Meanwhile Labyrinth was making David Bowie’s package even bigger on purpose.

 

No wonder my mother loved watching that so much.

 

There's a good reason we had terms like "Parental Service" and "Parental Bonus" for all-ages media.

 

Spoiler: Namor meme

 

Just watched the film. Felt like a 2 and a half hour funeral where drunk relatives occasionally break out into fisticuffs. The acting was fine but there were several moments I nearly thought about just shutting my eyes and taking a nap.

And yes, Ironheart was pretty forced. But whatever.

 

What the hell...??? I am sorry, why are breasts offensive all of a sudden?
And is this going to be a thing now, Disney editing movies in retrospect?
(Btw, never knew Lindsey Lohan was in Herbie. I only saw that movie ages ago as a kid.)
EDIT: ah never mind I just saw this was a new Herbie movie apparently, one I never heard of.

Glad I skipped this then. Will download it someday maybe but honestly I still have not watched Thor Ragnarok 2 or whatever either yet, I am finding these newer Marvel movies just rather uninteresting.

 

Looked up Rotten Tomatoes. How in the world is this movie pulling a 95% audience approval rating? I mean, it's okay as a film (a tad boring and the war between two kingdoms feels strangely small) but it's not THAT good.

 

For me, Endgame was the perfect jumping off point. The big finale to this decade-long story we’d all been following. But then they kept the train rolling, and I just haven’t been interested enough to check many of them out aside from Spider-Man & Loki.

And yeah- I can’t believe that they caved in to some people at a test screen and spent the cash to painstakingly go through the entire movie to reduce Lindsey’s breast size. The absolute height of absurdity. If the movie had been made before cg was a thing, they’d be like, “No. we’re not reshooting the entire movie, because you’re offended that someone has big boobs.”

 

Also, what's up with Namor's people doing Ryu's ha-u-ken as their national salute?

 

It's taken from actual Mesoamerican art.

 

Should have gone with Imperious Rex!

 

So does the movie try to explain why the Atlanteans up and left the Mediterranean and are now living in the ocean around Central/South America?
Gotta say, if I was greek, I would be pissed about how US and UK movies constantly reimagine greek mythology.

Was that the director's doing? I assumed it was Bowie himself...
It always felt uncomfortable to watch his scenes due to that. Especially made it hard to recommend the movie to family and friends.  

It's absurd. I mean Lindsay was exactly 20 when the movie aired. She wasn't exactly underage or anything where it would have been an issue to sexualize her. But it wasn't even her dress or such, it was a natural part of her body that apparently riled up the censors! Just WTF of a world we are living in...
I checked out after Infinity War already. Or actually, before that, I regretted paying to see Ant-Man in theaters, and never went to see Captain Marvel. Other people sat all jawdropped and oohh-ahhhhing at the end of Infinity War and I was shaking my head wondering how the hell all these grown up men and women have never read a comic book before to know such character deaths are always undone? (Unless you are Ben Parker or Thomas and Martha Wayne).
I found most of the Marvel shows lackluster. I enjoyed Falcon and the Winter Soldier the most but that was due to Bucky's, Walker's and Zemo's actors being really good, the story had huge issues. Loki was infuriating, and Hawkeye was forgettable.
Unlike others I had no huge nostalgic feelings for the big Spider-man crossover movie, because honestly I had no great love for either of the previous Spider-Men movie series. The Tobey Maguire ones were certainly better than the disaster that was Amazing Spider-Man, which tried to be Batman Begins at first and then completely lost focus by the next... but even the Maguire movies had tons of issues for my liking. Frankly, it wasn't until Homecoming that I felt Spider-Man was finally done right in a movie.
Honestly, I would be much more interested in animated shows, if Marvel would finally get around to make some good ones. The last Spider-Man show was lazily written and had even worse animation, and there was not much else around. I wish we could have something like Avengers - EMH or Spectacular Spider-Man again.

RT is not using a logical system for its ratings, unlike IMDB which just weighs the averages of the ratings users give it. On RT, you have to verify a ticket purchase through some Fandango system or otherwise your review will not count into the score. And you can guess how many people will go through all that rigamarole. Not to mention how this basically removes everyone outside the USA from voting, as well as anyone who has not watched the movie in theaters but via streaming or TV. So the user score is completely worthless.

 

Knowing nothing about Namor, I thought when he said “Imperius Rex” he was trying to call Shuri a bloodthirsty conqueror/king or something. It’s cool that it was still a really badass line for someone uninitiated.

 

Funnily enough, Bowie was against it. The Hensons explain that the story was basically a coming of (adult) age story for Sarah, so… I’m just going to let this article do the talking.

'Labyrinth': David Bowie's 'Naughty' Costume Pants Made Jim Henson Happy: 'It's Terrifying to Teenage Girls'

Yeah, just hurts my brain with how stupid that is.

I like the 3 main leads of Loki: Loki, Mobius, & Sylvie. They carry the show well and I like seeing them play off of each other.

I found plenty to like, but there were a few WTF moments. Like how just a day prior Loki could catch arrows out of the air & survive them exploding in his face (& survive being smashed by Hulk). But now he has trouble stacking up against a possessed Walmart employee.

 

Can't go with something the fans like.

 

He did say Imperius Rex, just translated into Mayan. Stop being so bitter about something so stupid.

 

Yeah, he clearly says it during the climax.

 

While I watched this film and enjoyed it enough to accept it as entertainment I am finding a rather large flaw in the MCU.

I'm not finding it as funny as it used to be.

I get why that might be the case here as this film is definitely grief centric, but the comedy of the past several MCU films hasn't hit nearly as well as it did with the likes of Iron Man and others. The jokes are falling flat and if you can't at least laugh a bit during the film then you're kind of stuck with a heavier emotional turn towards the stronger emotions driving the story. They are making you feel and the feel is definitely not as thrilling as it once was. The charm is missing, the enjoyment of seeing these characters interacting.

I haven't seen a single Disney+ show because I don't own the service and as such I'm probably missing a lot of context here, that being said I have to agree with others Valentina, or whatever her name is, is a poorly contrived character and the actress playing her is terrible in what little screen time I've seen of her. What is her purpose? Why is she there? Is she like the evil Skrull Queen or something stirring up humanity as part of what is to come when they inevitably adapt Secret War/Invasion or whatever the fuck it was called?

I half expect her to be some kind of alien with the way she acts so oddly.

Overall... Phase 4 is a middling mess of inconsistency caused, no doubt, by the fact that they expect you to be watching everything, including the Disney+ shows to understand where the plot is going. I honestly don't even get any kind of vibes as to what that might be, there's been these huge hints of the Multiverse being a factor going forward and apparently building up for Kang the Conqueror, but there has been too little genuine story beats between these films to link anything. Shang-Chi was the funnest and most enjoyable film that wasn't a direct sequel, Eternals was boring as fuck and the Deviants were not what I was expecting. (Mindless animals is definitely not my idea of a decent villain.) No Way Home was literally fan-wank central and quite a tad enjoyable, but considering we probably won't be getting to see any of these villains again as part of the MCU... well it's at least nice they got one decent hurrah.

Multiverse of Madness relied heavily on knowing Wandavision and really tried to get you invested and yet I haven't re-watched it. Black Widow was a non-entity, Thor Love and Blunder did a decent enough job being entertaining and funny and I love the overall idea behind the plot, yet it is another film I haven't re-watched yet to get a better feel for because I'm still a bit put off with some of the decisions going on with these movies.

All I can say is Ant-Man and Guardians 3 better break the curse of three that sequels sometimes fall into because I could use some action and serious funny moments not spoiled by trailers or the like.

And for the love of God give us a break with needing to know all the events of the Disney+ stuff just to get invested in these cameos or stuff.

I fear the MCU has imploded and is slowly crumbling away from the solid foundation it had near the beginning.

 

The MCU is certainly a victim of its own success, and I think the special presentation format would be a much more reasonable way to give us the stuff they don’t want to commit to a whole film. Some stuff, okay, maybe needs more time than a two hour film and for that you could always just do a two part special presentation or something.

She-Hulk is explicitly a 30 minute sitcom deal that wasn’t a 6 hour movie so if you want to follow that format, okay, go ahead and do a series if you want. But the special presentation format is more palatable and doesn’t require us to watch 6 hours of homework, which is especially egregious since the Kang story was only introduced by Loki and nothing more. Why do I need to watch scenes of Valentina obnoxiously hamming it up to John Walker and putting down his wife? Why do I need to watch Kingo being a chickenshit and completely abandoning his family to die because he refuses to fight Ikaris, a man who just said “fuck your family”? Why do I need to watch Valentina hamfistedly telling Walker his new super-antihero name?

Okay okay I really hate Valentina. It’s to the point I don’t really want to see Thunderbolts, especially given there’s been two Suicide Squad movies and James Gunn himself did the good one.

But anyway, special presentation could just take us back to how it used to be. You’d get two-three movies a year, go in for two hours at a time, and be done with it. And it would trim the fat off the shows, and you don’t have to spend six weeks watching filler for breadcrumbs about the ongoing story, especially when the big movies of the year don’t do jackshit about the story despite literally being titled “multiverse” or being set in the cosmos like Thor. Wakanda Forever gets a pass because they had real life circumstances to address and they didn’t need to focus on anything else before settling that, bless Ryan Coogler for actually incorporating Namor in a way that makes sense and doesn’t feel contrived.

Same can’t be said for Valentina but both BP films had one weak spot; last time it was the dodgy CGI in the climax, this time it’s her who Marvel obviously demanded to be forced into the movie for, again, homework.

 

The MCU was first conceived brilliantly, until Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and Netflix came along, then half that shit was ignored, including the Inhumans because that was just terrible and I never even watched the damn thing.

Now, the major problem with the MCU is the same problem that has been plaguing the Marvel Comics for decades. Too many plots, too many characters and if you don't read every single issue you miss out on a lot of little details that might become crucial during the next big event BS.

As far as Valentina is concerned, I'm lucky, the extent of my exposure to her is one scene in Black Widow and now BP Wakanda Forever and quite frankly it says something when I didn't even remember her fucking name until I came here and read posts to remind me of who she is because I don't think her name was even uttered in BW or BPWF.

It's just Elaine from Seinfeld with a really odd personality quirk, a shock of blue in her hair for some reason and some really weird Super-Villain vibes.

Ross warns her off what a global power with Vibranium would do and she's acting all giddy and excited at the prospect as if it's the best idea since Ultron. I mean how is that not big warning signs to anybody sane in Office, and where the hell is Maria Hill? I don't think we've seen any of the former S.H.I.E.L.D characters that were important since Far From Home. (Unless they've been in the Disney+ stuff and, like I said, not a member.)

Anyway, I'm repeating myself.

The MCU was fun and entertaining when they had to try harder to make good movies, now that they have succeeded they're coasting, just like the comics on fan viewership. I have a feeling that once Phase 5 is over their plans for future franchises and films are going to be met with a huge flop because you can't just coast through the popularity and expect it to stay the same. It's why James Bond's film franchise slowly died until the last Pierce Brosnon failure, it's why The Sequel Trilogy has successfully murdered the Star Wars film franchise and it's why Harry Potter's Wizarding World films have succumbed to terrible choices just to cram Grindelwald and Dumbledore into everything that should have just been a light-hearted adventure about magical beasts.