arc
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Variety:
https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/echo-trailer-marvel-hulu-rating-release-date-1235778785/
The Marvel series “Echo” — which debuted its inaugural trailer on Friday and premieres on Jan. 10 — contains several firsts for the company. It’s the first Marvel Studios production that will debut simultaneously on Disney+ and Hulu, the first that will have every episode available to binge at once and the first that will be rated TV-MA. And most importantly to director and executive producer Sydney Freeland (“Reservation Dogs”), it is the first superhero series ever to center on a deaf and a Native American character: Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), who made her debut in the 2021 series “Hawkeye.”
(There's no spoiler below; I pushed the spoiler button and now I can't delete the spoiler box on mobile.)
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New trailer! Also confirms new release date and that it’ll still be a binge drop. I kinda hoped they would recalibrate in wake of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes slowing down the pipeline.The tag line “no bad deed goes unpunished” has to be a Punisher tease, right?
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2 hours ago, paigow said:
The Hiddleston Variant we see now was either removed from his timeline before meeting Alt!Thanos or Alt!Thanos did not behave the same as Prime!Thanos.
Yes, per the first episode of the series, he was caught by the TVA almost immediately after escaping with the Tesseract/Space Stone in branched 2012.
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4 hours ago, paigow said:
Gator Loki [much like Spider-Pig] indicates that DNA is not the critical common factor across variants.
I feel like Loki could be a special case because of magic and all those Loki variants could have started out as the same baby.
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First thing that bugs me, since it came up in the previouslies: the temporal loom is more of a temporal spinning mule, isn't it? "[refining] raw time into a physical timeline" is much more analogous to how fabric yarns and threads are spun from raw staple fibers into a one-dimensional product, rather than a loom that weaves yarns into a two dimensional fabric. (There are many myths about Fates weaving destinies into a tapestry that's basically a sort of sacred timeline, of course, but this show has chosen to make the Sacred Timeline a one-dimensional thing rather than a tapestry.)
Was that girl who broke her arm written to not have lines because that made the most sense, or because they could pay her less if she doesn't have lines? As far as I understand the SAG-AFTRA contracts, she'd be an "under-five" (as in five or fewer lines, totalling 50 words) even if she did get to speak a little.
Whoa, real timeline OB's lab/workshop looks a lot like his TVA workshop.
I didn't recognize Zaniac as a real game, but it turns out it's a deep cut MU reference.
"It's about who" is magnificent cheese and I love it.
4 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:But my favorite part? That freaking Casey was one of those prisoners who mysterious escaped Alcatraz back in 1962!
Oh wow, I had no idea this was based on a real incident!
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(some noodling on the lore of the show and Sylvie's character, which I felt fits better here than on any particular episode thread)
From the s02e04 thread, responding to me saying the show wants Sylvie to be a fully separate character from Loki
QuoteThis has been a tension we've had to roll with since S1. How much are they the same person vs not the same is always in the air. Quotes like "you can do this, because we're the same..." vs. "Because I'm not you..."
Regarding their families they have a conversation about their respective (adoptive) mothers on the train. In Sylvie's timeline, a goddess of mischief was born of Frost Giants and was adopted by the Asgardians instead of the more usual god of mischief. She's the same person in terms of the role in the timeline ("temporal aura") but also not necessarily related in a genetic sense. She likely has a sibling equivalent of Thor since they seem to have the same mom (Sylvie got nostalgic listening to Loki talk about Frigga). But still not the exact same person, since different timelines...
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QuoteIf Sylvie is a whole different character than Loki (which I agree it seems that way), I wish they would define what a variant actually means in this world but, at this point, it is a useless term
The show in s1 was pretty loose with the rules on how timeline branching worked and how far it could go before becoming unrecoverable to the Sacred Timeline, but on the one hand, it seemed like the TVA pruned variants right around the decisive moment where timelines would branch. (On the other hand, Sylvie said her parents told her she was adopted, and our Loki found out much, much later. Maybe that started the timeline divergence?)
Anyways, I don't think Loki and Sylvie were intended to have started out as two different babies. I think they were both the same baby found by Odin and Sylvie is a trans femme variant on Loki. I guess there isn't a whole lot of canon to support or rule out either view, though.
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On 10/29/2023 at 4:13 PM, ApathyMonger said:
The mythology of this season is just baffling to me. I have no idea why the characters are doing what they're doing or the consequences of them failing.
Last season, the TVA was more or less just about keeping history going the way it was supposed to. So the Avengers were allowed to time travel in Endgame but the TVA would clean up variants and branches.
This season they’ve introduced the loom which processes “raw time” into a team stream or something and if it breaks then all chaos is unleashed, or possibly the multiverse dies. And it’s an urgent problem but with no ticking clock or any kind of indication that things are getting worse. And this massive city-sized agency tasked with patrolling an entire universe for time shenanigans somehow has no one besides our handful of plucky heroes working on this existential looming disaster. And Renslayer opposes them with no plausible counter-plan of her own to not destroy her own timeline. This also kind of describes Sylvie. Then they’ve got this Kang variant who is both a genius and a small time con man so there’s never a sense that the show even knows who Timely should be.
also, I guess they want to make Sylvie a fully separate character from Loki but it jarred me when he talked about “his” brother rather than “our” brother.
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On 10/29/2023 at 4:09 PM, paigow said:
Then Loki sent himself to the End Of Time??? And fight Renslayer again???
No, this was the other end of the bit from 2x01 where there was some convoluted plan in which Loki had to get pruned right when the little indicator flashed green in order to fix his time slipping. So yes, normally the pruning stick sends the target to the end of time, but this time it didn't.
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Also, and this carries over from the last episode, I just can’t buy any kind of ticking bomb deadline for a crisis at the TVA. It sits outside of normal time, right? It shouldn’t matter how long Loki and Mobius stay in 1893 or any other point in normal time. The rules aren’t very clear about this and the way they can talk to B-15 does seem to imply that there is a 1:1 correspondence of time spent in the field to time passing in the TVA, but that makes very little sense.
Honestly I’d be fine with the show being vague about the rules if they didn’t try to impose imminent doom in two places that don’t share the same time. At least back in the first episode the deadline for saving Loki from time slipping occurred entirely within the TVA.
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Did Majors just decide that Timely should have a stutter in addition to being a before-his-time genius AND a con man? Or did the director keep telling him to do more acting? Every acting choice he made this episode felt showy and unnecessary, which I never felt watching him before. (though except for Ant-Man 3, I hadn't known about the abuse allegations with anything else I watched him in, and it certainly colors how I watch him now.) Anyways, he has always been an actor who makes a lot of big choices, but this was the first time where I felt like I could see him acting. Tremendously distracting.
Every bit of this episode felt like it was spinning its wheels, even if Loki and Mobius went a little meta by lampshading it. The multiple stand-offs with Sylvie had a lot of shouting and it never made sense to me why she wouldn't believe that the TVA was crucial to keeping the multiverse alive, esp since she did at the end and it wasn't because anyone finally gave her a more convincing argument either.
And the 1893 sets were good but somehow like 5% below great. I feel like the similar era "Warrior" show did it better, though to be fair their entire thing is set in the 1870s, while "Loki" time travels all over.
I wonder if original formula He Who Remains was self-built or if he was also kick-started by a TVA manual from OB. So is Ravonna's big secret that she's a HWR variant too? Or is OB the real power behind the TVA? "He Who Remains" is a good name for someone who set up his throne at the "end of time", but Ouroboros is a good name for someone who's always been there, a truly self-created man.
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20 hours ago, Athena said:
Memory Rick says that after they got back, Memory Rick was left in Jerry's mind whether by accident or purpose by Rick. If Memory Rick was in the gestalt, he would have a lot more access than springs and gears.
I guess I interpreted it differently. He suspects he's in Jerry's brain due to Rick's fault, but the way he says it, it's as if he doesn't remember the Burger-and-Fries/Jerrick thing at all -- or, this is the Burger-and-Fries/Jerrick thing: "How did I get here? I suspect a chunk of Rick's brain got merged with a chunk of Jerry's." Whereas if he had been the key to preserving Rick and Jerry's individual minds, and then got stuck in Jerry's brain after all that, he would have been a lot clearer about how he got left there.
Also, I feel like the show has used end tags to expand on various short gags hinted at earlier in an episode without meaning the tag comes chronologically after the events of the episode, but I don't actually remember enough to cite an example.
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40 minutes ago, Lantern7 said:
We forgot about the tag . . . the memory of Rick that was in Birdperson's mind is now trapped in Jerry's brain . . . and he/it can't get out because Jerry assumes everything runs on springs.
Memory Rick said he was in Jerry's brain, but I think he made a mistake based on incomplete information. I think the tag was a flashback to Memory Rick trapped in the Jerricky gestalt.
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I only barely followed the idea of Rick's mind in Jerry's brain and vice-versa, but they very quickly moved on from it to a weird friendship of two Jerry-Rick merged entities, followed by Jerricky, which was horrifying. And I'm not sure why the crime boss could tell Jerricky had all the positive qualities of Jerry and Rick -- surely the two merged versions would have some of Jerry's self-sabotage and/or general incompetence.
All that said, I was highly entertained throughout.
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10 hours ago, tennisgurl said:
but she could slow down with the self righteousness. Yes the TVA have done a lot of horrible things, but they really did think that they were doing the right thing and they do seem to serve kind of greater cosmic purpose, the situation isn't as black and white as she acts like it is.
Being the direct target of many TVA murder attempts will probably create a permanent bias against the TVA.
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The episode’s moments were strong, but I felt like they skipped way too much plot, going from fixing Loki’s time-slipping problem last episode to pursuing X-5* in 1977 because he’s their lead to Sylvie. And BTW why is that important to Mobius and B-15?
I continue to love the costuming of the TVA. It’s mostly classic (1950s?) but with weird extra details that show they’re clearly not from any real-world era.
* how can it be that an agency that looks after an entire universe and multiverse and is clearly shown to be bigger than Manhattan has so few hunters that all the ones we’ve seen have such short designations? Do agents like Xcdef-847293737272 only get assigned to remote corners of the sacred timeline?
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I love time shenanigans, so the conversation happening in two time periods was awesome. They also did a good job using little details like glasses or Mobius' idle dust-graffiti to help signpost which era was which.
Also, this show's Modern(ish) art direction in the whole design of the TVA is sublime. I love it so much. The 1982 McDonalds was great too.
Overall, Loki the show is one of the least directly adapted from any comics runs, right? S1 was a great story and I'm excited for S2 too.
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... correction, "NOT let Joshua enact his "standby, not off" plan."
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+ great vibes
+ incredible production value, esp for an $80M film. A couple of slightly bad CGI moments but overall it looked great
+ interesting world building
- but it doesn't fully hang together. In some ways the Americans are full on anti-synthetic zealots, but on the other hand Alison Janney's character (Col Howell) was happy to use the sapient running bombs.
- also, there's no reason to make those bombs bipedal, or even sapient.
- as with Captain America 2, sinking all your money into one (or three, in CATWS's case) megaweapon is a poor allocation of resources.
- Simulants having that big hollow zone in their heads doesn't make a lot of sense. There's no compelling aesthetic reason for simulants not to have fully human-looking heads.
- it felt underexplained why the Americans couldn't have destroyed Alphie and let Joshua enact his "standby, not off" plan.
- the monkey activating the detonator was cool, but honestly once that explosive was planted it should have just been on a timer.
- So did Drew just flip sides? How was he an American combatant but five years later he was living free in New Asia? And Joshua knew where he was and that he'd be an ally, but the Americans like Howell didn't?
[neither a plus nor a minus] Hans Zimmer's score was fine but I don't think it was iconic like his most famous scores.
+ the Vietnam allusion/allegory was solid and I was pleased it wasn't outrageously jingoistic pro-American.
+ the art design evoked Syd Mead a lot, esp with those 45 degree angles in the buildings and NOMAD.
- surely the Buddhist (?) synthetics could have recruited some human local to turn off Maya's life support long before Joshua happened to arrive.
- I couldn't buy that multi-thousand tons of NOMAD chunks could crash into land and sea from a few kilometers up and it wasn't a major catastrophe on its own. Instead people were running towards the wreckages immediately.
All those negatives above are just my usual plot nitpicks, but specifically about what the film was trying to achieve, I think:
* the film under-executed on drawing a more concrete father-daughter connection between Joshua and Alphie, who is the child of Maya.
* I saw a review say that Joshua gradually becomes radicalized over the course of this film, but for me that doesn't feel fully fleshed out, in that I never felt like I could see Joshua's convictions changing. What little motivation I got was that he was trying to do right by Alphie and Maya. And it's nice to have a personal connection to the fight, but this is a case where I wanted him to have an opinion (or a more obviously drawn one) about the war.
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This brought its net spending down to $219.8 million meaning that the movie will have to gross at least $439.6 million at the box office to break even as studios get around half of theater takings.
I read years ago that studios get 90% of the first run ticket revenue*. Movie chains make their profits on popcorn, soda, and other snacks.
* apparently it’s a more complicated formula, but still above 50%: https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/movie-distribution2.htm
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‘Past Lives’: how Celine Song made the year’s best indie movie
QuoteThe strangest and most transporting thing about talking to Song about all of this is that it feels like rewatching her movie – not in the sense that she’s recounting it scene by scene or quoting her own work, but in her infectious enthusiasm for what that work evokes: a heightened awareness of how our memories shape our perception of time. That sense of perspective comes across when she describes something as simple as an old haunt or apartment long after leaving it: “It’s probably gone in every meaningful sense of the word, but it lives in me. That can make you feel powerless in some ways, but you can also think of it as a very powerful thing. This is eternal, this is forever. It can all go away, and you can die, and the experiences you have in it are forever.”
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I feel like Rick and Morty at its best really explores every possible ramification of their insane ideas, and that's something where maybe Futurama has not been quite as strong. Like, here the idea that parasites have their own parasites is something, but then the resolution was just to stomp the parasite-parasites. Why weren't the second order parasites also themselves subverted by third order parasites, and so on?
Separately, the Dune sandworm lifecycle was sort of referenced with the cycle of life in the litterbox, but it didn't fully land because they rushed over it so quickly. I guess Dune is a lot to cover in a single 24 minute episode.
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On 7/18/2023 at 1:34 PM, swanpride said:
It is really frustrating....Marvel had a great show to tie with the movies with Agent of Shield, and they just threw it away.
At the time, Disney-Marvel’s live action efforts were split in two (even leaving aside all the characters licensed away to other studios). Feige had the movies and cheapskate/terrible person Ike Perlmutter was demoted to TV. Also, Jeph Loeb was leading efforts on the TV side and he also sucked. So aside from the practical difficulties of trying to coordinate between the movies and TV, there was also the problem of the TV side being led by people with really bad ideas.
And it’s not like Iger could have fixed this much earlier. Perlmutter owned Marvel before selling to Disney, and retained clout just for his wealth and shares. Disney demoted Perlmutter because Feige was more successful, and then took TV away from Perlmutter too because whatever the handicaps of working without the full blessing of the movie side were, the TV side wasn’t executing that well either, most notably in the Inhumans debacle.
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100% Soft, who designed the Twitter She-Hulk emojis and the Avongers merch in the show, will sell a KEVIN toy as an SDCC exclusive.
https://gizmodo.com/marvel-studios-kevin-comic-con-she-hulk-100-soft-toy-1850647356
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6 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:
So why would I bother even going there when I already have a Disney plus subscription?
Fair, but then again, second run is a small, small part of box office revenue. I think studios/distributors take 90% of the ticket on first run films, and a much smaller cut on second run, which also has cheaper ticket prices.
It’s not just Disney/D+ and WB/Max. Even studios without major streaming services (wait, is that just Sony?) have movies come up on DVD or digital rent in a similar time frame. Uncharted was available digitally nine weeks after release, and on physical media about two more weeks after that. (Then on Netflix another three months after DVD.)
and even with short windows, GOTG3 did very well.
S02.E05: Science/Fiction
in Loki
There was no explanation for why Loki started time slipping, no. Maybe they'll cover it in the next episode or maybe it was just a very plot-convenient side effect of killing HWR.
As for Loki and Mobius: yes, in one sense Loki was selfish. Some of the best moments of this show have been when Mobius (in s1) and Sylvie here break past Loki's self-deceptions to get to real truths. But while Sylvie was right in the bar, Loki's pretext for gathering his friends wasn't entirely wrong either: ignoring the apocalypse doesn't mean the apocalypse will ignore you.
Also, I'm of the opinion that if someone leaves and then returns with time travel to the instant they left, functionally they didn't really leave. Although if they left for a really long amount of perceived time from their end and had life changing experiences, then maybe.