ICantDoThatDave

I get that sentiment, but it's an... enjoyable debate, & I don't think we're that far off, given that it (should, but really didn't) affect characters in this movie so... I think? you're jumping ahead here - I'm referring to the scene where Bucky & Sam confronted him after Lamar was just murdered in front of John's eyes by the Flag Smashers? If I have that wrong, I'm open to re-interpreting it, but Lamar was "just a regular human". EDIT: although, even if we're referring to the same scene, I think my below points are apt: True, but why? Why did they even attack him? Why did they even confront him? His BFF *just died*. I know according to film rules "your BFF just died" is meaningless, but in a well-written show that would actually mean something. Oh, agreed. That should have been explored. A more meaningful, or multiple meaningful "shame room" scenes for Walker (honestly, all of them, most didn't even get ONE) would have been better writing.

Saw the movie yesterday, but wanted to wait a day to let my thoughts sink in, because... a) I really enjoyed it, but 2) there were some absolutely horrible writing aspects to it So, now that I've "reconciled" those two thoughts here's my review (no direct story spoilers, but I will focus on how the specific characters are "handled", so... MILD SPOILER WARNING!!)... I still recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Phase 1-3 Marvel movies. It's fun. The characters, for the most part, are handled well, if quite a bit inconsistent with what we've seen of them in past movies/TV shows. The story is engaging, the over-arching plot is engaging, & I found myself very invested in the plot & resolution. As a quick summary, it's easily one the better Phase IV/V Marvel movies. And I recognize how low a bar that is, but it really is the greatest praise I can give it. To quickly address point #2 without spoiling: There were a TON of Coincidence #1+#2+#3 need to happen in order for the plot to happen, which are quite noticeable while watching, not even upon reflection. This object needs to hit this object (& ignore physics) to reveal this object. This character needs to conveniently overhear this conversation. This character needs to be able to locate our group despite that being improbable if not impossible (that one happens multiple times) Full disclosure: I love Yelena as a character, probably my favorite (current) MCU character, so just handling Yelena right is a plus IMO. She's not nearly as... jovial & free & upbeat... as she was in Black Widow or Hawkeye, but it makes sense in her timeline. It's been years (for her) since we've seen her & she is a bit disillusioned with her purpose in life. Which makes sense, but you still get glimpses of her snarkiness & wit. She is absolutely the main character of this movie, & that has its plusses & minuses - the other characters get a bit sidelined/shafted on character development due to the film's focus on her. Her journey, especially as it relates to Red Guardian, is engaging though. Just wish it hadn't detracted SO MUCH from the other characters. Red Guardian - He is, as the trailers showed, mostly comic relief, but does have some heart to him. He gets some chances to be the hero & Father he always wanted to be. I'm still always thrown a bit by his competent portrayal at the beginning of Black Widow vs his portrayal from later Black Widow & also in this film, but that's mild. Taskmaster - Oddly enough, If you hated the portrayal of Taskmaster in Black Widow, you will like the portrayal in this movie. If you were a fan of that portrayal, you likely won't appreciate this as much. Ghost - is basically a non-entity in this movie. She gets a few nice scenes, but has little dialogue, no character development or arc, & is far too often conveniently side-lined because her powers would interfere with the plot as written. You could lift her out of the movie & you wouldn't even notice. But how we got from her resolution in Ant-Man & the Wasp to here is one of the things I was referencing above in how this movie kinda forgets prior portrayals of these characters. Bucky - How to put this? I guess... Sebastian Stan clearly did not want to be there (can't blame him given Bucky's "role" in this plus the Captain Falcon movie). He is an exposition fairy + "get us to the next scene" fairy. As in, he shows up, magically fairy dusts the audience to the next scene, then contributes nothing. Even phoning it in his scenes were fun & engaging, but wow, was he wasted in this. Especially in the ending resolution where he just fades into the background & apparently forgets his character motivation from earlier in the movie. USAgent - Saved this for last: This character was treated so weird. It's the same impression I had in watching Falcon & the Winter Soldier*: the film clearly wants us to think he's an a-hole. The writers try to make him a punching bag & want the viewers to see him as a failure. They do everything they can to tell us he sucks. But what they show us is that he's pretty cool, & often right, & the group should have listened to him. He isn't always right of course, but most of the time his input is given, ignored & belittled, but then he's shown to be right, & then he gets berated afterwards. There's even a back-story scene for him which is supposed to show him in a bad light but my impression was like "that's it? that's all?". I'm not a USAgent fan or anything, but the show-vs-tell of this character is so inconsistent to me. * the reason I reference that show was I came away from it thinking: Walker & Lamar, two normal humans at the time, kept trying to team up with Bucky & Sam (a Super Soldier + Falcon) & they kept rejecting him; Walker & Lamar risked their lives multiple times to help Bucky & Sam; eventually Walker & Lamar help Bucky & Sam against a terrorist group who have taken Super Soldier-serum who wind up murdering Lamar (narratively, the equivalent of someone murdering Sam in Steve's presence); Walker chases down & is attacked in public by one of these Super Soldier terrorists who throws fountain at him; Walker kills the terrorist; afterwards instead of having Walker deal with this issue, Sam & Bucky beat him up, break his arm & literally steal The Shield from him. Anyway, all that weirdness aside, he was shown a the end of F&tWS as being recruited to do something to help his country, kinda OK with what had transpired. I believe his wife was even shown to be aware of all that. They just completely ignored the character's previous shown back-story & hoped the audience did as well. Again, the tell-don't-show regarding his character was constant here with him. I typed that all out because... I still enjoyed the movie. I still recommend the movie. If I hadn't enjoyed it, I wouldn't have bothered posting about it in depth & just dismissed it as "yet another Marvel fail". I really just wanted to get all my annoyances out... and still say I had fun watching the movie. Go see it in theaters - if just so we nudge Marvel in the direction of "fun" again.

True. It's important to the story that Norrin Radd is male. In the initial comics he turns against Galactus on our world because Sue (originally Alicia in the comic, but if you want to short-hand it in a movie, Sue works, as in the '07 film) reminded him of Shalla-Ball.

Sure! Agreed! Marvel movies already (Iron Man 1 through Endgame) was both. More male than female audience, sure, but massive $$$. But post-Endgame they started trying to... some sort of weird social engineering. Instead of just keep telling stories & making movies which attracted both genders in massive numbers (again, granted, more male than female, which should be fine). I don't think Barbie represents "female-oriented genres and films", but it was clearly a female-oriented film. Which is totally fine! It simply makes for a good counter-example. I think Marvel films started out as a "male-oriented genre", with, of course, some female fans. No big deal. My point was that if studios look at the success of Barbie & say to themselves: "Wow, we have a very successful female-oriented film. What if we made it more male-oriented to attract a wider audience?!?" then they would be... um, dumb? Take the audience you have. Appreciate the audience you have. You have a massive audience, even if it's not exactly 50-50. If they looked at Barbie's success & said to themselves: "females love this! what if we made Barbie 2 more male-oriented & that would make us even more money?!" then that would be just dumb. That's totally fine with me, but that would be done to attract more women to the existing Barbie audience. My analogy is: "make some of the existing Barbies into men & add more gun-fights & explosions to add more males to our existing audience mostly female audience which we take for granted". An absurd idea. Red Sonja would be great. I'm all for it. But that's very different than some studio exec saying "we need to make Conan appeal to a more female audience". Know your audience. It is for Silver Surfer fans. Some people love that character & grew up with him. To go back to back to Barbie, & this is not a perfect analogy, but imagine if the next Barbie film was called Barbie 2: Ken's Journey.

I mean, I don't really know how that relates to the discussion, but I'll try to guess. It was an anomaly in their track record. In that Marvel has essentially gone 3-9 in wins/losses post-Endgame: No Way Home, Deadpool & Wolverine, & Guardians 3. The rest either barely broke even or lost money. And studios don't make movies to do either. A few successes don't invalidate my point. 3 "hits" out of 12 attempts makes you a decent-but-average baseball player but certainly don't make you a successful movie studio. EDIT: Plus, in No Way Home's case, Marvel only received 25% of the profit, due to the deal they have with Sony regarding the rights to Spider-Man. So, still counts, but not exactly a huge win for Marvel.

Well, I mean it seems obvious to me that there are some successful male-dominated genres & films that some, but not the majority obviously, females also already enjoy them. And they made billions when they stuck to that. There are also some female-oriented genres & films that some, but not the majority obviously, males also enjoy the way they are, & they also made billions. Barbie is a good example to me because if studios say to themselves: "Barbie was a huge success! But... what if we tried to attract more males to our movie? Genius, right?!" is an absurd concept. If they made Barbie 2 more male-balanced, maybe gender-swapped some of the Barbies, maybe added some gun-fights & explosions... what would happen would be that they actually would not attract more male viewers & would alienate their current mostly female audience. I mean, I don't mean to twist your words, but in regards to Barbie does this sentiment make sense? "in a genre and medium that's been [female]-dominated for decades, I think [pursuing more men is] a good goal to pursue." Is it really a good goal to pursue? If you want to make money that is? It's totally OK for some genres to be male-targeting & others to be female-targeting. Trying to alter Disney princess movies in order to pursue more males is a losing strategy, IMO. Trying to make Conan the Barbarian more female-oriented is a losing strategy, IMO. Same thing here.

Then you haven't been paying attention to the last 5 years of Marvel movies' box office returns. Or the internet over the past few days. Any other actual purpose then. If you truly think balancing the gender roles in films is an actual legitimate purpose that should be pursued, then I look forward to hearing that take echoed when the cast of Barbie 2 is announced.

No, but the decision was made before any casting decisions were made. After deciding if B is a good or bad idea, you'd only then go to: C) Get a good actor for the role D) Get a bad actor for the role At which point the choice of C > D is equally obvious to me.

My take on the gender-swap is that it serves no purpose except to hurt the box office. Consider two groups of people: A) People who would NOT go see this movie because Silver Surfer is male B) People who would NOT go see this movie because Silver Surfer is female I would go so far as to say A=0. Literally no one who was inclined to see this movie would watch that trailer & go "Male Silver Surfer?! I'm out." But B is definitely non-zero. So it's an easy decision: Don't do B.

Ask Disney. I think this episode actually explains what really happened with the Snow White remake.

Just watched the whole season (was waiting 'til it was all released). I found this season pretty boring overall. No one (except "British Teeth Girl") was really interesting or entertaining. I didn't care if we found out in the last episode if any of them died. I guess I was kinda rooting for Gaitok, I suppose.

Didn't have them at the top of my head, so looked up a few episodes: "Mad Dog" - Jack harasses a released prisoner so much that the guy re-offends. It's pretty clearly implied, even by the show, that absent Jack's harassment, the guy would not have re-offended. When even the show implies Jack can sometimes go "too far". There was the episode [EDIT: Found it: "Bodies", s14E1] where Jack indicts the randomly assigned Public Defender of a serial killer who (stupidly) went to the location of his client's bodies for "accomplice to murder" (Jack knew that was BS). That guy's life was RUINED b/c he (rightly) valued the Attorney-Client privilege more than his own liberty. Jack thought he would "blink", but he didn't, ruined the guy's life for abiding by his principles. In "Gov Lov", s7, Jack literally gets Gay Marriage overturned because he wants to convict someone & needs Spousal Privilege to not apply in his case. "Ramparts", s9, Jack tried to use the death of one person to illegally crowbar open some Vietnam-related files, not because it was legal, he knew it wasn't, but because he wanted to see them. "Rubber Room", s20, the one where teachers who have "attitude problems" get sent to a mandatory AA-style meeting building (which it turns out are often faked) - here's Jack to a completely innocent person, who he *knows* at the time is innocent: "You get no argument from me there. But if your obstruction allows a massacre to happen, I will crucify you, Mr. Kralik. I will charge you with negligent homicide, and after I convict you I will resign my job and represent the families of the victims in a wrongful death suit against you and the union. By the time I'm done, you'll be finished. So, my advice to you is GET OUT OF MY WAY!" I get that's over the top. But the point is he knows at that time the guy is just doing his job, does not actually merit that charge. It's probably the most outlandish example of what I'm trying to illustrate: Jack blackmails/extorts people all the time. It's what Jack does. He's essentially a Mob Boss with a Badge. As I alluded to above: "nice life you got here; it'd be a shame if I made up a charge against you, right?"

You're right about the plot points, but I'm interpreting them differently... Jack threatened him with indicting him. As I mentioned, even Jamie, who was a bit of a hard-ass herself, called him out on that. He threatened prosecution he never intended to pursue & knew couldn't be sustained. That's extortion & the type of behavior I never liked ("nice kids you got there, sure would be a shame if something happened to them"). Right, but that clearly shows Jack was just blackmailing the guy. He was guilty of it (he used the escort service to butter up clients), but Jack used the threat to get him to bring his daughter back to the US then dropped the charges! He was clearly using the charge simply as extortion. Agree to disagree is fine. I enjoy watching the show, but just thought Jack abused his office just as much as Cutter (which was where this discussion started). Cutter used under-handed tricks. Jack used blackmail/extortion by threatening to charge ancillary people with fake crimes & then dropping the charges when he got what he wanted.

This is where I think we disagree for the most part, & it's not that the people he was trying to get to testify were necessarily innocent, it's that the people he was threatening to indict (often for "conspiracy") were innocent & Jack knew they were innocent. It was legal blackmail - threatening to bring (what he knew were) false charges against a third party in order to compel someone to testify or take a plea deal. I can't recall most of the specific episodes off the top of my head, but I recall Jack threatening to indict husbands*/wives/sons/daughters, bankrupt businesses**, & take away/put into foster care children, using charges he knew were trumped up & bogus. * The first example I could think of was the one where an ex-cop/PI is found dead & it leads to a couple upstate housewives who are call girls. Jack threatens one of husbands with "obstruction of justice" & losing his kids when he knows that's BS. Jamie even calls him out on it after the meeting. ** I remember a specific example here with the father of the girl who was running an escort service with her college friends - he literally dropped the "enterprise corruption" charges as soon as he got his daughter to come back to the US - the charge was clearly just used as blackmail (Jack went back on his word later in the episode though).

Agree with all that (except see below*). Cutter used underhanded trick after underhanded trick to "win", no matter the legality or if the person was even guilty - I mean, they often were, but he clearly didn't care. *I will disagree with you on Jack though. He was just as bad, but in a totally different way. He used literal blackmail, extortion, just total scorched earth tactics. "We'll take your kids away if you don't testify!" "We'll bankrupt your business if you don't testify!" "We'll deport you if you don't testify!" "Your wife will be charged with conspiracy if you don't testify!" ** "Your child will be charged with conspiracy if you don't testify!" ** ** these were the worst examples Jack was the personification of Prosecutorial Misconduct. Cutter was just as bad, just in a different way, by cheating rather than blackmailing. They were both just awful in those respects. Fun to watch on a TV show? Sure. Want someone like that in real life? Absolutely not. Jack (& Cutter) are like the caricature of the "ends always justify the means" types that the whole 4th-8th Amendments to the Constitution are meant to protect us from. Still love watching the show, don't get me wrong, but the prosecutors give... well, prosecutors a bad name, IMO. EDIT: It's like how Batman is fun in a movie, but do I want an actual Batman running around? No, of course not.