Superheroes!

[RobAnybody]

Not sure if I should have avoided double-posting, but this is a completely different subject, so probably so:

Y'all should all go watch Netflix's One Piece live-action adaptation. Just a great story, with deep, fascinating characters. And great world-building.

I had no idea of the backstory or history (it's an anime I have never explored) - the Netflix live action version is... great? I can't think of a better word. I can't recommend it enough without spoilers. I had heard of One Piece before now, but had no idea of the characters or even the premise ("is this about bathing suits?")

High level: it's Pirate themed, the "One Piece" is an old Pirate Treasure everyone is trying to locate. The main characters are deep, & quite interesting: deep, deep backstories, engaging world-building, impressive fight scenes (though, granted, it's anime-style, but still, live-action, so sometimes a bit very over-the-top but quite fun to watch).

Recommend it.

 

[Cutlass]

I made another attempt at watching Ms Marvel. But again just couldn't get into it. Which is a shame, as I'm still looking forward to seeing the movie.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Okay, 4th episode of season 2 of Loki and I have to say that I've completely lost the plot, both literally and figuratively. There was a scene in this episode that I could tell was supposed to be a very tense and meaningful confrontation, and I had no idea what the conflict even was.

Spoiler :

It was the scene with Ravonna and Gen. Dox in the jail cell. I felt like I'd missed an entire season of backstory, or something. I haven't really understood this whole season who Gen. Dox is or what she's doing or what she represents, and now she's dead, and none of it seems to have had any purpose.

And I don't really know what Sylvie is even doing here; it seems like the writers didn't know what to do with them, but writing them out of the show (or just leaving them out, without explanation) would raise more questions, so they just kind of sidelined them. And there was a moment when I wondered if even Wunmi Mosaku knew what her character was supposed to be doing there, 'cause I didn't. They've also completely squandered Orouboros. I'll watch the last two episodes, mainly just so I can say that I did*, and then I'll be canceling my subscription to Disney+.

I made another attempt at watching Ms Marvel. But again just couldn't get into it. Which is a shame, as I'm still looking forward to seeing the movie.

I thought the first 2 or 3 eps were the best, and it went downhill after that.


* And, hey, you never know. Sometimes movies or shows really come together at what seems like the eleventh hour, and I'm glad I stuck it out to the end. Looper (2012) comes to mind as one example. I remember getting a little bored in the middle of that movie.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Not a lot of good news here.

Crisis at Marvel: Jonathan Majors Back-Up Plans, ‘The Marvels’ Reshoots, Reviving Original Avengers and More Issues Revealed

Marvel has enjoyed a nearly uninterrupted string of hits ever since it started independently producing its movies with 2008’s “Iron Man.”

variety.com

“Marvel is truly [borked] with the whole Kang angle,” says one top dealmaker who has seen the final “Loki” episode. “And they haven’t had an opportunity to rewrite until very recently [because of the WGA strike]. But I don’t see a path to how they move forward with him.”

Directed by Nia DaCosta, “The Marvels” unites Larson’s heroine with two superpowered allies, Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau (introduced in the 2021 Disney+ series “WandaVision”) and Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan (first seen in the 2022 series “Ms. Marvel”). But instead of seamlessly building on the success of “Captain Marvel,” this move resulted in four weeks of reshoots to bring coherence to a tangled storyline.

Then eyebrows were raised again when DaCosta began working on another film while “The Marvels” was still in postproduction — the filmmaker moved to London earlier this year to begin prepping for her Tessa Thompson drama “Hedda.” (A representative for DaCosta declined to comment.)

“If you’re directing a $250 million movie, it’s kind of weird for the director to leave with a few months to go,” says a source familiar with the production.

This past February, when the credits rolled at the world premiere of “Quantumania,” shock rippled through the Regency Village Theatre in Westwood over some shoddy CGI. “There were at least 10 scenes where the visual effects had been added at the last minute and were out of focus,” says one veteran power broker who was there. “It was insane. I’ve never seen something like that in my entire career. Everyone was talking about it. Even the kids of executives were talking about it.”

But some internal sources suggest Alonso was a scapegoat and point to the “She-Hulk” VFX issues as a symptom of a deeper rot — namely a lack of oversight on script development. In the original arc of “She-Hulk,” a flashback of star Tatiana Maslany’s transformation into her Hulk character didn’t take place until Episode 8, the penultimate episode. But after Marvel’s brain trust watched footage, it realized the scene needed to happen in the pilot episode so that audiences could see more of the character’s backstory early. That meant that the VFX team was tasked with fixing the mess in postproduction.

“The so-called bad VFX we see was because of half-baked scripts,” says one person involved with “She-Hulk.” “That is not Victoria. That is Kevin. And even above Kevin. Those issues should be addressed in preproduction. The timeline is not allowing the Marvel executives to sit with the material.”

All the while, Marvel was bleeding money, with a single episode of “She-Hulk” costing some $25 million, dwarfing the budget of a final-season episode of HBO’s “Game of Thrones, ” but without a similar Zeitgeist bang. The August 2022 series premiere at the El Capitan Theatre foreshadowed what was to come six months later at the “Quantumania” bow: the “She-Hulk” special effects were out of focus in multiple scenes.

 

[Synobun]

Case in point: the “Blade” reboot. With Mahershala Ali signed on for the eponymous role of a vampire, things looked promising for a 2023 release date. But the project has gone through at least five writers, two directors and one shutdown six weeks before production. One person familiar with the script permutations says the story at one point morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons. Blade was relegated to the fourth lead, a bizarre idea considering that the studio had two-time Oscar winner Ali on board.

What.

 

[Cutlass]

Across the Spider-Verse hit Netflix.

Haven't watched all of it yet. Too late for the night.

Spoiler Scene :

SpiderGwen stopping the helicopter crash was an extremely well done scene. Had to watch it 4 times.

 

[Patine]

Not a lot of good news here.

Crisis at Marvel: Jonathan Majors Back-Up Plans, ‘The Marvels’ Reshoots, Reviving Original Avengers and More Issues Revealed

Marvel has enjoyed a nearly uninterrupted string of hits ever since it started independently producing its movies with 2008’s “Iron Man.”

variety.com

I think Walter Elias Disney and Stan Lee would each do a roll in their grave.

 

[EgonSpengler]

What.

Between this story about Blade and the report that Daredevil: Born Again didn't have Matt in costume as Daredevil until its fourth episode, I really have to wonder what kind of idiots they've got working on these projects.

Across the Spider-Verse hit Netflix.

Haven't watched all of it yet. Too late for the night.

Spoiler Scene :

SpiderGwen stopping the helicopter crash was an extremely well done scene. Had to watch it 4 times.

I'm not currently sub'd to Netflix, but I definitely want to watch this one.

 

[Arakhor]

I saw Across the Spiderverse at the cinema (an all-too-rare occasion for me). I highly recommend it!

 

[EgonSpengler]

Okay, 4th episode of season 2 of Loki and I have to say that I've completely lost the plot, both literally and figuratively.

Episode 5 was a lot better. It didn't really solve the problems I had with ep 4, but it didn't make them any worse. To its benefit, it returned its focus to the characters, and in particular it brought Sylvie back to the front of the stage, so while I still couldn't really tell you what's going on, in terms of the bigger picture, it didn't matter. But I feel like episode 6 - which I believe is the series finale - almost has to be a plot-focused episode, so I'm still biting my fingernails. (Metaphorically. I don't actually bite my fingernails. Always thought that was kind of gross.) I took the comment in the article mentioned above from the guy who'd seen episode 6 - that "Marvel is [screwed]" - was more about Jonathan Majors' legal problems than a comment on the episode itself.

---

‘Superman & Lois’ To End With Upcoming Season 4 At CW

Superman & Lois, starring Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch, will end with its upcoming 10-episode fourth season.

deadline.com

With the previous announcements that the entire supporting cast was being let go, and that season 4 would have only 10 episodes, this announcement only confirms what we already knew. But it's still a bummer. I think this series has been a great success, and in some ways was the best of all of the CW/Warner Bros DC shows (which, depending on your level of superhero fandom, may not be a very high bar - I was very off-and-on with every one of those shows, myself). I do wonder how they're going to write so many characters out of the show, in one fell swoop. iirc, the announcement that most of the cast wouldn't be returning was made before the last couple of episodes of season 3 had aired, so I figured the easy way out would be to have the Kent family find a reason to move back to Metropolis. But that didn't happen. I suppose it still could, but there was no farewell. I worry that it's going to feel clumsy to have the Kents suddenly no longer in Smallville, without a soapy, tearful goodbye scene with Lana and the gang; even one that would be worthy of a Hallmark Channel Christmas special would be better than nothing at all. (I'm trying not to think about how Castle ended, which was one of the all-time fusterclucks. I'm still mad about that one. )

On the bright side, Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch have been great, possibly my 2nd-favorite Clark/Superman and Lois. For me, Reeve & Kidder were the definitive cast, but I also really liked Cain & Hatcher. Hoechlin in particular deserves a high-five for getting both Clark and Superman right, and for making them distinguishable from one another. In my book, it's vital that Clark and Superman really seem like different guys, and Hoechlin may have done that better than anyone since Reeve. That would be one note I would give to James Gunn and David Corenswet for the next movie, if I could. Since it's a feature film and not a series, they won't have a lot of time, so they really need to figure out in advance how to portray Clark. Hoechlin didn't do the shy, bumbling Clark that Reeve did, but with less screen-time, maybe taking a page from Reeve's more direct approach would be better for Corenswet. In addition to having more time to develop the character, Hoechlin's Clark could lean into the small-town-guy aspect, because of the setting (I don't think we know where Gunn & Corenswet's movie will be set, but until I hear otherwise, I'm assuming it'll be Metropolis). Hoechlin's Clark is also a father, which necessarily makes him a different man than the live-action Clarks have been.



EDIT: I just thought of another fumbled ending, although it wasn't half as bad as Castle's. Lisa Edelstein did not appear in the finale of House MD. jfc guys, back up the money truck to her house and get her in that one [flipping] episode, even just for a few minutes. Did they really burn that bridge so thoroughly? I swear to gods, sometimes I think the people who run Hollywood are all a bunch of baboons, and when they do something well, it's just a case of a million monkeys with a million typewriters. Obviously, that's not true, but some of the blunders they make seem so avoidable if they had even average people skills. I mean, look at Joss Whedon. He [tanked] what was going to be a legendary career just because he was a [donkey]. He didn't even have to be nice to Charisma Carpenter, et al. He could've merely been unapproachable and grumpy and he'd have been in the Hall of Fame, but no, he had to be a raging [tool]. I just want to smack these people, sometimes.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Well, that's interesting. First, good trailer. Of course, I think I said the same thing about Secret Invasion, and look how that went. So let's not get ahead of ourselves. But I do like what I see here. The silent fight scenes are cool, in seconds-long doses, making it clear that we're experiencing it from her pov. The level of violence in this is almost on the level of the Netflix shows. Fisk seems more like the guy he was in Daredevil than he was in She-Hulk Hawkeye. I also think the decorative, block font they used looks similar to the one they used for Jessica Jones, which is a nice tip of the cap to the Netflix shows, if that was intentional.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Then eyebrows were raised again when DaCosta began working on another film while “The Marvels” was still in postproduction — the filmmaker moved to London earlier this year to begin prepping for her Tessa Thompson drama “Hedda.” (A representative for DaCosta declined to comment.)

“If you’re directing a $250 million movie, it’s kind of weird for the director to leave with a few months to go,” says a source familiar with the production.

On their podcast, Kevin Smith and Mark Bernardin didn't think this was particularly newsworthy. They think it's not unusual for busy directors to have multiple irons in the fire. They pointed out that Spielberg's work on Jurassic Park and Schindler's List overlapped, as did Coppola's on The Conversation and The Godfather, Part II, and all four of those movies turned out alright.

 

[EgonSpengler]

‘Echo’: ‘Hawkeye’ Spinoff Series To Debut Under New Marvel Spotlight Banner That Focuses On Less MCU Continuity

When Echo hits Disney+ on Jan. 10, 2024 it will premiere under the new Marvel Spotlight banner complete with a new intro-logo, scored by Oscar winning composer Michael Giacchino. Essentially, the n…

deadline.com

Per Marvel.com, Marvel Studios’ Head of Streaming Brad Winderbaum at the screening said, “Marvel Spotlight gives us a platform to bring more grounded, character-driven stories to the screen, and in the case of Echo, focusing on street-level stakes over larger MCU continuity.”

That sounds promising. Obviously they still have to make good shows, but freeing them from having to be part of the larger, ongoing story might be liberating. I do like the idea of "more grounded, character-driven stories." If the budgets are going to be lower, that might put a limit on the types of Marvel characters they could do. If She-Hulk was so expensive, for example, I don't see how they could do something like Alpha Flight. But perhaps they could do something like Union Jack, or get Simone Missick & Jessica Henwick to come back for Daughters of the Dragon.

 

[Patine]

I don't see how they could do something like Alpha Flight.

As a Canadiain, myself, Alpha Flight was cringeworthy and horribly cliched.

Even Captain Canuck and Nelvana of the North (which were indy comic lines in the day) were not as bad in terms of stereotyping...

 

[EgonSpengler]

As a Canadiain, myself, Alpha Flight was cringeworthy and horribly cliched.

Even Captain Canuck and Nelvana of the North (which were indy comic lines in the day) were not as bad in terms of stereotyping...

American comic books have always been poor with characters from other countries, and have frequently leaned on stereotypes, so I suppose I'm not surprised to hear that Alpha Flight was no exception.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Loki, ep 6: I have no idea what I just watched.

I thought I was hangin' in there, for a while. I sort of want to watch it again, just to see if I understand it any better, but I don't know if I'm going to have the time. If I even get around to re-watching something, this would be far down the list. I may just have to live with my first impressions.

 

[EgonSpengler]

So basically everything Marvel is being pushed back, as much as a year. Obviously it's a bummer, but if that means the upcoming projects will be better, I'm all for it. Does it mean that, though? I guess we'll see. It appears James Gunn's reboot of the DCU is still on track - I'm not sure those projects were affected too badly by the strikes - so we'll have those to look forward to.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Finally started watching Loki season 2. I know, I know, I should be ashamed... well I'm NOT! Fight me.

I've really enjoyed it, especially the soundtrack which has been excellent. It's been a little confusing, but I think that is the point. I like that about the TVA, you know that its supposed to be somewhat metaphorical, that what you see is actually only a facade of what is truly there so that it is easier to comprehend, like the box-crushing torture/execution device that looks like gas powered industrial shop-vac. It reminds me a lot of the Q-Continuum in Star Trek, the implication (maybe Q explicitly says it at some point) is that the true nature of what is going on would be far too complex for mere mortals to comprehend so the visual representations are dumbed down to make it easier to interact with them. I've also enjoyed all the little Easter eggs and references that they've thrown in to other beloved movies, like Back to the Future and Jurassic Park for example.

I actually started watching several weeks back with wife and kids, but as usual, I fell asleep, so I had to catch up on my own. I've just finished episode 4 and I plan on trying to finish at least one episode tonight depending on how tired I am. Gotta finish by Thanksgiving because the last time I was with my brother he wanted to talk to me about it and I got scolded because I hadn't seen it yet. If I'm not ready to discuss it by Thanksgiving he may disown me

 

[Synobun]

Finally started watching Loki season 2. I know, I know, I should be ashamed... well I'm NOT! Fight me.

I've really enjoyed it, especially the soundtrack which has been excellent. It's been a little confusing, but I think that is the point. I like that about the TVA, you know that its supposed to be somewhat metaphorical, that what you see is actually only a facade of what is truly there so that it is easier to comprehend, like the box-crushing torture/execution device that looks like gas powered industrial shop-vac. It reminds me a lot of the Q-Continuum in Star Trek, the implication (maybe Q explicitly says it at some point) is that the true nature of what is going on would be far too complex for mere mortals to comprehend so the visual representations are dumbed down to make it easier to interact with them. I've also enjoyed all the little Easter eggs and references that they've thrown in to other beloved movies, like Back to the Future and Jurassic Park for example.

I actually started watching several weeks back with wife and kids, but as usual, I fell asleep, so I had to catch up on my own. I've just finished episode 4 and I plan on trying to finish at least one episode tonight depending on how tired I am. Gotta finish by Thanksgiving because the last time I was with my brother he wanted to talk to me about it and I got scolded because I hadn't seen it yet. If I'm not ready to discuss it by Thanksgiving he may disown me

I would suggest watching both episodes 5 and 6 the same night.

 

[Gorbles]

Thoroughly enjoyed Loki Season 2. It's probably one of the first (still canon) MCU shows I've felt compelled to rewatch at some point? Apart from Ms. Marvel, though my better half and I were able to top up there (along with her delightful family) in The Marvels on Friday. Was great fun (and ignore all the chuds saying it's underperforming, the SAG-AFTRA strike stifled any promoting the cast and crew could do, and it's a genuine movie with heart).