Superheroes!

[Patine]

It definitely has to take place after the event of Endgame otherwise it's not going to make a lick of sense.

Sensible, cohesive, believable, and internally-consistent, even within the context of a high-fantasy, super-science, metaphysical, or superpowered background, is no longer a real perquisite for modern "big budget Hollywood blockbusters" these days. In fact, if I didn't know any better, I'd say the movie makers there almost had a subtle derision toward, and contempt of, the concept.

 

[BenitoChavez]

Sensible, cohesive, believable, and internally-consistent, even within the context of a high-fantasy, super-science, metaphysical, or superpowered background, is no longer a real perquisite for modern "big budget Hollywood blockbusters" these days.

Making continuous references to the ending of the last movie while simultaneously being set before the last movie would be a major WTF moment. I think the MCU has done a pretty good job of being "sensible, cohesive, believable, and internally-consistent". Personal tastes may vary depending of course on one's ability to suspend disbelief. There are exceptions of course, most are minor, and most are done in the name of telling a compelling story.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I guess what confused me was that, [Endgame spoiler]

Spoiler :

Ned, MJ and Flash all appear to have not aged 5 years. I would find it awfully convenient if all of the significant characters were victims of Thanos. I guess they could have Aunt May be a survivor - Marisa Tomei only ages 1 or 2 years out of every 5, anyway. But, yeah, the obvious references to Tony's death mean this has to take place after Endgame, unless the trailer's playing games and those scenes are from the film's epilogue, or something. I'm also hoping that Mysterio is a villain running a con, and the MCU 'multiverse' is a misdirect.

 

[Cutlass]

Avengers: Endgame - Very good, and jam-packed. 3 hours is a big chunk of your day, and the running time was the main reason I delayed seeing it for so long, but once your butt is in the seat, there's so much going on in the movie that it really moves. They try to do a lot, and for the most part they succeed. A nice balance of spectacle and drama. There was so much going on in this movie, even writing brief thoughts on all of it would be too long a post.

Spoiler :

Great conclusions for Tony and Steve, although the latter raises questions that I think almost have to have unsatisfying answers. One nice loop that it creates is that the photo of Steve on Peggy's desk in 1970 wasn't her still pining for her decades-dead boyfriend, it was a picture of her alive-and-well husband. The moment where he sees the picture on her desk made me sad, at first, suggesting that she'd never moved on.

I have mixed feelings about Natasha's death. I think it would have been better if it had been Bruce instead of Clint, but how would Natasha 'defeat' Bruce? I was thinking she could have a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency version of the 'lullaby' from Age of Ultron - like Tony had the Hulkbuster suit - but maybe that would seem too convenient. Although if Bruce had been with Natasha, we wouldn't have had the funny moment of Bruce trying to imitate the rampaging Hulk in the first Battle of New York.

The gigantic battle was very well done, and held my attention throughout. As that scene was beginning, I was mentally preparing myself to be bored, but I wasn't, at all.

I liked the avalanche of call-backs and nods to the source material.

Time travel. I mean... just... oy vey. The paradoxes and mind-pretzels are enough to put you in the 'psych ward.' I guess we just have to turn our heads and pretend not to see it? Argh.

Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer - I'm very confused about when this film takes place. Guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Spoiler :

And I'm nervous about the idea of a Marvel Multiverse. On the bright side, this may be the best way to manage the Avengers and a reboot of the X-Men, but I hope this doesn't mean they're going to keep all of the properties separate (e.g. an Avengers Earth, an X-Men Earth, a Fantastic Four Earth, etc).

Agents of SHIELD season 6 premiere - A good first episode. I'm not in love with Daisy's new haircut, but the shot of the giant and the little girl made me laugh.

Spoiler :

My assumption about when this season takes place must have been wrong. It doesn't seen like this is after Infinity War and Endgame. Could they actually be incorporating the events of those movies into these next two seasons? That would be pretty ballsy.

Finally got to see this:

Spoiler Reply to first spoiler :

I suspected from things that I couldn't avoid seeing that Steve ended up back in the past with Peggy. But it's more than a little handwavey that that wasn't known in the world. As in, how was it hid all those years?

Tony's end seemed more of the fact that RDJ was the biggest star. So got to be the biggest hero. Rather than it making sense story wise.

Natasha's death I think was right. Clint was the right person to be there, because even though she loved Bruce, she was closer to Clint, and he was a much more integral part of her life. And, more importantly, her redemption story. That's what her death was, the final verse of her redemption story. Although I think they missed an opportunity when she didn't say "I have red in my ledger". He had a family, she never would. She had to jump to save him. He was willing because of his guilt from Ronin. But he was the one who was needed alive.

The huge battle was fairly well done. But there was so much going on, there was just too much to follow. The flashes of the individual people came and went too fast.

I'm pretty much always wary of time travel in fiction. It is so very rarely done well. It's just too magic.

Spoiler Spiderman :

This is inconsistent. For everyone else in the universe, 5 years passed. For Spiderman and his friends, no time passed.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Endgame spoiler

Spoiler :

Discussion of secret Steve blasted back into the Peggy past really misses the timeline disruption problem. Thanos jumped nine years into the future and died. So there is no Thanos to collect the stones and kill half the universe in the first place. Now what? Compared to that who aged the five years and who skipped the five years is somewhat trivial, eh?

 

[Patine]

Finally got to see this:

Spoiler Reply to first spoiler :

I suspected from things that I couldn't avoid seeing that Steve ended up back in the past with Peggy. But it's more than a little handwavey that that wasn't known in the world. As in, how was it hid all those years?

Tony's end seemed more of the fact that RDJ was the biggest star. So got to be the biggest hero. Rather than it making sense story wise.

Natasha's death I think was right. Clint was the right person to be there, because even though she loved Bruce, she was closer to Clint, and he was a much more integral part of her life. And, more importantly, her redemption story. That's what her death was, the final verse of her redemption story. Although I think they missed an opportunity when she didn't say "I have red in my ledger". He had a family, she never would. She had to jump to save him. He was willing because of his guilt from Ronin. But he was the one who was needed alive.

The huge battle was fairly well done. But there was so much going on, there was just too much to follow. The flashes of the individual people came and went too fast.

I'm pretty much always wary of time travel in fiction. It is so very rarely done well. It's just too magic.

Spoiler Spiderman :

This is inconsistent. For everyone else in the universe, 5 years passed. For Spiderman and his friends, no time passed.

The problem is, fiction that relies heavily on time travel as a plot mechanism (as well as the alternate history genre, which is technically separate, but has very similar problems) is always very sloppily and crudely done in a way I, at least, find less than satisfying. It's often not realized that if you changed a profound event, or several such events, in the past, it wouldn't just logically change things that only obviously derived back in an easily discernable way to those changes and things they directly effect, but most of the rest staying very similar - the time period you returned to would, by logic, by unrecognizable to you because so many variables would at stake - a veritable "butterfly affect."

 

[EgonSpengler]

Finally got to see [Endgame]:

Spoiler Reply to first spoiler :

I suspected from things that I couldn't avoid seeing that Steve ended up back in the past with Peggy. But it's more than a little handwavey that that wasn't known in the world. As in, how was it hid all those years?

Tony's end seemed more of the fact that RDJ was the biggest star. So got to be the biggest hero. Rather than it making sense story wise.

Natasha's death I think was right. Clint was the right person to be there, because even though she loved Bruce, she was closer to Clint, and he was a much more integral part of her life. And, more importantly, her redemption story. That's what her death was, the final verse of her redemption story. Although I think they missed an opportunity when she didn't say "I have red in my ledger". He had a family, she never would. She had to jump to save him. He was willing because of his guilt from Ronin. But he was the one who was needed alive.

The huge battle was fairly well done. But there was so much going on, there was just too much to follow. The flashes of the individual people came and went too fast.

I'm pretty much always wary of time travel in fiction. It is so very rarely done well. It's just too magic.

Spoiler Spiderman :

This is inconsistent. For everyone else in the universe, 5 years passed. For Spiderman and his friends, no time passed.

Endgame spoiler

Spoiler :

Discussion of secret Steve blasted back into the Peggy past really misses the timeline disruption problem. Thanos jumped nine years into the future and died. So there is no Thanos to collect the stones and kill half the universe in the first place. Now what? Compared to that who aged the five years and who skipped the five years is somewhat trivial, eh?

Yeah, it's all very headache-inducing, which is a shame. They didn't even stick to what at first appeared to be an interesting take on the trope:

Spoiler :

When Bruce talked about how, when you travel back through time, for you the future is the past. I thought, in that moment, "Okay, they're trying to do something clever here." But then, as Tim says, bringing Thanos into the final battle from the past - and then dusting him - creates a paradox that the film doesn't even acknowledge. If they wanted to leave it unresolved, as a kind of cliffhanger, they might have included a line to tell the audience that at least the filmmakers know what a knot they just tied in their own story.

I thought the tv show Timeless was a game effort at a time-travel story that dealt with some of the innate problems, and it was still convoluted.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The new trailer for Batwoman. It really leans into the feminist stuff, but I'm okay with that. If you want subtle social commentary, Greg Berlanti's CW/DC shows come down somewhere behind Aaron Sorkin shows. The action looks pretty good, the design & photography appear inspired by both Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan's movies. I'm still not sold on Ruby Rose as an actor, but I guess I didn't know a lot of the other Berlantiverse casts, either. I've no idea who the villain is. Maybe she's from the comics, I never read Batwoman.

 

[Cutlass]

The new trailer for Batwoman. It really leans into the feminist stuff, but I'm okay with that. If you want subtle social commentary, Greg Berlanti's CW/DC shows come down somewhere behind Aaron Sorkin shows. The action looks pretty good, the design & photography appear inspired by both Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan's movies. I'm still not sold on Ruby Rose as an actor, but I guess I didn't know a lot of the other Berlantiverse casts, either. I've no idea who the villain is. Maybe she's from the comics, I never read Batwoman.

That's partially based on the graphic novel Batwoman: Elegy, by Greg Rucka, which seems to which seems to be the foundation canon of the Batwoman stuff I've seen, and critically acclaimed at that. And that explains the blonde. But in that canon Batwoman has no relationship with Batman. In some older Batman stories Bruce's mother is Martha Kane Wayne. Which is what this series is apparently basing the cousin stuff on. But in the Rucka Batwoman stuff both of Kate's parents are Army officers, and the money backing Batwoman is from her father's second wife, after Kate's mother is killed. Kate is not raised rich, until her father remarries. So that would make Bruce's mother a cousin to a family who isn't rich, but is instead "Army aristocracy". Which is inconsistent with the portrayal of Martha Wayne as a Blue Blood. So they seem to have gone with a mashup of backgrounds. And Bruce Wayne is normally portrayed as having no living family after his parents are killed. Otherwise, why is Alfred the guardian?

All this being done in a Gotham without Batman is probably just necessary because the CW can't afford the rights to a Batman show.

 

[Cutlass]

Yeah, it's all very headache-inducing, which is a shame. They didn't even stick to what at first appeared to be an interesting take on the trope:

Spoiler :

When Bruce talked about how, when you travel back through time, for you the future is the past. I thought, in that moment, "Okay, they're trying to do something clever here." But then, as Tim says, bringing Thanos into the final battle from the past - and then dusting him - creates a paradox that the film doesn't even acknowledge. If they wanted to leave it unresolved, as a kind of cliffhanger, they might have included a line to tell the audience that at least the filmmakers know what a knot they just tied in their own story.

I thought the tv show Timeless was a game effort at a time-travel story that dealt with some of the innate problems, and it was still convoluted.

The problem is, fiction that relies heavily on time travel as a plot mechanism (as well as the alternate history genre, which is technically separate, but has very similar problems) is always very sloppily and crudely done in a way I, at least, find less than satisfying. It's often not realized that if you changed a profound event, or several such events, in the past, it wouldn't just logically change things that only obviously derived back in an easily discernable way to those changes and things they directly effect, but most of the rest staying very similar - the time period you returned to would, by logic, by unrecognizable to you because so many variables would at stake - a veritable "butterfly affect."

It's valid that time travel in fiction is almost always done poorly. And this is no exception. Now I was fairly certain before this movie was even filmed that they'd be doing time travel as their resolution. Ultimately the creators of it just hope they've made the story good enough so that the errors of it aren't big enough to turn the viewers off, and that the rest of it works well enough to keep them happy.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

Robert Pattinson to Play ‘The Batman’ for Matt Reeves and Warner Bros.

WTF?!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Robert Pattinson to Play ‘The Batman’ for Matt Reeves and Warner Bros.

WTF?!

A good question in multiple ways.

Yet another reboot of Batman? WTF?

This drip is qualified to play Bruce Wayne? WTF?

Warner Bros hasn't given up on making bad comic book movies altogether? WTF?

 

[EgonSpengler]

I've never seen Pattinson in anything, so he's something of a blank slate for me. Twilight aside, he looks like an indie guy. I want to see High Life, Claire Denis' sci-fi movie, and I've had The Lost City of Z in my queue for ages. He's done 2 Cronenberg movies. I used to be a massive Cronenberg fan (I even saw Crash in the theater) but it looks like Pattinson hooked up with him after I drifted away. He also dated FKA Twigs for a while, which I can respect. He looks younger than he is and I'm surprised to read that he's a couple years older than Bale was in Batman Begins.

As Tim says, I'm more dubious about another Warner Bros Batman movie, in general, than I am about Pattinson specifically. Matt Reeves has directed Cloverfield, Let Me In, and War for the Planet of the Apes, which isn't a bad CV, I guess. He's said that he envisions a kind of neo-noir detective story, and the "World's Greatest Detective" version of Batman is one we've yet to see on film. And Batman movies have recovered from a nose-dive before. He's clearly our #1 superhero, and a malleable, resilient character, so there's some reason for cautious optimism.

 

[Cutlass]

Robert Pattinson to Play ‘The Batman’ for Matt Reeves and Warner Bros.

WTF?!

This is probably about his popularity with certain audiences, rather than his merrit as an actor, or his looks to fit the part.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Is anyone still watching The Flash? I've only seen a couple of eps this year, but I've heard that this season has been a slog, so I haven't gone back. But it looks like they've done precisely what I predicted they might: The time-travel meddling has caused the dateline on the newspaper - "Flash Missing" - to change from 2024 to 2019. Perhaps the season finale is worth watching, if only as a prologue to Crisis on Infinite Earths.

 

[BenitoChavez]

Robert Pattinson to Play ‘The Batman’ for Matt Reeves and Warner Bros.

WTF?!

There seems to be conflicting reports.

https://deadline.com/2019/05/rob-pattinson-nicholas-hoult-batman-short-list-matt-reeves-1202616908/

Matt Reeves is getting close to naming his Batman. While a report declared that Twilight Saga star Rob Pattinson had been set for The Batman, Deadline hears that the filmmaker and Warner Bros haven’t gotten to that place yet. Pattinson is on a short list but so is Nicholas Hoult, who stars in Tolkien and is about to open in the X-Men: First Class film Dark Phoenix. We’ll keep you posted as this unfolds, but several sources said that right now, the bat suit isn’t filled yet and that they like both guys, with Pattinson holding the edge.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

There seems to be conflicting reports.

I don't believe so. The articles I read all pretty much say it's not "official". The title of my linked article is a bit misleading, though. But, if you read it, it states:

While sources say it’s not yet a done deal, Pattinson is the top choice and it’s expected to close shortly. Warner Bros. had no comment.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Collider claims that Matt Reeves' Batman movie will feature Catwoman and The Penguin. They cite a Hollywood Reporter newsletter, but I can't find the news on THR's own website, which makes me wonder. Anyway, I would like to see a Batman villain who hasn't already gotten a ton of screen-time, but off the top of my head, I'm not sure who that'd be. As long as it's not The Joker again, I guess I'm alright with whomever. It's more important that the movie is good. (I wouldn't mind seeing a really good Mister Freeze or Poison Ivy, even though I don't know what a really good Mister Freeze or Poison Ivy would look like.)

 

[Patine]

Collider claims that Matt Reeves' Batman movie will feature Catwoman and The Penguin. They cite a Hollywood Reporter newsletter, but I can't find the news on THR's own website, which makes me wonder. Anyway, I would like to see a Batman villain who hasn't already gotten a ton of screen-time, but off the top of my head, I'm not sure who that'd be. As long as it's not The Joker again, I guess I'm alright with whomever. It's more important that the movie is good. (I wouldn't mind seeing a really good Mister Freeze or Poison Ivy, even though I don't know what a really good Mister Freeze or Poison Ivy would look like.)

Mind, I would be quite alright with Catwoman and The Penguin as villains. I quite enjoyed Batman Returns in the day, back in the very early '90's, and those two were among my favourite recurring villains on the Adam West TV series (which I used to watch the reruns of along with the cheesy '60's Spider-Man cartoon with the stock animation and the catchy theme song when I was much younger).

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Is anyone still watching The Flash? I've only seen a couple of eps this year, but I've heard that this season has been a slog, so I haven't gone back. But it looks like they've done precisely what I predicted they might: The time-travel meddling has caused the dateline on the newspaper - "Flash Missing" - to change from 2024 to 2019. Perhaps the season finale is worth watching, if only as a prologue to Crisis on Infinite Earths.

I've stuck with it through thick and thin, and IMO there's been very little thin. I'd call it one of my favorite shows. No actors I consider annoying, no shortage of plot threads, not terribly repetitious. The finale did set up a gigantic shake up for next season, so we'll have to see where it goes, but I'm looking forward to it.