mainly just filling space on Disney+

[hauberk]

Wrapped up Echo tonight. I quite enjoyed it. Agree with preceding comments that some elements and characters clearly suffered from the way it was cut down but liked it enough to to call it an overall success. 

[SpaceChampion]

 

[Rhom]

Saw today that The Marvels is coming to Disney+ on Feb 7.

So I guess I'll take time to watch it sometime this week.

[Rhom]

Watched it.  It was fine.  Pretty fun in places.  Very light hearted.  Felt almost like the "chick flick" version of a super hero movie.  

I think it just missed the mark in its target and expectations.  It should never have been expected to be an Avengers level "event."  The fact that it released in and around the strike preventing a full promo tour certainly did no favors.  In some ways, feels like Disney Plus was the exact place for it.  It works more as a follow up to Ms Marvel than it does to Captain Marvel in a lot of ways.

All that said, its a perfectly enjoyable small screen adventure.  There are some features of it that I think the MCU can certainly take and move forward with.  The mini-team concept can definitely help them tie together some of these loose threads that are dangling everywhere with no resolution in sight.  The shorter run time was a positive for me as well.

Lastly I completely misunderstood the context of the post credits scene.  So while I had been spoiled and knew what actor made his surprise appearance, I was surprised by who else was involved.

Edited February 8 by Rhom

[Werthead]

Yeah, it was fine. It may have even been elevated to "solid fun" but was let down by a lack of exploration of the main villain (Zawe Ashton is a very good actress but was kind of anonymous in this) and a total tonal mishmash within itself and also with other MCU projects: wasn't this supposed to come just after Secret Invasion with ultra mega-depressed Nick Fury, who is now cuddling kittens?

But yeah, it was okay, especially given the aggressively meh quality of level of Phase 4/5 so far.

[DaveSumm]

On 2/8/2024 at 10:00 PM, Werthead said:

wasn't this supposed to come just after Secret Invasion with ultra mega-depressed Nick Fury, who is now cuddling kittens?

Secret Invasion managed to not only be bad, and also boring, but actually made me more confused about the movie it was supposed to be teeing up. The fact that a bunch of Skrulls have a ton of ships, and have managed to successfully move to another planet (until the bad guy shows up anyway)… what the hell were the Earth ones doing? Sitting around waiting for Fury (human, has not travelled to other planets, limited access to interstellar craft) to rehouse some Skrulls (aliens, travelled to tons of planets with their ships) already didn’t make sense, and then The Marvels just rubs our nose in it by showing us Skrulls who have? OK I’m sure there’s different factions and what not, but they still didn’t explain why either of these factions are in the predicament they were in. I mean … it’s space! It’s big! 

6/10 overall, yea it was quite fun but it needed another 10-15 minutes to explain things a little better. We didn’t really get a great feel for Bad Guy’s motivations, or what the bangles are about or what they are, why the ending had to be done the way it did (this kind of took me out of it because the answer here is just “so we could do that credit scene”). Also…

Spoiler

I never thought I could be underwhelmed by an X-Men post credit scene. The CG on Beast looked quite bad, and we’ve been dining out on multiverses and timelines and dimensions so much recently that ‘another reality’ just … doesn’t really mean much. The multiverse has diluted everything sadly, it means less when there’s a million other universes to choose from.

 

[mormont]

On 2/8/2024 at 10:00 PM, Werthead said:

Yeah, it was fine. It may have even been elevated to "solid fun" but was let down by a lack of exploration of the main villain (Zawe Ashton is a very good actress but was kind of anonymous in this) and a total tonal mishmash within itself and also with other MCU projects: wasn't this supposed to come just after Secret Invasion with ultra mega-depressed Nick Fury, who is now cuddling kittens?

But yeah, it was okay, especially given the aggressively meh quality of level of Phase 4/5 so far.

I think we have all agreed to pretend Secret Invasion never happened. It's a safe bet that it's significantly less likely to be referenced ever again than The Marvels is.

(On top of that, again, have we not read the source material? On a month by month basis, these characters appear in tonally variable stories which only reference events in their solo series when the editor remembers it exists...)

Anyway, I rewatched The Marvels this weekend and the edits and reshoots do weigh it down. Forget your Snyder cut, I want to see the original cut of this movie. But it's still pretty good. Zenobia Shroff (Kamala's mum) is so important to that. Kamala's whole family are, but Muneeba is the key here, along with Iman Vellani as Kamala, of course.

[sifth]

I mean has The Eternals been mentioned once since its release? Have they mentioned the giant hand sticking out of the planet in any movie or show?

[williamjm]

This looks fun. Is this a new title for it?

27 minutes ago, sifth said:

I mean has The Eternals been mentioned once since its release? Have they mentioned the giant hand sticking out of the planet in any movie or show?

I think it was mentioned briefly in She-Hulk.

 

[Corvinus85]

Nice trailer. I like that they're using the TVA to bring DP and the X-Men into the MCU.

[sifth]

I think my biggest issue with The Marvels is Fury seems like a different person, than the guy we saw in Secret Invasion.

He actually seems happy, his wife doesn’t appear to exist and Earth is somehow a safe place for Skrulls. 

So is this proof that they are making too many things, too quickly and not sharing notes?

Edited February 12 by sifth

[SpaceChampion]

4 hours ago, sifth said:

I mean has The Eternals been mentioned once since its release? Have they mentioned the giant hand sticking out of the planet in any movie or show?

I don't know where it started, rumours or pure speculation, but seen lots of people saying Adamantium is made from dead Celestials, and Tiamut's corpse will be fought for at some point in Captain America: Brave New World.   That probably would lead right to Armour Wars, if factions are making Iron Men suits from Adamantium.

Saw a New Rockstars video theorizing that Sentry is in BNW to be the original source of the super soldier serum, and he won't have his powers.  In the comics apparently he's an amnesiac and unaware of his origins.  Making his blood or whatever the secret ingredient for the super soldier formulas seems like a good bet to me.

[SpaceChampion]

3 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

Nice trailer. I like that they're using the TVA to bring DP and the X-Men into the MCU.

The music at the end reminded me of the score of Loki.  Not the same composer though.

[Heartofice]

Pleasantly surprised by the Deadpool trailer, it doesn't seem to have lost it's edge moving over to Disney, which I was scared would happen. Deadpool 2 was pretty forgettable for me and possibly the Ryan Reynolds schtick is getting a bit old now, but I'm still interested to see what they do with this movie.

Them using the TVA is a point of interest, will they use this movie to try and tie up Multiverse loose ends, or just use it as a punchline? 

[SpaceChampion]

 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Told you guys this movie will come make tons of money and people will promptly stop complaining about the death of marvel 

[polishgenius]

You can't 'told you so' about something before it happens, but also Guardians 3 made loads of money and people still talked about the death of Marvel.