Superheroes!

[Laurana Kanan]

Unpopular opinion, but we actually really liked The Flash. GotG3 was actually pretty good as well. I know both Spiderverse movies are very well reviewed, but we still haven't seen either - just can't get past the animation style.

 

[Patine]

Unpopular opinion, but we actually really liked The Flash. GotG3 was actually pretty good as well. I know both Spiderverse movies are very well reviewed, but we still haven't seen either - just can't get past the animation style.

I reall must ask, Laurana, when you always speak as, "we," (in non-Moderator opinions), are you speaking for a family or group of friends, or is it the, "Royal We?"

 

[EgonSpengler]

Overthinking It: The Blip.

Spoiler :

The more I think about it, the more I think the writers of Endgame made a mistake in crafting a resolution to The Snap at the end of Infinity War that didn't completely undo its effects, because the MCU subsequently has worked so hard to ignore The Blip. You can tell the writers just don't want to deal with it in the stories they've written since.

Premise: When Bruce used the Infinity Stones to bring back everyone who'd been Snapped, it didn't undo or roll back the 5 years everyone had been gone. Tony was adamant about that, actually. So most of the effects of The Blip remain, and have barely been hinted at since. I can't blame them, the writers, because I think it would be all bad. Like, really bad. Worse than a bunch of PG-13 superhero stories can handle. I think The Blip would be one of the worst events in human history, rivaling or even surpassing things like the Black Plague and WWII/The Holocaust.

1. I think a lot of people would have been permanently killed by The Snap. We saw, for example, a passenger plane slam into a building. Everyone on that plane who hadn't been Snapped is dead, as are many people in the building. Multiply that one plane crash by N, where N is the whole planet. In the seconds and minutes after The Snap there would be car accidents, industrial accidents, all kinds of mayhem (I'm deliberately dodging the obvious fact that the Snap affected the whole galaxy or universe. Because Earth is so isolated, the effects of the Snap and the Blip on other planets wouldn't affect Earth directly, but we have to leave open the possibility that it might.)

1a. I think the death toll of The Blip - not of The Snap, but among the people who survived The Snap - has to be in the hundreds of millions, worldwide. "Excess Deaths" is a term you might have heard lately. It's a tool of epidemiologists and statisticians to estimate the toll of big traumatic events like wars and COVID-19. Simply put, they compare the overall death toll to the period immediately preceding the traumatic event, and the difference is the approximate toll of the event. It's useful because includes secondary effects, like people who die of illnesses or injuries that are normally treatable, but who were unable to get treatment because the war/earthquake/disaster disrupted or overloaded normal health services. Some of the people who died after Hurricane Katrina died of heart disease and infected wounds. After the big earthquake in Haiti, there was a massive cholera outbreak.

1b. What would the suicide rate be in the years after The Snap? Globally, about a million people a year die by suicide in a year, irl. These days, the term "Deaths of Despair" gets used a lot, which bundles deaths by suicide and drug overdoses together. In the aftermath of The Snap, how many people would just give up?

2. The effect of half the population disappearing for 5 years is almost hard to wrap my head around. The somber opening moments of Endgame hint at some of it. There was a real documentary I saw several years ago about the City of Detroit and the substantial depopulation it suffered over the course of ~40 years. This particular documentary was not comprehensive: It focused on the Detroit Fire Department, because all of the empty, derelict houses - rows and rows and streets and streets almost completely uninhabited - were tremendous fire hazards. And of course the Fire Dept itself was underfunded, undermanned, and overworked.

3. Even if the Snap was fairly evenly distributed across society, at the macro level, society would have to contract in the aftermath. The remaining half of people would be struggling to meet their immediate needs and keep whole societies and nations from collapsing entirely. Just to cite one, relatively insignificant example, the derelict baseball stadium in New York City in the opening scene of Endgame was probably accurate. If half of Major League Baseball players were Snapped, you couldn't simply assume that MLB would continue with half the teams, it would probably have to shut down completely. People who have made a living in entertainment industries would have to learn to be farmers, or plumbers, or truck drivers. Lots of people would simply have to be laborers. Retirees who'd survived The Snap would have to come out of retirement, just to keep basic services running.

4. How many wars would start within 5 years of The Snap? Goodbye, Taiwan. Goodbye, Palestinians. Pakistan and India have nukes. If Kim Jong Un got Snapped, North Korea might collapse entirely; if he didn't, I have no idea what would happen.

None of this stuff would have gotten fixed when Bruce used the Infinity Stones and everyone who'd been Snapped came back. We can see why the writers of the MCU don't want to touch this stuff with a 10-foot pole.

Then, everybody who'd been Snapped comes back, all at once and without warning, after being presumed dead for 5 years. Unfathomable chaos. Again.

After I'd seen Infinity War, but before I'd seen Endgame, I was of course thinking "how're they going to get out of this?" Using the Time Stone to go back in time felt too obvious, and I hoped the writers had a more clever idea than that. But now I'm thinking they should have gone ahead and used the time-travel element of the story in a more predictable way, and had the heroes go back in time and defeat Thanos before he'd acquired all of the Infinity Stones. I actually think you could retain a lot of we got in Endgame, or tailor it to fit. For instance, the Big Fight at the end would still work. The death of Natasha would still work, if they really want to keep that. I'm not sure about the death of Gamora, but it could probably be tailored so that it would be permanent, if they wanted her to remain in her new incarnation. I think you could still have the two Nebulas.

And, most importantly, you could still have Tony use the new/old set of Infinity Stones and sacrifice himself to defeat the new/old Thanos. Knowing that he'd be losing his daughter in the bargain might even have made that sacrifice all the more potent. Or would that have been just too much for the audience to take? Maybe the writers could think of a way to save Morgan, even as they erase the future she's from. I'm thinking of this as an Avengers version of Days of Future Past, which ended with Rachel Summers remaining in the present, even though the future she was from had been prevented. Shades of The Terminator too, I guess. (It's worth noting to any sci-fi fans who are dismissive of comics that Days of Future Past preceded The Terminator by 3 years.)

So, yeah, the more I've thought about it, the more I think the 'too obvious' solution that I initially dismissed might actually have been the better choice. Just because something is obvious doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, and sometimes the predictable thing should be what happens next.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Overthinking It: The Blip.

Spoiler :

The more I think about it, the more I think the writers of Endgame made a mistake in crafting a resolution to The Snap at the end of Infinity War that didn't completely undo its effects, because the MCU subsequently has worked so hard to ignore The Blip. You can tell the writers just don't want to deal with it in the stories they've written since.

Premise: When Bruce used the Infinity Stones to bring back everyone who'd been Snapped, it didn't undo or roll back the 5 years everyone had been gone. Tony was adamant about that, actually. So most of the effects of The Blip remain, and have barely been hinted at since. I can't blame them, the writers, because I think it would be all bad. Like, really bad. Worse than a bunch of PG-13 superhero stories can handle. I think The Blip would be one of the worst events in human history, rivaling or even surpassing things like the Black Plague and WWII/The Holocaust.

1. I think a lot of people would have been permanently killed by The Snap. We saw, for example, a passenger plane slam into a building. Everyone on that plane who hadn't been Snapped is dead, as are many people in the building. Multiply that one plane crash by N, where N is the whole planet. In the seconds and minutes after The Snap there would be car accidents, industrial accidents, all kinds of mayhem (I'm deliberately dodging the obvious fact that the Snap affected the whole galaxy or universe. Because Earth is so isolated, the effects of the Snap and the Blip on other planets wouldn't affect Earth directly, but we have to leave open the possibility that it might.)

1a. I think the death toll of The Blip - not of The Snap, but among the people who survived The Snap - has to be in the hundreds of millions, worldwide. "Excess Deaths" is a term you might have heard lately. It's a tool of epidemiologists and statisticians to estimate the toll of big traumatic events like wars and COVID-19. Simply put, they compare the overall death toll to the period immediately preceding the traumatic event, and the difference is the approximate toll of the event. It's useful because includes secondary effects, like people who die of illnesses or injuries that are normally treatable, but who were unable to get treatment because the war/earthquake/disaster disrupted or overloaded normal health services. Some of the people who died after Hurricane Katrina died of heart disease and infected wounds. After the big earthquake in Haiti, there was a massive cholera outbreak.

1b. What would the suicide rate be in the years after The Snap? Globally, about a million people a year die by suicide in a year, irl. These days, the term "Deaths of Despair" gets used a lot, which bundles deaths by suicide and drug overdoses together. In the aftermath of The Snap, how many people would just give up?

2. The effect of half the population disappearing for 5 years is almost hard to wrap my head around. The somber opening moments of Endgame hint at some of it. There was a real documentary I saw several years ago about the City of Detroit and the substantial depopulation it suffered over the course of ~40 years. This particular documentary was not comprehensive: It focused on the Detroit Fire Department, because all of the empty, derelict houses - rows and rows and streets and streets almost completely uninhabited - were tremendous fire hazards. And of course the Fire Dept itself was underfunded, undermanned, and overworked.

3. Even if the Snap was fairly evenly distributed across society, at the macro level, society would have to contract in the aftermath. The remaining half of people would be struggling to meet their immediate needs and keep whole societies and nations from collapsing entirely. Just to cite one, relatively insignificant example, the derelict baseball stadium in New York City in the opening scene of Endgame was probably accurate. If half of Major League Baseball players were Snapped, you couldn't simply assume that MLB would continue with half the teams, it would probably have to shut down completely. People who have made a living in entertainment industries would have to learn to be farmers, or plumbers, or truck drivers. Lots of people would simply have to be laborers. Retirees who'd survived The Snap would have to come out of retirement, just to keep basic services running.

4. How many wars would start within 5 years of The Snap? Goodbye, Taiwan. Goodbye, Palestinians. Pakistan and India have nukes. If Kim Jong Un got Snapped, North Korea might collapse entirely; if he didn't, I have no idea what would happen.

None of this stuff would have gotten fixed when Bruce used the Infinity Stones and everyone who'd been Snapped came back. We can see why the writers of the MCU don't want to touch this stuff with a 10-foot pole.

Then, everybody who'd been Snapped comes back, all at once and without warning, after being presumed dead for 5 years. Unfathomable chaos. Again.

After I'd seen Infinity War, but before I'd seen Endgame, I was of course thinking "how're they going to get out of this?" Using the Time Stone to go back in time felt too obvious, and I hoped the writers had a more clever idea than that. But now I'm thinking they should have gone ahead and used the time-travel element of the story in a more predictable way, and had the heroes go back in time and defeat Thanos before he'd acquired all of the Infinity Stones. I actually think you could retain a lot of we got in Endgame, or tailor it to fit. For instance, the Big Fight at the end would still work. The death of Natasha would still work, if they really want to keep that. I'm not sure about the death of Gamora, but it could probably be tailored so that it would be permanent, if they wanted her to remain in her new incarnation. I think you could still have the two Nebulas.

And, most importantly, you could still have Tony use the new/old set of Infinity Stones and sacrifice himself to defeat the new/old Thanos. Knowing that he'd be losing his daughter in the bargain might even have made that sacrifice all the more potent. Or would that have been just too much for the audience to take? Maybe the writers could think of a way to save Morgan, even as they erase the future she's from. I'm thinking of this as an Avengers version of Days of Future Past, which ended with Rachel Summers remaining in the present, even though the future she was from had been prevented. Shades of The Terminator too, I guess. (It's worth noting to any sci-fi fans who are dismissive of comics that Days of Future Past preceded The Terminator by 3 years.)

So, yeah, the more I've thought about it, the more I think the 'too obvious' solution that I initially dismissed might actually have been the better choice. Just because something is obvious doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, and sometimes the predictable thing should be what happens next.

You're definitely overthinking it... but you're not wrong. In fact, I'd say both WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier were valiant attempts to deal with all of the very issues you brought up, but its just a really big continuity problem that, you're right... it would just be so much easier to either time travel or multiverse their way out of.

Speaking of Captain America: The Winter Soldier... I recently watched it again and I realize that I like it a little better than I thought I did. I still don't think I would rank it top 10, but I think I'd bump it up a few notches.

 

[Cutlass]

Unpopular opinion, but we actually really liked The Flash. GotG3 was actually pretty good as well. I know both Spiderverse movies are very well reviewed, but we still haven't seen either - just can't get past the animation style.

I haven't seen Flash yet. To me GotT3 wasn't bad, so much as it was lower part of the MCU. But opinions may vary based on how invested someone is with the characters.

 

[RobAnybody]

OK I am way behind on my Superhero movies too, not just the shows... and I have to decide whether to try and go to the theatre to see a few things or just wait for it to come out on streaming...

Across the Spiderverse
Guardians 3
The Flash

I haven't seen any of them yet, so I'm in the same boat but am choosing to wait for streaming on all of them. However, if I had to choose one to go see in theaters, it would definitely be Spider-Verse. I'm as skeptical as you are in regards to it living up to the first one, but everything I've read says it does.

Second choice would be Guardians 3. Word of mouth on that one is good as well, although not quite *as* good. Probably depends on how quickly you want to see the wrap up to their story. From what I've read, if you are an Adam Warlock fan (which I am), you won't like his portrayal. Also, it apparently really fleshes out Rocket's history.

Flash: no chance. Reviews are pretty bad, it's flopping horribly, even worse than expected, & apparently even the Keaton Batman scenes don't save it. Plus, all the baggage: dead-end DCEU, Ezra Miller, & the real reason we all know it flopped but no one is willing to admit: short-haired brunette completely out-of-character Supergirl!!! (actually, I've read that Sasha Calle's "Supergirl" is one of the few good things in the movie) *

* I swear people just think she's "female Superman" & haven't read a single Supergirl comic or know anything about her. It's infuriating. They graft whatever personality they want onto her because they know nothing about the character. It'd be like only knowing Iron Man is a "guy in a techno-suit" & making him a polite, humble guy with no ego, who gets along with everyone, because "guy in a techno-suit" is all the research they've done. So: I will maintain - & no one can convince me otherwise - that completely blowing the character, not to mention the look, of Supergirl is the one & only reason!** this movie is going to lose the studio $100's of millions of dollars!

** I'm obviously kidding, although it does annoy me

 

[Cutlass]

Rewatching Multiverse of Madness. Really not sure how Scarlet Witch is a match for pretty much every other magic user on Earth at the same time. Plot Armor, I suppose.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Rewatching Multiverse of Madness. Really not sure how Scarlet Witch is a match for pretty much every other magic user on Earth at the same time. Plot Armor, I suppose.

She was pwning Thanos in Endgame and he had to call in a massive airstrike from his spaceship to save himself.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Rewatching Multiverse of Madness. Really not sure how Scarlet Witch is a match for pretty much every other magic user on Earth at the same time. Plot Armor, I suppose.

She was pwning Thanos in Endgame and he had to call in a massive airstrike from his spaceship to save himself.

Right, and before that, in Ultron, she pretty much kicked the Avengers' collective [behinds]. iirc, Wong said that witchcraft was different from sorcery. He didn't elaborate, but we at least know they're not two words for the same thing.

But most of the explanation was in WandaVision:
Wanda was born with witchcraft, not taught it. So she was a magical prodigy, then she absorbed energy from the Mind Stone, and then she spent some time reading/absorbing/being infected by the Darkhold.
Agatha was impressed with what Wanda had done at Westview. iirc, she said it wasn't just an elaborate illusion, that Wanda had actually altered reality, and was mind-controlling an entire town of people. I think Agatha also said Wanda was doing it 'all on autopilot' or something, that the Hex was self-sustaining.
Darcy said that her equipment was "registering a high level of CMBR" - Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. Wanda was literally warping the universe. Wanda created a whole new superhero by accident; a superhero who, at least in the comics, is pretty powerful herself (and we saw that Monica could immediately see across the EM spectrum).
Agatha said that Wanda was using 'chaos magic' and again seemed impressed by that. We can infer that chaos magic is harder to use, more dangerous, and/or more powerful than other forms of magic.
Agatha mentioned that the Darkhold has a whole chapter about the Scarlet Witch, and that the Scarlet Witch is said to be more powerful than the Sorcerer Supreme. Wanda is literally a creature of myth. We can perhaps infer that women like Morgan le Fay, Baba Yaga, Hecate, Oya, and the Morrigan might have been Scarlet Witches.
Agatha also said it was Wanda's destiny to destroy the world, and when Wanda was leaving Agatha in 'prison', Agatha said "you have no idea what you've unleashed."

(In the comics, Wanda is a Nexus Being. The term 'nexus' was introduced to the MCU in Loki, but I don't think 'nexus beings' were mentioned. Also, there was a whole storyline in the comics about Wanda f'ing up everything, called "House of M." A lot of people were speculating that WandaVision might be an adaptation of "House of M" - I myself was wondering if WandaVision could be an inverted House of M and introduce mutants to the MCU rather than erase them - but it wasn't and it didn't. I guess it's possible the MCU isn't done with Wanda yet, but I heard or read an interview with Elizabeth Olsen that made it seem like she wouldn't be too sorry if she was done with that.)

 

[Laurana Kanan]

(actually, I've read that Sasha Calle's "Supergirl" is one of the few good things in the movie)

I was concerned about this version of Supergirl, but I actually really liked Sasha's version. I wouldn't have minded seeing her in a stand-alone movie in a similar universe where she doesn't die.

I swear people just think she's "female Superman"

Well, TBH for all intents and purposes she plays the exact same role as Henry Cavill's Superman in Man of Steel.

 

[Patine]

(In the comics, Wanda is a Nexus Being. The term 'nexus' was introduced to the MCU in Loki, but I don't think 'nexus beings' were mentioned. Also, there was a whole storyline in the comics about Wanda f'ing up everything, called "House of M." A lot of people were speculating that WandaVision might be an adaptation of "House of M" - I myself was wondering if WandaVision could be an inverted House of M and introduce mutants to the MCU rather than erase them - but it wasn't and it didn't. I guess it's possible the MCU isn't done with Wanda yet, but I heard or read an interview with Elizabeth Olsen that made it seem like she wouldn't be too sorry if she was done with that.)

Isn't the, "Nexus," (or, "Nexus of Sominus,") where the, "Dark Overlord," - the main baddie - was pulled from by the big muguffin device that summoned beings from alternate and other dimensions after the title character was summoned in, "Howard the Duck," (the first, full-length, live-action, Hollywood-produced, licensed movie based on a Marvel comics property - as it said in it's cheesy intro narration - "In the beginning, there was Howard the Duck!" How prophetic! )? But I believe the term Nexus was used in some similar vain - not that iti was MCU - it just just licensed Marvel - like the Hulk by Universal, the Fantastic Four and it's sequel, the X-Men moives, the oriignal Spider-Man movies Daredevil, Elektra, and both versions of the Punisher (the Dolf Lungrum version, and the one with John Travolta as the main villain) - things that had no MCU canon when made, and some that still haven't formally been worked in since settling rights and licensing.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Isn't the, "Nexus," (or, "Nexus of Sominus,") where the, "Dark Overlord," - the main baddie - was pulled from by the big muguffin device that summoned beings from alternate and other dimensions after the title character was summoned in, "Howard the Duck," (the first, full-length, live-action, Hollywood-produced, licensed movie based on a Marvel comics property - as it said in it's cheesy intro narration - "In the beginning, there was Howard the Duck!" How prophetic! )? But I believe the term Nexus was used in some similar vain - not that iti was MCU - it just just licensed Marvel - like the Hulk by Universal, the Fantastic Four and it's sequel, the X-Men moives, the oriignal Spider-Man movies Daredevil, Elektra, and both versions of the Punisher (the Dolf Lungrum version, and the one with John Travolta as the main villain) - things that had no MCU canon when made, and some that still haven't formally been worked in since settling rights and licensing.

I should have written, "The term 'nexus event' was introduced to the MCU in Loki." That was just a typo. But I'm not surprised to hear that nexuses (nexi?) of various sorts have been all over the place.

 

[Cutlass]

Right, and before that, in Ultron, she pretty much kicked the Avengers' collective [behinds]. iirc, Wong said that witchcraft was different from sorcery. He didn't elaborate, but we at least know they're not two words for the same thing.

But most of the explanation was in WandaVision:
Wanda was born with witchcraft, not taught it. So she was a magical prodigy, then she absorbed energy from the Mind Stone, and then she spent some time reading/absorbing/being infected by the Darkhold.
Agatha was impressed with what Wanda had done at Westview. iirc, she said it wasn't just an elaborate illusion, that Wanda had actually altered reality, and was mind-controlling an entire town of people. I think Agatha also said Wanda was doing it 'all on autopilot' or something, that the Hex was self-sustaining.
Darcy said that her equipment was "registering a high level of CMBR" - Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. Wanda was literally warping the universe. Wanda created a whole new superhero by accident; a superhero who, at least in the comics, is pretty powerful herself (and we saw that Monica could immediately see across the EM spectrum).
Agatha said that Wanda was using 'chaos magic' and again seemed impressed by that. We can infer that chaos magic is harder to use, more dangerous, and/or more powerful than other forms of magic.
Agatha mentioned that the Darkhold has a whole chapter about the Scarlet Witch, and that the Scarlet Witch is said to be more powerful than the Sorcerer Supreme. Wanda is literally a creature of myth. We can perhaps infer that women like Morgan le Fay, Baba Yaga, Hecate, Oya, and the Morrigan might have been Scarlet Witches.
Agatha also said it was Wanda's destiny to destroy the world, and when Wanda was leaving Agatha in 'prison', Agatha said "you have no idea what you've unleashed."

(In the comics, Wanda is a Nexus Being. The term 'nexus' was introduced to the MCU in Loki, but I don't think 'nexus beings' were mentioned. Also, there was a whole storyline in the comics about Wanda f'ing up everything, called "House of M." A lot of people were speculating that WandaVision might be an adaptation of "House of M" - I myself was wondering if WandaVision could be an inverted House of M and introduce mutants to the MCU rather than erase them - but it wasn't and it didn't. I guess it's possible the MCU isn't done with Wanda yet, but I heard or read an interview with Elizabeth Olsen that made it seem like she wouldn't be too sorry if she was done with that.)

I might have to rewatch WandaVision. I didn't take away that much from it.

 

[Clubber Lang]

Adventures with Supe's trailer -

Witness Clark Kent's transformation into Superman, Metropolis's guardian, as he struggles to embrace his destiny

Watch episode 1 (Adventures of a normal man) :

Clark Kent is ready to start a normal life as a reporter for the Daily Planet, but when his new friends Lois and Jimmy are put in danger, he risks revealing his true identity to save them.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Adventures with Supe's trailer -

Watch episode 1 (Adventures of a normal man) :

Eh, passable.

The Siegle heirs got a check, but did the Christopher Reeve estate?

 

[Kyriakos]

I heard that the latest superhero movie, The Ezra, bombed.
Good ^^

 

[Laurana Kanan]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1678396653345165320

 

[Patine]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1678396653345165320

Wolverine: "You guys really go out dressed like this?"

Cyclops: "What would you prefer? Yellow spandex?"

Easter egg quotes from the first X-Men movie.

Now he's dressed in BRIGHT YELLOW!

 

[Laurana Kanan]

IIRC, isn't Deadpool 3 supposed to be part of the MCU? If that's the case I wonder what the context is for including Wolverine?

 

[Patine]

IIRC, isn't Deadpool 3 supposed to be part of the MCU? If that's the case I wonder what the context is for including Wolverine?

Well, Professor X is also an Illuminati member. Maybe Disney will just quietly grandfather in the Fox 21 movies into retrospective canon. Here's hoping...