Cobalt Stargazer

I don't have any precise figures either way, but as @Dani says it's been a wasteland as far as the usual talk show stuff, and even the youtubers seem to have backed off from doing their own work to be supportive of the strikers. Regardless, the strike could have been ended way before the 148 days that it lasted if the studios had been giving more generous offers. Given how genuinely happy Iman seems about being involved with the franchise, her enthusiasm for this project could have been contagious, but she literally wasn't to speak on this movie because it was against the rules. Of course, there's always the crowd who were determined to wipe their ass with this film no matter what, and yes, any amount of promotional work wouldn't have changed their mind about it, so in that sense you're right. But that's a larger conversation and I'm talking about reasonable people anyway, not someone who hates the movie even when they haven't seen it. As I said in the main MCU thread, the Star Wars toxicity started to leak over into this fandom at some point, and its infecting everything even if the franchise hasn't always made particularly good decisions about how to proceed.

From the article: Never forget that this has to be at least partly because the studios had been refusing to pay their actors and writers fairly. If their greed hadn't been such a roadblock, the main cast could have been doing the usual promoting on the talk show circuit and wherever else. On a lighter note, Iman Vellani is a treasure and must be protected:

Not for nothing, but Laura is Dikolas' mother. Where was her emotional support when this boy was growing up and being banished to boarding school so that his dad could move Random Woman 24 (like Molly 6, but different) into Wyndemere? Maybe she's learned something about being present, but I can see why Spencer wouldn't believe that. Kevin, while a very good shrink/therapist, isn't really onscreen enough to provide support, and even if he was, there's about a dozen other characters who could use his help right alongside Spencer.

Yeah, but isn't that just more complaining for not much reason? WandaVision was six hours long, less if you subtract time for the credits, which I thought were much too long for thirty to forty-five minute episodes. Ms. Marvel was about the same, though I don't know specifics about the other shows. Even allowing that you "have to" watch the movies (which....no, you don't, and even if you did they generally explain things through bits of exposition in later films rather than an elaborate setup.) I thought the explanation of why Clint's hearing was gradually declining was particularly well-done, a short montage of him being caught near explosions that resulted in permanent damage. Boom, it's explained and it took something like a minute. Again, even deciding that all of the content is something that has to be watched, it kind of sounds like, "I have the attention span of a housefly, so don't give me homework*." That research can always come in the form of an online recap, unless it's a badly written one. Once again, it took a decade to build up to Endgame, but either we keep forgetting that or it's not necessary to watch every freaking thing that happened previously to get why everyone is fighting the big purple dude who turned half of the universe into into dust. No one ever says, How does Captain America: The First Avenger tie into Thanos' quest to "restore balance" to the galaxy? I mean, it does, but where did we put our patience that we want everything to lead to the end right now or else it's boring? Have all of the shows been excellent? No. I loved WandaVision and Hawkeye, tolerated FATWS, and enjoyed the rest enough to watch through to the end. I might be an outlier in that all you have to do is make me care. Make me care, and while I might have issues with individual stories, you will always have a fan in me. It's when I stop caring that's my Kryptonite. Marvel doesn't care what I think either, and honestly I would not want to be in charge of anything anyway given what parts of the fandom have turned into. It's become as bad (worse? maybe) than the Star Wars crowd, because no one seems to hate this franchise more than the people who claim to be fans. Maybe if we could stop expecting everything to be an Endgame level event, we'd be happier. Maybe. *That is not directed at anyone here, or even anyone in particular. But that really does sound like inventing something to be mad about, since the streaming content isn't going anywhere and can be watched whenever. Lord, it's not that damn complicated.

Now they just have to find a kid for him to spend the movie protecting.

Perhaps, but there's a piece in there where Ezra Miller's behavior may have had a hand in turning people off, and for more serious reasons than Brie Larson simply speaking her mind around the time Captain Marvel finished filming. Whatever she said or didn't say, she didn't get so far off the reservation that she was breaking into people's houses. Even if Miller is ill, as he later claimed, it goes beyond bad publicity when your lead is running amok. They are not the same. I would agree that the lack of Carol having an obvious romantic connection could hamper things. She had lovely chemistry with LaShana Lynch, but they killed Maria Rambeau off, and while her interactions with Prince Yan were nice, I don't know enough about him to get invested. Valkyrie? Maybe, because Twitter is talking quite a lot about her showing up to take the Skrulls from the refugee colony to safety. "May our next meeting be joyous." Hmm. I also think it's important to acknowledge that this is the first post-strike Marvel film. Even if it wasn't flawed, and it is, the main cast couldn't do any press or promotion regarding it, so there wasn't that extra effort to talk it up before it hit theaters. Maybe that matters less in today's online all the time culture, but I don't think it matters that much less. The strike didn't end until just before this was officially released, so there's definitely some bad timing involved. Finally, there's always the argument that we as a collective are much harsher on the female characters than the male ones, and Carol is right at the head of the pack in that regard. Monica and Kamala kinda-sorta haven't been around long enough to offend anyone, and Kamala might be spared anyway since she's still just a kid and can be expected to be overeager and make dumb mistakes before she matures and grows out of that. She hasn't even really outgrown her fangirl phase yet, so she's a work in progress. I really will talk about the movie next, but yeah, there is a lot of non-movie baggage to unpack here.

Brie Larson is thirty-four years old. Brie Larson has an Oscar. Brie Larson is thirty-four years old. More on the actual movie later, unless we're about to resign her to playing grandmothers.

That's what the "gift" of trauma does, though. I'm not entirely up on what's happening on the show right now, but Spencer's lousy childhood is informing his actions here. I don't think it can be disputed that Nikolas was a supremely terrible father, that he traumatized this kid over and over again for very little reason, and if he's not rational about how Ace will grow up, that's the Why of it.

Counterargument - I don't want to ever see Steve Rogers again, and I don't care who plays him. He can stay in Fake Happy Land, since that was the choice Feige made to end his storyline, and good riddance. The franchise should learn from their bad decisions, not repeat them.

She has said she wants to pursue other roles, but as @Spartan Girl says I'm more than half-convinced it's because Wanda got screwed over so bad. All things considered, Olsen has a relatively limited body of work, since she only has 27 credits on IMDB, but unlike her sisters she didn't begin to act until she was in her twenties. If you're interested in seeing her in other things, I would suggest Martha Marcy May Marlene and Wind River, where she co-stars with Jeremy Renner. It always could be both, that she's a bit weary of the Marvel juggernaut and wants to explore other possibilities as an actress, because either she was very choosy with what she decided to take as a role, or.....something else. I don't know what that Something Else might be.

Look at it this way; in thirty years he'll be claiming she was his soulmate.

I thought that was year-round in TV Land, though. Procedurals tend to be different because the entire show revolves around work, but you'd think no one else on TV needs their job, since they skip out in the middle of a shift to go have a confrontation or tell someone they're madly in love with them. Sometimes both, depending on how it goes.

Because the internet remains undefeated:

There's some legitimacy to the argument that it took ten years to build up to Endgame, a decade of movies to get all those moving parts together in one place at one time. Especially since teams like the Guardians and individual characters like Carol Danvers are usually off doing their own things and not really interacting with outsiders, as it were. It took time and patience to get to the point where everyone we'd already been introduced to were fighting together against a common threat. Hell, I still get emotional when everybody is emerging from those portals to go battle Thanos and his army, but it took a while to get there. And it will take a while to build up to that level again. That said, there does seem to be a lack of cohesion, and I'm sure the strikes haven't helped. They've screwed up some stuff I was really interested in and cared about, and this news about a 'soft reboot' is already annoying me. Like, just admit you fucked it up, Kevin, that you hired at least one writer who couldn't create an interesting grocery list, and maybe-possibly that you should have your creatives watch previous projects so they don't walk over the same ground all over again. At this point, I'm here for The Marvels and Thunderbolts and maybe Echo, and even with Thunderbolts it will be depending on how things proceed. Get it together, Kevin. Fanfic writers shouldn't have to correct your mistakes. P.S. - Natasha is trending on Twitter. I had forgotten that in canon, today is that day.

From what I've been able to gather, Jada never wanted to marry Will, but she was pregnant with their first kid and felt pressured to go through with it, so they got hitched and it's been a miserable hell ever since. At least in private, which just makes it weirder that they're still married and playing happy family in public. It seems like living with him would be difficult, since there's something of the glory hound under that 'down to earth' persona, but it also feels like she goes out of her way to embarrass him every chance she gets. Jesus, Tupac's been dead for thirty years, and she's still invoking him as the love of her life? Just. Get. A. Damn. Divorce. Already.

I'd say it was fifty-fifty. The Amy Nick thought he was married to was not the "real" Amy, for one thing. Rather, she was a persona created in equal parts for her parents and for her future husband. All of her talk about the Cool Girl was an act that she put on for him, but before that she was the Good Daughter for her folks, who used her as an example in the books they wrote. We never really know if her parents knew how awful Amy was, but I think at some point Go felt like something was amiss, just never in a way she could put her finger on. See her devastation when she realizes Nick is going to remain in the marriage, despite and/or because of Amy's vile tactics. The real Amy, though, is the one who resorts to murder after two yokels treated her more roughly than she was used to. She cuts Desi's throat because he thought he could blackmail her into doing what he wanted, and he was stupid enough to let her that close because he believed the persona. So yes, Nick was probably never going to be a great husband, but he also probably never stood a chance after Amy was involved in his life.

Aren't Will and Jada Scientologists? That might be one of the reasons they're 'divorced', even though they're still legally married and have been seen in public together like nothing's going on.

Elizabeth Holmes?

Not to be obvious, but you could easily draw a line from Kylo killing Luke's other students to Anakin killing the younglings. The criticisms of Luke for "giving up" on his nephew never take the step, what Kylo did in response. "How could you possibly think Kylo would ever....oh. Well. Never mind, then." There could be the argument that Luke didn't see Kylo's fall soon enough, take preventative measures to either stop it or secure the safety of the other people he was teaching, but putting those murders on Skywalker's doorstep is like blaming the Jedi for Anakin's slaughter of children.

I agree, but even so there's levels to it. Hailee Steinfeld is a nepo baby, but so is Scott Eastwood. They are not the same. That foot in the door may work wonders in helpng a young actor get their start, but if there's not innate talent to work with then those family connections are the only things that will assist in being cast and even being considered for roles.

It's both, IMO, an insult and kind of a nonsensical one, but it's based on the idea that most actors make lots of money for doing not much. With the strikes just over, there's been quite a bit of talk about "well, maybe acting shouldn't be such a high-paid profession, then the writers could be paid fairly", but there aren't many actors who get Harrison Ford type money for one movie. I don't know the exact numbers, but Ford got 25 million dollars to be in the new Indiana Jones movie, and that was after taking a huge pay cut. There's dozens or maybe even hundreds of others who don't get anywhere near that, and the cost of living in California in particular is ridiculous. But by 'getting a hand up' from a parent or another relative who is also in the business, they're seen as having an unfair advantage towards making lots of money for doing not much.

Columbo arrested Jessica Fletcher?! I thought she never got caught!

Although they do often encounter security guards who used to be cops or wish they could have been cops but got denied for one reason or another. So they get in the way of the investigation, trying to help solve the crime because they think they can do a better job than the actual police. It's always something.