[Movies] MCU: Phase 5 - To Kang or Not to Kang

Frank

Frank

So officially people are calling the Letitia Wright thing bullshit and that filming will resume in January, but until that happens, I'm not holding my breath. She doesn't live in the US and in order to finish Black Panther she has to be vaccinated to re-enter. The last time she spoke about it she said it would be like injecting Satan into her veins. This sounds like the company assuring moneyhats that they'll be able to reign her in until the last minute.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
I'm not sure how to react to this poster for Thor: Love and Thunder



It is impressively 80s, but it's also kinda impressively bad.
 
Shawn

Shawn

As impressed as I was with the movie I must say I am very disappointed with the "brock-tease" aspect of the mid-credit scene. Continuing from the after-credit scene of Let There Be Carnage we find Eddie Brock in a bar in Mexico questioning how he got to the MCU universe. Then suddenly, as Dr. Strange's spell finishes during the events of the film, Eddie returns to his own universe. What on Earth was the point of that? And yes I'm aware that a small piece of venom is left behind which will likely kick-off a Black Suit Spider-man saga (hopefully), but why have that happen at all when it would have just been as easy (and less frustrating) to just introduce the symbiote into the MCU as a version that had always been there? You tease that the Sony-verse Eddie Brock/Venom is going to be in the MCU for several months and then just send him home without even being part of a major plot point, all so they can just leave behind a piece of the symbiote? What a waste. It feels like Sony was like "we're going to do this" and then Disney said "no you won't".
And let's also address that Eddie Brock shouldn't have been there in the first place as he doesn't fit the requirement of the spell that brought all the characters to the MCU: He has absolutely no idea who Peter Parker even is.
Rant done.
 
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ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Shawn said:
As impressed as I was with the movie I must say I am very disappointed with the "brock-tease" aspect of the mid-credit scene. Continuing from the after-credit scene of Let There Be Carnage we find Eddie Brock in a bar in Mexico questioning how he got to the MCU universe. Then suddenly, as Dr. Strange's spell finishes during the events of the film, Eddie returns to his own universe. What on Earth was the point of that? And yes I'm aware that a small piece of venom is left behind which will likely kick-off a Black Suit Spider-man saga (hopefully), but why have that happen at all when it would have just been as easy (and less frustrating) to just introduce the symbiote into the MCU as a version that had always been there? You tease that the Sony-verse Eddie Brock/Venom is going to be in the MCU for several months and then just send him home without even being part of a major plot point, all so they can just leave behind a piece of the symbiote? What a waste. It feels like Sony was like "we're going to do this" and then Disney said "no you won't".
And let's also address that Eddie Brock shouldn't have been there in the first place as he doesn't fit the requirement of the spell that brought all the characters to the MCU: He has absolutely no idea who Peter Parker even is.
Rant done.
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I just got back from seeing it. I'll do a full review in a bit, but wanted to touch on your rant. Spoiler ahoy!

Yeah, it really didn't make sense why Brock was there at all. MAYBE it could be explained that the symbiote has a hivemind-like connection with others in other universes, like the one in Raimi's films? At the end of Let There Be Carnage, the symbiote did say "That guy" as if he recognized Peter Parker.

Of course, that's never EXPLAINED, so it's all fan theory garbage.

I'm guessing it was a thing demanded by Sony executives, not Disney, so it could seem like Venom might play a bigger role in this movie. Let There Be Carnage was kind of a mess and I bet there was some executive meddling there, too. So maybe they did some meddling to make this happen, but didn't care about explaining it. Or maybe someone insisted Venom/Brock be included, but didn't actually know the rules of Dr. Strange's spell. But I'm leaning more on executives not caring. Or maybe miscommunication between Sony & Marvel. I get the feeling the Venom/Brock mid-credits stuff was done entirely by the Sony side, not Disney/Marvel.

Funny enough, it's funny that this movie is loosely (VERY loosely) based on the comic story, One More Day. Because at the end of it, Joe Quesada wanted to use it as an excuse to bring not only Harry Osborn back to life, but Gwen Stacey. He got Harry, but whoever else was involved wouldn't budge on Gwen. When asked how the spell that makes people forget Peter was Spider-Man would also bring back the dead, he said "It's magic. We don't have to explain it." I get the feeling some executive said something similar. [/quote]
 
ScytheRexx

ScytheRexx

ThatNickGuy said:
Funny enough, it's funny that this movie is loosely (VERY loosely) based on the comic story, One More Day. Because at the end of it, Joe Quesada wanted to use it as an excuse to bring not only Harry Osborn back to life, but Gwen Stacey. He got Harry, but whoever else was involved wouldn't budge on Gwen. When asked how the spell that makes people forget Peter was Spider-Man would also bring back the dead, he said "It's magic. We don't have to explain it." I get the feeling some executive said something similar. [/spoiler]
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Huh, I thought the spell was to prevent Aunt May from dying, and it did it by changing history by making it so Peter and Mary Jane never got married, thus altering the timeline with Aunt May not getting shot. Everyone forgetting he was Spider-Man was a side effect of this. So the entire intention of the spell was to bring someone back from the dead, it just did it through time alteration and not literal resurrection.
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

ScytheRexx said:
Huh, I thought the spell was to prevent Aunt May from dying, and it did it by changing history by making it so Peter and Mary Jane never got married, thus altering the timeline with Aunt May not getting shot. Everyone forgetting he was Spider-Man was a side effect of this. So the entire intention of the spell was to bring someone back from the dead, it just did it through time alteration and not literal resurrection.
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Oh shoot, you're right. I stand corrected. It was originally "Save Aunt May, but for the soul of your marriage" or something like that. Sorry, I'm so used to the biggest side effect being his identity being wiped that I wrapped it around with this. But even then, they had to explain why, if Peter & MJ never got married, why would that bring back Harry and/or Gwen? I don't know if it was ever explained in the comics, but I still remember the end point being "It's magic. We don't have to explain it" for various changes they wanted to make.

EDIT: Because remember, too, it also reset the fact that he had organic webshooters and other new powers. That was all whisked away without any real explanation.
 
Celt Z

Celt Z

I'm going to go with "Sony shoehorning in their Venom" because the only Venom that would have made sense would have been Topher Grace's. It was kinda lame on Sony's part.

Having said that,
my little Spidey-loving heart was so happy. Also heartbroken for Aunt May. People in my theater were audibly sobbing. I loved that when the Spidies were together, they played snippets of the original Spider-Man theme from the Raimi films. I'm also glad I spent the last week having Li'l Z watch the pre-MCU Spider-Mans. I could see it made the movie so much more exciting for him. Although he didn't get the Matt cameo, but I'm not letting him watch THOSE yet!
 
Shawn

Shawn

Celt Z said:
I'm going to go with "Sony shoehorning in their Venom" because the only Venom that would have made sense would have been Topher Grace's. It was kinda lame on Sony's part.

Having said that,
my little Spidey-loving heart was so happy. Also heartbroken for Aunt May. People in my theater were audibly sobbing. I loved that when the Spidies were together, they played snippets of the original Spider-Man theme from the Raimi films. I'm also glad I spent the last week having Li'l Z watch the pre-MCU Spider-Mans. I could see it made the movie so much more exciting for him. Although he didn't get the Matt cameo, but I'm not letting him watch THOSE yet!
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Aunt May dying, though even sadder than the death of even Tony Stark, was brilliantly orchestrated. We went two whole Spider-Man movies just assuming that Uncle Ben had died at some point before the events of Civil War. Now we know there was likely never an Uncle Ben and Aunt May is the "Power/Responsibility" death that drives him forward. Sad but damn wonderful story-wise. I really hope they continue this series with Tom Holland.
 
ScytheRexx

ScytheRexx

Shawn said:
What on Earth was the point of that? And yes I'm aware that a small piece of venom is left behind which will likely kick-off a Black Suit Spider-man saga (hopefully), but why have that happen at all when it would have just been as easy (and less frustrating) to just introduce the symbiote into the MCU as a version that had always been there? You tease that the Sony-verse Eddie Brock/Venom is going to be in the MCU for several months and then just send him home without even being part of a major plot point, all so they can just leave behind a piece of the symbiote? What a waste. It feels like Sony was like "we're going to do this" and then Disney said "no you won't".
And let's also address that Eddie Brock shouldn't have been there in the first place as he doesn't fit the requirement of the spell that brought all the characters to the MCU: He has absolutely no idea who Peter Parker even is.
Rant done.
Click to expand...
After finally watching V:LTBC I wanted to just talk about this a bit.
My take is that they already established so much of the MCU cosmos in previous movies that bringing in another planet of super strong symbiotes might not have worked with what they established. Many old comics worked because by and large they were self-contained affairs, you didn't think too much of say "What are the Skrulls doing?" while reading Spider-Man because the only times the Skrulls ever existed for Spider-Man was when they were needed for a crossover issue with like the Fantastic Four. The movies are different in that they are DESIGNED to be a single established universe from the very start, and so those things become more restricted. Having Venom come into the picture through dimensional rather then planetary means they can establish him without going through the effort of trying to fit his "race" into the greater cosmos of the MCU.

As for the second comment, it's implied VERY heavily in the last V:LTBC scene that Venom himself knows Peter Parker / Spider-Man. The whole scene basically starts with Eddie asking Venom if he has any "secrets" he isn't sharing, leading to Venom talking about his "billions of light years of knowledge" he has shared as a hive mind with other symbiotes. This leads to them getting pulled to the MCU and the minute Venom sees the unmasked Spider-Man he takes over Eddie's body, says "That... guy!", and licks the screen like he is lusting over an old lover. It's pretty clear that Venom knew Peter, whether through a personal interaction at some past period of his universe (maybe he escaped the Life Foundation once before?) or through the supposed "hive link" he says he shares with other Symbiotes. Either way it's clear if he knows Peter he fits the rule.
 
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ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Couldn't sleep, depressed, so figured I'd watch the Hawkeye finale.

Really good. Nothing groundbreaking or universe breaking like the end of Loki. In fact, it stays pretty much within Clint and Kate's world. And that's fine. Not everything needs to be a world or universe threat. The villains in this weren't really developed enough for me to really care about them in the end. But everything involving Kate & Clint was absolutely top notch. There's a sequence around the halfway mark that is SO MUCH GODDAMN FUN.

More thoughts behind spoilers.

-ALL the trick arrows. God, that was so much fun. I didn't keep up with Arrow, but I'll bet it never had a sequence half as fun as that. BUT STILL NO BOOMERANG ARROW. So disappointed.
-Pretty much expected Yelena and Hawkeye to bond over Nat's death, but it was still sweetly delivered. Yelena is fantastic and you can tell the actress is having a blast in the role. She has insanely great chemistry with Kate. Which I just realized they re-created the Hawkeye/Black Widow due for a new generation.
-The Swordsman amounted to pretty much nothing. Maybe we'll see more of him in the future, because he's a fun character in this.
-Kingpin's not dead. Yeah, it looks like Maya killed him, but given that we only hear the shot off screen, they can come up with any excuse they want to bring him back. Superhero Rule #1: The villain isn't dead if you didn't see a body. Superhero Rule #1b: And even then, that doesn't always stop them from returning. Also, my god, I never want another actor playing Fisk. Vincent D'Onofrio is perfect in the role. Although the "Hawaiian Action Kingpin" outfit didn't really suit him. Especially the hat. I don't know why they chose that for him.
 
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ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Decided to finally rework my MCU rankings. Still not sure if I like where some stand, but it works overall. I feel like Endgame shouldn't be in the top 10, but there's not much that stands above it. Civil War could swap in with it.

As I've said multiple times, I don't think even the bottom ones are "bad." They have their own issues, but they're still overall good flicks. Certainly compared to many other superhero movies.

1. Captain America: The First Avenger
2. The Avengers
3. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
4. Avengers: Infinity War
5. Thor: Ragnarok
6. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
7. Black Panther
8. Guardians of the Galaxy
9. Thor
10. Avengers: Endgame
11. Captain America: Civil War
12. Doctor Strange
13. Iron Man
14. Ant-Man and the Wasp
15. Spider-Man: Homecoming
16. Spider-Man: No Way Home
17. Ant-Man
18. Shang-Chi
19. Eternals
20. Spider-Man: Far From Home
21. Avengers: Age of Ultron
22. Captain Marvel
23. Iron Man 2
24. Black Widow
25. The Incredible Hulk
26. Iron Man 3
27. Thor: The Dark World

I also almost added the Disney+ shows into the rankings, but decided they didn't technically "count" among the films. If I did?
- Hawkeye and WandaVision would somewhere around the top 13ish. They're good, though have some issues. WandaVision oddly falls apart as more of the mystery is revealed. Hawkeye's villains aren't really well fleshed out, but the chemistry between the two Hawkeyes is top notch. Kate Bishop, especially, has a big future in the franchise.

- Falcon & Winter Soldier would probably be around 18 or 19. It has some good moments, but the final product overall is flawed. I think Covid killed a lot of what they planned for the villains, so there's behind the scenes stuff that dragged it down.

- Loki would probably be around the same spot. It has some good ideas, Loki & Enchantress are great together and Tom Hiddleson carries it far better than it could have been. But it feels like half the show was exposition, explaining how the multiverse and the TVA works. It gets better along the way and ends on a high note, but it's an awkward start.

- What If...? would probably fall towards the bottom with Iron Man 3 and such. It has its moments, but it's a real mixed bag of hit and miss episodes. The ones that hit (Dr Strange, big finale) REALLY hit. The ones that miss (Zombies, Party Thor) REALLY miss.
 
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