arc
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Posts posted by arc
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On 12/28/2023 at 3:48 PM, thuganomics85 said:
Certainly won't complain about getting Devery Jacobs to voice Kahhori, since I'm all for her getting more and more work after Reservation Dogs (granted, in a just world, all of the young actors in that show would become huge stars.) Thought she did great work here. Interestingly,
According to an interview with Collider,
SpoilerShe was cast as Kahhori well before the Echo casting ever came up and so it doesn't sound like the two were intended to be linked. I mean, she could be lying, the way Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield lied their asses off about not being in NWH.
This was a lovely episode.
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My only quibble is that the lessons of Ta Lo are healing but not necessarily permanent: in the main timeline Wenwu turned evil (ish) again after his wife was murdered. (I know, not the worst reason in the world to turn evil.)
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21 hours ago, Linderhill said:
No, Hydra was wiped out by Bucky and Steve before Steve was captured by the Red Room.
I thought Hydra was almost wiped out, but the thing that took Steve out meant there was a stub of Hydra left over. I assumed that the last base wasn't fully destroyed. Probably not enough to have taken over SHIELD from the inside and start Project Insight, but enough to have a little something.
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Ah, this is a full on remix of Winter Soldier, where Peggy is Steve, Nat is Sam (or at least the sidekick role, combining Sam and Nat's roles from the movie), Steve is Bucky, Bucky is Alexander Pierce... plus like 20% of the Black Widow movie too.
Wait, is Rumlow not evil in this universe? Or I guess maybe even if he is, Hydra and the Red Room aren't necessarily allies.
That air rescue of Steve in the shorted-out suit was dope.
Steve and Peggy talking about the passage of time since WW2 made me realize Peggy still wears her hair in a very 1940s-ish style. I get the visual design reasons for them not to change her hairstyle, but it doesn't feel that believable.
I do like that they brought back that sound effect from CA:TWS where the bullet ricochets changed in pitch as the shield wielder approached the machine gun.
Oh snap, I was all set to wait for the next season doing a Peggy Carter version of Civil War or something, but instead Peggy got yoinked to the 1602 universe!
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2 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:
Is it just me or does this season feel like they aren't using The Watcher/Jeffrey Wright as well as they did last season?
The Watcher is usually just a framing device meant to introduce the What If of the issue/episode, and provide some helpful narration to speed things along and wrap things up at the end. It's really only in the last couple of episodes of last season where he had to do more than just watch and narrate. Given how overstuffed the last two episodes have felt, I wouldn't be surprised if they cut Watcher stuff to make room for the main story.
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1 hour ago, Megras said:
I guess they needed a Soviet hero to show the world cooperating aspect and the Winter Soldier is the best known.
Best known to the real world audience, but in the MCU all of their superhumans were pretty secret. Red Guardian would have been their most famous one. Per Black Widow, he even inspired toys made in the USSR. The Black Widows and Winter Soldier were black ops super-spies more than soldiers, much less superheroes. But arguably the Winter Soldier would have been more capable than Red Guardian.
Though even a kid with the kind of powers Celestial Peter Quill displayed would seem to greatly outclass a Winter Soldier armed with a sniper rifle. So really, the USSR coulda sent anyone for all the good it would do.
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Honestly, I didn't think Tessa Thompson voiced Valkyrie this time, and yet she did. <shrug> Whereas I figured RDJ didn't come back to do AU Iron Man, but Mick Wingert was nearly spot on as the replacement. Really solid.
The plot felt like a movie cut down to a 30 minute TV episode. Not enough time to explain why Valkyrie would throw in with Korg and Tony, or the Grandmaster would accept the challenge. As Topaz pointed out, the Grandmaster already ruled Sakaar, so it'd be a bet with no upside.
But the racing was fun enough, Iron Man did funny and cool Iron Man things, and I'm still not too annoyed by Korg yet.
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"Bernard in accounting" (who got the Puffin-1 call sign) has been mentioned twice now! The first time was the season 1 finale, in the Winter Soldier homage where Natasha talks about setting Peggy Carter up with Bernard.
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There's something absolutely bonkers about Stark building in red lights into his Iron Man bots to show when they've turned evil. Like, the very fact that he installed them indicates he knows there's a chance they might turn evil. He could have spent that energy on building some anti-evil protocols into the droids instead. However, it is totally on brand for Justin Hammer to activate the red eyes because he knows he's being a dick.
TBH I've never seen Die Hard. But I think I've picked up the gist from sheer cultural diffusion, and I was tickled to hear Darcy list how the situation was just like all the movies inspired by Die Hard.
How does one even obtain Hulk blood? Isn't he nigh invulnerable?
"Hulk Hogan" - ahahahaha!
I'm also pleased by WERNER, played by Ross Marquand, who went viral years ago for doing a ton of very funny impressions. Apparently he's actually been in What If season 1.
Darcy is adorable. There wasn't a post-credits scene in this, but Kat Dennings as Darcy did get to sing her full verse. I wonder if it was improvised. It's great either way.
I wasn't paying attention to the background during the call to Clint and Bruce, but the credits sequence made me realize the Iron Man toys were sold out and Hawkeye toys were on 25% discount and still no one was buying em.
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lol at the pretty unnecessary exposition explaining how Cap's shield isn't made of stolen vibranium.
That quadjet (?) had more than enough room inside for front-facing seats. Lemme tell you as a bus rider, side-facing seats aren't great even for the kinds of acceleration and deceleration a public bus has.
This goes back to the Avengers movie, but I've never been clear on how that glass circular cell is able to hold a Thor, much less a Celestial.
ROFL at Marvel engineering their own sorta "save Martha" moment in What If.
I'm no military tactician, but it seems bad to put tanks behind the superheroes, and who'll have to fire through em.
One big (no pun intended) problem with Goliath's powers is it makes him a much bigger target or vulnerable to friendly fire.
C'mon, there's no way an ant flies faster than Celestial energy tentacles.
The 1980s version of the Avengers is pretty good but as far as victory meals go, I'm sad shawarma was harder to come by back then.
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I was alternately charmed and put off by the cheesy neo-noir dialogue. The cyberpunk/Blade Runner aesthetics were superb, though.
Why did Nebula even need Yon-Rogg to hack the door to the mainframe? She's a cyborg with incredible hacking abilities herself, as seen both in GOTG3 and this episode right here. ... and then she got double-crossed by the Kree guy she busted out of jail in order to foil the big bad Ronan, who's... also a Kree guy.
Oh, her boss Nova Prime was in on it the whole time. Well, I guess that kinda works. This is still a heck of a convoluted plan for Nova Prime to have enlisted Yon-Rogg's help ahead of time without even setting it up for Nebula to know she would need Yon-Rogg.
Gotta say, as someone who enjoys the MCU but forgets vast swaths of it very quickly, I'm always thrown by the MCU Nova Corps not having super powers, unlike the comics.
And as with S1, I remain impressed that Marvel Studios convinced so many of the live action actors to reprise their roles for this.
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58 minutes ago, AimingforYoko said:
Well, I liked Majors as an actor, unfortunately he's a POS.
The thing with Kang is you can recast pretty easily.
THR suggests actors might be wary of taking a role where the previous guy was so publicly fired, but I think a lot of actors would make any sacrifice to get a multiple blockbuster movie contract. Anyways, THR also says Marvel could also pivot altogether to some other big bad, noting that "Avengers: The Kang Dynasty" has already been internally renamed to "Avengers 5".
Story-wise, Marvel isn't in a bad place. (spoilers for Quantumania and Loki s2)
SpoilerAnt-Man Quantumania finished with Ant-Man defeating Kang and Loki s2 finished with Loki end-running around Kang's most dangerous variant He Who Remains.
(yes, there is that Quantumania mid-credits scene, but we could just assume the post-Loki TVA is really good at dealing with Kang variants. I say pair Mobius up with Doctor Strange if we want a little more TVA onscreen.)
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Inside The Episode
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Well, that was fun. Man, Marder and Harmon weren't kidding when they said episode writer Heather Anne Campbell has enough darkness for everybody.
4 hours ago, Lantern7 said:Also: if Morty was the only one to go into The Hole, why did we look into the Rick/Diane dynamic?
I guess the Hole had to build up something to get to the deep underlying fear of relying on Rick? I don't know, this episode faked me out so many times I don't really know what's what.
I am 10000% convinced if the Hole was real that I would not jump in. The guy in the suit didn't come right out and say it, but the way he phrased things, it didn't sound like everyone who went in got out.
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new trailer: "Rampage"
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Now this was fun. My only quibble is that Rick already made a microverse a few seasons ago only to harvest the tiniest sliver of energy (the Microverse aliens of one planet stomping on Goobleboxes to generate electricity). If instead he had harvested the energy of the suns in the miniature universe, well, it wouldn't be infinite, but probably close enough for most purposes.
OK, that aside, solid work. You'd think Rick could have figured out a way to hitch a ride to Jerry's afterlife instead, but I think Rick craves conflict so he picked the Valhalla option.
I did really enjoy the whole Bigfoot story, from Morty stupidly opening the door and getting killed almost instantly, to Bigfoot's eventual truce with Rick. Shame Rick didn't put Bigfoot back into a body more like his original body.
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I only watched about half of this, because I kept dozing off. Last week's was "gloriously stupid" but this one was a dud.
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I was so in when I thought it was a movie. As a TV show, I’m actually slightly less enthused about it, but it still seems like a lot of fun,
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On 4/20/2021 at 12:00 PM, Crashcourse said:
Is this a new show, or the 1996 tv show with Scott Bakula and Maria Bello?
It's loosely based on the 2005 Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie movie: suburban couple are secretly glamourous spies. But the current description of the show sounds like it diverges significantly from the movie:
QuoteTwo strangers land jobs with a spy agency that offers them a life of espionage, wealth, and travel. The catch: new identities in an arranged marriage.
whereas in the movie (spoilers for the movie, I guess?)
Spoilerthe two are secretly glamourous spies but don't know each other is also a spy and more importantly, turn out to be working for opposing (unnamed) organizations, who consider the marriage, once revealed to them, to be a dealbreaker and want them to kill each other.
It's probably fine; the movie premise might not have sustained an ongoing show.
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Yes in one sense it's recent, but in another sense Superman died 30 years ago.
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9 minutes ago, Tenshinhan said:
This isn't really true, at least in regards to the main characters and protagonists. It's more like those characters rarely ever die in the first place. Villains and supporting characters maybe, but even then it's usually only after years and years that they return to life.
Peter Parker, Superman, Barry Allen, Jean Grey, 99% of all mutants several times, most of the core X-men when Hickman introduced the reincarnation protocols to stop death being a plot point in X-comics, Matt Murdock, Kamala Khan (she got better in just two months!), Bruce Wayne ... this trope is so common TV Tropes doesn't just have a sub-page for comic books, but a sub-sub page for the DCU and another two for Marvel (616 and the Ultimate universe)
QuoteAlso, movies are not comic books. The difference between mediums means that the nature of storytelling will not be the same, and the audience's expectations will also be different.
Yeah, that's fair.
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re: Earth-42 Miles -- possible spoilers for the upcoming third movie, just passing along what the filmmakers have said:
SpoilerThey hinted that this Miles, who they internally codenamed "Wiles" -- maybe the Wario to our Miles' Mario? -- is a vigilante superhero of some sort. He has no super powers. But then again, neither does his uncle in either universe; both rely on gadgets. Without a Spider-hero in Earth-42, the Sinister Six rule NYC, making it a more dystopian place compared to most alternate universes.
Anyways, if that's the case, then Wiles being this antagonistic to Miles is a fake-out on some level.
also, check out this non-canon animation test for an action sequence involving Miles-42 that one of the directors tweeted out.
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On 12/3/2023 at 4:09 AM, kiddo82 said:Quote
I also kept hoping that Zack Snyder and DC would do the Injustice Superman story, giving us a fun, dark alternative take on the Man of Steel.
LMAO. The piece started off bad by not getting the fun and heart of EEAAO, but this is where I knew the author’s takes are awful. “What if Superman is bad” is one of the core conceits of The Boys, and Invincible, and Brightburn, and also quite a lot of joyless comics too preoccupied with being shocking to be good. Let Superman be good. (Which I gather is James Gunn’s approach, but I digress)
Comics have been doing multiverses for decades. DC started their crossovers between Earth 1 and Earth 2 with their first “Crisis” storyline years before going all-out with “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, which reset their multiverse into a single universe, and then was gradually, then suddenly undone over the years because subsequent writers and editors simply couldn’t resist. And all of that was fine! What the audience cares about is the mainline version of the characters. Yes, theoretically there’s an infinite set of MCU-adjacent universes where May Parker didn’t die, but that didn’t cheapen her death in the movie.
Also, comics characters rarely stay dead. Even most of the most permanent deaths have ended up not being permanent: DC’s Barry Allen and Jason Todd, Gwen Stacy… at this point Uncle Ben might be the only one not brought back to their mainline universe in the comics.
Marvel’s What If? series did bring one character from one alt universe to another permanently, but that was semi-forgiveable since that version of the char was dead in the second universe and the first universe was a total wasteland with no one left to be abandoned by the character. Having already used that move, hopefully they won’t permanently undo the MCU deaths of major characters, but more importantly, the actors are aging out of those roles and probably can’t sign on for another ten years even if they wanted to.
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S02.E09: What If...Strange Supreme Intervened?
in What If...?
I've liked this season a lot, but this episode actually suffered from a way too long final boss fight despite being a 30 minute episode. Actually, it's two things: the fight was too long and way too much of it was energy bolts. Peggy throwing her shield through portals to redirect it: cool. Time manipulation: cool. Strange, Peggy, and Kahhori firing generic energy bolts: blech! Actually, Peggy literally punching the grief demon out of Strange was also good, in the so-stupid-it-rules sort of way. But still, this is the kind of boring pointless stuff that's been making the mainline MCU disappointing lately.
The show deserves the tiniest possible credit for making the Forge a ground portal of doom instead of a sky portal of doom, but that's about it.
Also, kind of a bummer to undo the redemption arc Strange Supreme had at the end of s1 all for the sake of having him heel turn for the same reason he had in his first appearance.