#See Marvel even the villain in this story can give a Jewish person a Jewish funeral | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nerdinreview · 3 years

Text

“WandaVision In Review”

The first of many Marvel Disney+ shows has just recently concluded. With fan theories running rampant, and twists and turns during almost every episode, it isn’t surprising that WandaVision was so successful. However, the show is not without its own issues as nothing can ever be quite perfect. Below is our spoiler-filled review of WandaVision.

My first impression when watching the early (first two) episodes of WandaVision was confusion. I had a hard time trying to determine why Disney and Marvel would take us on a nostalgia tour through classic television series featuring two underserved and underutilized Avengers. I have to admit, I wasn’t overly invested in the project in the beginning. I enjoyed the references to The Dick Van Dyke Show and Bewitched, but I honestly didn’t care much for it past that point. Despite this, I kept watching for curiosity’s sake, and it certainly paid off.

When it becomes clear that Wanda is more in control of this reality than was initially assumed, I was hooked. I’m a big fan of Wanda Maximoff as a character. In the comics she has been a force to be reckoned with and the Marvel Cinematic Universe hadn’t seized the opportunity to really utilize her until this point. It was exciting to see Wanda use her powers in a way we hadn’t gotten to see on screen before, and the ending definitely implies that this is just the tip of the iceberg for her.

As someone who has been critical of Vision in both comics and film, I have to say that this did wonders for his character as well. We finally get to see a more “human” side of the synthezoid. That said, it’s hard to determine how real this side of him was, as he’s technically a manifestation of Wanda’s grief. At the very least, we get to see Vision as Wanda saw him, which is almost beautiful in its own right.

As mentioned above, some of the best content to come out of WandaVision is the character development. While the two titular characters had the most development, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the other characters who stuck out. The first of which is Monica Rambeau. The last time we saw this character she was a child in Captain Marvel, and while she may have been dreaming for the stars, she had a lot of growing up to do before she became the version of her we see in the show.

Monica was another bright spot in the show, she was fearless, and certainly didn’t back away from a challenge. She, similarly to Wanda, is dealing with grief. Losing her mother in addition to the last five years of her life, would be maddening to anyone, yet Monica jumps right back in to work at SWORD, and is often the voice of reason throughout the series. It was also incredibly exciting to see Monica get her powers after being exposed to the boundaries of Wanda’s “hex” three separate times. We even got to see her powers in action, first being able to withstand Wanda’s attack to get her to leave the neighborhood again, and then being literally bulletproof in the finale. I don’t think I need to go too deeply into the significance of the MCU literally giving us a bulletproof black female superhero! It was amazing, seeing her protect Billy and Tommy, while also being impervious to Hayward’s attack. It was a powerful scene that only highlighted Monica’s character even more.

However, what impressed me most about this character was her empathy to Wanda. No one would have been overly critical of Monica if she had taken Hayward’s side. After all, she too was held hostage by Wanda and forced to play a role in Wanda’s show. The experience was even described as “excruciating,” in Hayward’s retelling of Monica’s experience, and yet Monica is unyielding in her opinion that Wanda is not doing this maliciously. In fact, she willingly exposes herself back into the “hex” despite knowing that it is quite literally altering her DNA, with unknown side effects. This was something that Jimmy Woo wasn’t even willing to expose himself to once. During his first scene in the show, he says he doesn’t enter the town because he can “feel” that they’re not supposed to go inside. He stays true to that throughout the series, only entering Westview when Wanda breaks down the “hex” during the final episode.

As mentioned previously, Jimmy Woo was another character we got to see develop a bit since his Ant-Man and the Wasp appearance. He and Thor’s Darcy Lewis, were oftentimes the comic relief in the show when things got heavier. However, we got to see a side of Jimmy Woo’s character that we hadn’t seen before. While he was appreciated in Ant-Man and the Wasp, he was often at odds with Scott Lang as he was assigned to make sure that Scott was following his house arrest. It was refreshing to see Jimmy defy Hayward and fight back, being a key role in thwarting his escape.

It was nice to see Darcy Lewis get in on the action as well. In the Thor franchise she was often comic relief but rarely in the spotlight during action scenes. While she still didn’t do much fighting in WandaVision it was refreshing to see her stop Hayward with her stolen truck, and have her be the leading expert during SWORD’s investigation of Wanda. It was particularly exciting to see that she has earned her doctorate, so she is no longer Jane’s intern, and isn’t playing second fiddle to Jane Foster or Erik Selvig.

Finally, Kathryn Han’s Agatha Harkness is also deserving of praise. With the exception of a few of the films, Marvel has had a bit of an issue with giving fans villains that were worthy adversaries to their favorite heroes. This was not the case with Agatha Harkness. Seeing her toy with Wanda throughout the series was a highlight of the show and seeing her be a full fledged witch was equally as exciting. While Wanda defeated her in the finale, they certainly left the door open for Agatha to return, and I certainly hope they find a way to incorporate her in the future.

While I have mostly praised WandaVision, I have to mention some of the negatives as well. Overall, I greatly enjoyed the show, there are still a few points that I took issue with. The first of which is Maria Rambeau. Maria Rambeau was last seen in the Captain Marvel film and had become a bit of a fan favorite. She was a pilot, similar to Carol Danvers before gaining powers from the Space Stone, single mother, and according to WandaVision the eventual director of SWORD, yet she is killed off-screen from cancer.

While this is frustrating for a number of reasons, I was particularly miffed because Marvel still has a long way to go in terms of diversity in their films, and to kill off one of your few female black characters off screen left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. That’s without getting too deep into the fact that many fans were hopeful that Maria and Carol might have a romantic relationship in the sequel, and this all but confirms that won’t be the case. This adds another layer to the fact that Marvel has yet to have an LGBTQ+ hero in the films.

Additionally, the Marvel films have always handled Wanda and Pietro’s Romani roots poorly. Not only are the actors not of Romani descent, the culture of their characters is often used as a prop or a joke. Specifically, Wanda’s costume in the Halloween episode being referred to as a “fortune teller.”

Additionally, having the twins willing join Hydra--a Nazi organization while having Romani and Jewish roots, through their father Erik Lehnsherr, in the comics has always rubbed me the wrong way. WandaVision had an opportunity to remedy that when Wanda is reliving her past. They could have easily given us a one off line about Wanda and Pietro not knowing that it was Hydra when they signed up to be experimented on and didn’t find out until later. Unfortunately, all we get is a line about the twins wanting to “change the world.”

One of the other issues that I took was the presence of Evan Peters’s Quicksilver. Initially, I was very excited to see him show up on the show and hoped that this meant we’d be seeing more of Fox’s X-Men in future Marvel films. Not only was he not the real Quicksilver, but he was instead just a long running “boner” joke, as he was Ralph Bohner, Wanda and Vision’s next door neighbor that Agatha was controlling. While I wasn’t expecting him to be a huge character, I was hoping for something a bit more significant than Ralph Bohner.

Finally, something that has been sticking out in my head for a while is Jimmy Woo’s missing person. Jimmy Woo mentions in his first scene that Quantico had sent him to investigate a missing person in witness protection, who lived in Westview. Initially, this was who I believed Evan Peters’s character to truly be, yet when Jimmy sees him on screen in the All New Halloween Spectacular episode, he just makes a note that Pietro has “the wrong face,” and doesn’t indicate that he recognizes him. In fact, Jimmy’s missing person is never mentioned again later in the season and it seems as though that was just a plot device used to include him in the show.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed WandaVision. It was refreshing to have Marvel be able to spend six hours to devote to character development and plot rather than it just being action-centric. I think the show was an excellent first step in setting up a post-Iron Man Cinematic Universe. After Avengers: Endgame, so many characters were lost, and it felt like a finale of sorts. I think this was a great way to continue the story with a whisper rather than a bang, and I look forward to their upcoming Disney+ content.

WandaVision is currently streaming on Disney+.

#wandavision #wandavision review #marvel #review #wandavisionreview

1 note · View note

phynali · 5 years

Note

If given the chance, how would you rewrite the MCU?

Anon. Anon. Anon.

How wouldn’t I?

I mean - okay, there’s a lot you have to keep the same just for the sake of like, continuity, clarity, and keeping the bones there.

I’d probably keep all the original movies in Phase 1 as they are with only minor tweaks. I’d fix the mess that was Iron Man 2. I’d give Black Widow and Hawkeye a movie of their own to establish their characters. Hmm, I can see that coming after the first Avengers, possibly.

The first Avengers film though, that’s where I would make the first major changes.

Loki’s characterization is a mess and not properly explained in canon. I’d put him more obviously under Thanos’s thumb. I’d fix Cap’s messed up characterization. I wouldn’t have Thor show up when he does because, hey - bifrost issues. We’d see him and Heimdall from Asgard trying to work on that problem and let them find a cogent way to get Thor to earth. So, he’d show up for the final battle and to take Loki home. He’d be the ace in the hole that helps allow the Avengers to assemble and overtake Loki.

Okay, so fix Iron Man 2. I can barely remember it but I know it needs fixing.

Cap 2 I’d leave intact. I might give Hulk a follow-up movie tbh, or rather, probably tie him in to the Black Widow and Hawkeye movie that would follow the first Avengers.

Also put more female heroes front and centre earlier on. And especially WoC.

Big issues arise by the time we get to Age of Ultron. Fix that hot mess of a movie.

Hawkeye doesn’t have a family and a farm. That was weird. Erase that shit. Don’t set up a romance between Nat and Bruce. Don’t -

Look, I mean no disrespect to Tony stans -

Don’t make every problem in the MCU something that was inadvertently caused by Tony. Because like every Iron Man movie involves a villain who felt scorned by him, and then AoU was caused by him messing with the Mind Stone (Bruce too, okay, but Bruce isn’t the one with the narrative trend here) and all the villains in the Spider-Man movies, and then there’s how shit played out in Civil War and -

Okay so fix AoU. Have the Mind Stone literally take on a life of it’s own and don’t fucking make it the fault of Tony’s hubris, okay. Make it more accidental and incidental than it was. Don’t make it something that happened overnight from tinkering.

And for the love of god, make it so that Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver did not sign up to be experimented on, but rather keep their comic origins. They’re Jewish Romani PoC. Give them a narrative that’s authentic to those identities.

I also would not fucking kill off Quicksilver, what the honest fuck?

Actually also don’t just make up a random country and code it a given way and then destroy it. I know it’s an MCU movie and therefore actually needs a giant CGI battle at the end, but okay - Age of Ultron. Stretch that shit out. Make it more clever. Show some more subtle and almost… guerilla tactics from the Avengers, taking down Ultron’s armies? Instead of a single battle in a country we don’t know about and haven’t been told to care about from a narrative standpoint, have Ultron go after their friends and families, have them fight smart and mean but no less visually pleasing to watch. The Avengers don’t have the numbers on Ultron’s army, but they can (and do) recruit Wanda and Maximo and they fight their fight using all their resources - not just their fists.

Okay so let’s move on.

iron Man 3 was great, but the whole bit with Pepper being kidnapped? Not that into it, personally. Also not into her getting powers and then getting them taken away. There was a lot to love about that movie, but so many Iron Man movies tease at this idea of Tony wanting to retire, or getting out, and they need to just back off that and let him own his heroism. That movie navigates so much so well so let it be.

Okay -

Thor 2? Don’t fucking kill Thor’s mom. Friga deserves better. Stop motivating male characters by killing women. Let Loki and Thor come together by Friga being injured, by their dad dying, by a desire to bring their mother joy - whatever. Just - don’t kill her. I’m still pissed about how much they take from Thor over time.

I’d keep Cap 2 the same, and the only changes I’d make to GotG would be -

Okay wait actually. There are huge glaring issues with that movie. Gamora is poised to be the hero of these movies and finds herself as the damsel in distress or incapable whenever the narrative needs her to be. I fucking hate it. Let her shine more. Show instead of tell. Let each character develop in their own right rather than dropping some random backstory notes in expository dialogue. Build up to the notion that it’s super weird Quill can hold the Stone and actually like… acknowledge it in the movie. You can keep the story basically the same but fix things with Gamora’s narrative, please please please.

Okay Ant-Man is great. There’s a huge narrative issue within the entire MCU with how they exclude Janet Van-Dyne though, and how she isn’t introduced until now even though she should be a fundamental member of the Avengers. I would almost like, at some point in Phase 1-3, a movie with Janet at the helm, possibly (to keep their timeline intact), her working with Peggy, working with SHIELD, with a young Fury or something, and laying the groundwork for the Avengers. A lot of what Captain Marvel eventually did, but situated fully on earth, and coming much sooner in the MCU itself.

Civil War was a hot mess. They needed to actually explain and detail both sides and the problems with them. It functioned amazing as an introduction to Black Panther and I love it for that, but it wasn’t a Cap movie, not really, and I’m bitter about it. This movie should have focused around the Black Panther, Cap, Bucky narrative, and dropped the whole Civil War with the other Avengers stuff entirely.

Actually - Civil War needs to be either an entirely separate movie on its own or else… drop it. Deal with it differently. That airport fight was an embarrassment. Let the Avengers break down during Cap 3 if you need do, but make it more interpersonal and tense, and less throwing punches and locking each other up. Make it more human, more relatable, because those were the best parts of that whole divide. Make it real for the viewer, for fuck’s sake. Don’t have Tony (seriously what’s with them making him do villainous things and painting them as heroic) blackmail a literal child into a battlezone????

Okay - and Cap issues, they need to either set up Agent 13 aka Sharon Carter as a proper love interest sooner, or else drop that. They drop breadcrumbs of her in a few movies but that’s it. It feels hollow between them by the time they actually kiss. They should either keep their dynamic as “could have been but whoops, nope” or have done more to set them up together in Cap 2.

(Totally honest, total bias here - take out love interests altogether or let Cap be the bi icon that he should be and let him and Falcon hook up in Cap 2. Let the fact that he was in love with Bucky be canon but you don’t need to set them up as a couple. Let it be recognized that they love each other but god there’s too much there, too much mess, they don’t need to be together in the present to acknowledge that history. Either way keep the Bucky and Sam dynamic because it’s amazing).

Doctor Strange - fix the casting. The racism, appropriation - just - wow. Use this as an opportunity to introduce more Asian and East Asian characters and actors into the MCU rather than it being the appropriative mess that it is. Keep the cool visuals though, and the cape. The narrative itself isn’t bad, but spend less time establishing this asshole character and more time establishing the side characters and the dynamics between them because those are far more interesting.

GotG 2 - uhhhh… okay what was this? Peter Quill is Ego’s son, but how does that really advance anything in the MCU or about the character or … ? Just fix the whole goddamn plot, I don’t even know. Tie this shit into Thanos way better. Introduce that better. Make this movie more interesting, make Nebula the Big Bad of it, honestly. Dive into the other members of the Guardians and give them their backstories and plots that they deserve. Is this the Guardians or the Peter Quill show? I don’t know I just - just fix this, okay?

Thor Ragnarok and Black Panther need no fixing. Remember that in this version of the MCU, Thor’s mom is alive, so that’s there. She’s still on Asgard and with Heimdall and being awesome, and we get some awesome interactions between her and Hel because we fucking deserve that, okay? Also Valkyrie’s bi scenes aren’t deleted (fuck you, Marvel execs). I would love love love for Killmonger not to die at the end of Black Panther, personally, but I wouldn’t change much more than that.

Oh wait I forgot - with the whole Bucky in Wakanda thing? Fucking take that out or do something narratively with it. It’s the weirdest brushed-aside thing that serves no genuine narrative purpose. I’d err on the side of taking it out entirely, personally.

Infinity War is fine, leave it as-is more or less, except for -

Okay, so we need textual discussion and canonical pushback against Thanos’s ideals. Because so many people came out of that movie all “oh but he’s got a point - population is expanding blah blah blah” and it was such fucking bullshit. We needed Gamora to point out why Thanos was fucking wrong - why her people were not actually better off after he killed half of them, thank you very much. We needed Tony to point out “population doesn’t work that way, it’ll bounce back in 50 years - do you plan to keep doing this each time? why not double resources?”. We needed people to tell the audience not just that Thanos was bad, but why he was bad, and that there is no ‘random’ and he needed to be a monster and selfish and it needed to be way more clear that his was not a sublime ideal of a detached idol, but rather the ravings of an entitled man whose gone unhinged and hateful.

Okay. So that. And don’t make the final battle just decimate Wakandan soil and its army? Why do they have to fight Earth’s battles for it? Let that be a joint effort and not just a Wakandan one, jfc. I get that you had the set ready and all, but no, don’t treat Wakanda like that, it deserves better. If ever there was a time to blow the budget on a final fight, this would be it, so freaking do it and have that battle be in space and over earth and at many different locations but then zeroing in on where Vision is (which itself can be in Wakanda because it’s safest but yeah).

And honestly I wouldn’t make it so Gamora died, like wtf. I hated that. I hated the whole bit with the Soul Stone. I could swallow it if what they did was have Gamora turn into the Soul Stone - so that she could, as the stone, set up a sabotage to Thanos.

Okay - more on that. Let’s talk about Endgame. Endgame needs so much goddamn fixing. Holy fuck does it need fixing.

Okay - okay where do I even start. I make myself mad whenever I think about it.

Five years? Five fucking years? What the fuck is wrong with you, Russo brothers? Time travel? What - just -

I hated that movie with a passion.

Okay - so the Snap happened. Pick up right after. Give us the fucking shock and horror. Give us the attempt to regroup, just quick, the intense emotions - people punching walls. Show us snippets of the world quickly, news casts etc. This is a horror, let it be one. Own the shit that you did.

Give us a time skip-montage. A month out, the pressure is on to the Avengers to fix this. The Avengers are all traumatized. Clint doesn’t have a family in this version, and doesn’t go all terminator. Thor - he wouldn’t have as much time to spiral but let him get there, let him be unwell, unkempt, let him own his suffering because goddamn he’s lost so much. (oh I forgot, I actually wouldn’t kill Loki and Heimdall because wtf wtf I hate you Infinity War, but let’s move on - )

Five months - people are losing hope. There are therapy sessions. Cap is a mess. Everyone blames themselves. Tony “if I’d only made the call to Cap sooner, we could have worked together” (also he and Nebula make it to earth fast, none of that lost in space and starving stuff), Cap “if only I hadn’t been so arrogant as to not trade lives”, Thor “if only I’d gone for the head”, etc etc. let it be clear that it’s not just Thor’s fault and not just Peter Quill’s fault - that all of those in charge of decision making fucked up.

Ant-Man isn’t freaking saved by a rat, thank you. He comes out of the quantum realm on his own merits, some safeguard, only to realize shit’s messed up. He and Janet work together with the remaining Avengers. maybe Janet saved him from the quantum realm this time? what a nice parallel to him saving her. anyway, they use the quantum realm to find thanos. Or - fuck that, they use Nebula to find Thanos. She knows shit. What they use the quantum realm for is to realize that all the souls that were lost in the snap aren’t ‘dead’ dead, they’re in stasis. They’re in a liminal space - they’re in the Soul Stone. Because Gamora is the stone and she sucked up all those lives and is holding them, holding for dear life but she can’t hold on forever (make sure the stakes are high, they feel real, the clock is ticking). Captain Marvel teams up with them of course. they track down thanos.

“but Phyn” you say, “thanos still has all the stones? how can they defeat him?” great question! difficult to answer! i’m not sure! with the power of love!

okay but really - they have an awesome team. they need to work smarter than the enemy, not harder. they can take out thanos’s generals. they can use nebula to slip past defenses. if loki were alive, which he should be, they can use his magic. if friga were alive, which she should be, they can use hers. if heimdall were alive, which he should be, they can use his eyes. they can use the magic of all the magicians in the doctor strange films. they have captain marvel.

but they will never win on might alone, or magic alone - not against a full complement of infinity stones. not unless -

have you seen Avatar: The Last Airbender? if so - you know how Azula gets a little unhinged toward the end? she’s just a kid, i feel for her, but the point for here is that she does enough shit and gets what she (thinks she) wants and it takes a devastating toll on her. using the stones, clearing half the life in the universe - that took a toll on thanos. it was a terrible choice. he’s in denial, in self-deception about that. he’s coming apart at the seams. he’s not all chill about it, he’s spiralling hard. he lost half his army too, after all. and life doesn’t seem improved. he can hear the cries of the souls locked in the soul stone (not that he realizes what he’s hearing nor acknowledges it) and it’s like the beating heart under the floorboards. his crimes have left scars. he’s not well. physically, from the toll of the Snap, nor mentally, from everything else it took out of him.

let gamora save the fucking day. let her and Vision and their stones - hell, let Loki (maybe he’s fused with the tesseract and maybe thanos did kill him to acheive that, or maybe something else) - let the stones respond to people. to quill. to freaking Jane Goddamn Foster. let the stones’ connections to life undermine and corrupt thanos and his connection to death.

is it cheesy? maybe. is it better than time travel bullshit? definitely. because it uplifts. because it draws from heroes in all the movies, even unlikely ones. people who’ve touched the stones, held them, melded with them. it assumes that the stones aren’t static entities, that they are just as alive as us, in a way we can’t comprehend, and so much more. they resonate with the universe, and thanos has done something that scarred the universe. let this be rectified, not through the actions of a man’s sacrifice, but through the actions, big and small, of a ton of people, of unlikely heroes, of those who suffered personally at his hand, at the hands of the stones - let it be the will of half the goddamn universe to see thanos fall.

let the snap-back happen when thanos loses control over the stones (he’s been holding on tight this whole time, can’t let it slip, the stones have a ‘mind’ of their onw). let it happen again right before the final battle against his armies. let him not have the power to immediately re-snap, hand burnt by the force of the snap-back, and let thor take off his fucking arm this time. let nebula take off his fucking head. let there be a huge final battle with everyone alive and ready to go down swinging once again.

and okay, i’m okay with tony dying. i’d be game for him to die by destroying the stones, tbh - taking them out of existence henceforth so they can never be used like this again, even though it kills him. i think that would honestly be a really fulfilling conclusion to the narrative set up in the first Iron Man film - the reformed arms dealer destroying the ultimate weapons in the universe.

by this way - there’s been 5-8 months or something like that, not 5 years, but why not have Pepper be pregnant, why not have a little child who’ll get to live on after he’s gone, even if that kid won’t remember him? she’ll get to live in a universe that exists and is safe because of him.

i’d be okay with cap dying in this movie too (much better than him going back and stealing peggy’s life from her by changing her history, wtf wtf wtf). i refuse to accept nat dying in clint’s place, that was bullshit and totally not necessary in this version. gamora is also back, not from the past but from the present, and with her sister again. this time nebula got to save gamora, isn’t there some poetic justice in that?

okay okay that’s all that. whew.

I forgot about Captain Marvel. It was decent, I liked it. It wasn’t my favorite in the sense that it was laid out odd when it came to falling in love with this character. Like I wouldn’t change much of the plot but I’d change the… storytelling? The emotions used to connect us to Carol. Give us more of her past from the start, before you introduce her. Give us her childhood. And let Maria be her girlfriend, fucking please.

Okay - now we’re at Far From Home. I didn’t mention Homecoming before but the problem with both of these movies is one I mentioned earlier - that the villains are byproducts of choices made by Tony Stark. That’s a problem. There’s just so many goddamn movies in which that’s the ultimate villain and it fucks with Tony’s characterization so much. How am I supposed to love Tony (which I want to?) when he’s got satellites with drones that can attack anyone he names, tech not that unlike the tech Hydra was aiming to make. Sure, he won’t use it the same, but why the fuck does he have it? Giving it to Peter is all well and good, but - they have interacted maybe a grand total of 5 times?

The relationship between Peter and Tony is cute but if you stop for a second, it’s annoying as hell that it’s built up to what it is. Peter gets recruited by Tony, mostly works with Happy and not Tony in Civil War, and then gets ignored by Tony for months and months on end, then Tony shows up and scolds him and takes his suit, and then invites him to be an Avenger when he doesn’t fuck up, and then they go off to space and Peter dies, and then everyone comes back to life and Tony dies. Why the fuck would Tony entrust Peter with this Edith system that allows him to kill anyone on Earth? Actually, fuck that, entrust is the wrong word - why the fuck would Tony put that weight on the shoulders of a child?

Far From Home is great but Tony’s post-mortem role in it makes almost no sense. Let Peter’s movies be about Peter and not about the shadow and then the ghost of Tony Stark. Please. I love Tony, I do, but if you stop and think for one second, you have to jump mental hoops to absolve the shit Tony does in Peter’s movies, and for many of us, it leaves a really awful taste in our mouths.

anyway - i probably missed stuff. that’s just what’s currently top of mind. #whoops

#i spent too many hours of my life on this #marvel #mcu #walrus #you said you wanted to read this when i got around to answering...#here you go #marvel critical #mcu critical #ask to tag #comics etc #Anonymous #long post #long post for ts

53 notes · View notes

inventor-researcher-chef · 4 years

Note

I MAY BE TO SCARED TO INTERACT BEYOND ANONYMOUSLY BUT I WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE YOUR ASOUE EPISODE RANKINGS

Mmk It’s gonna be long tho so it’s going under a cut

Penultimate Peril Part 1

very accurate to the books! any changes made sense within the context of the show and worked

gorgeous aesthetics, strongest opening of any episode aside from Bad Beginning

only minus points because of Sporty Kit but she’s in it so little and the rest of it is so good that it doesn’t even matter

Max Greenfield as the Denouements was phenomenal

I actually liked the part where they try to make us think Kit was shacking up with Ernest, it was clever

Also I actually like the green uniform, I think it’s a more flattering colour on the actors than red would have been

Dewey’s death scene was amazingly shot and acted

I would die for Sunny in her toddler uniform. That being said in this episode if you look closely you can in fact see the light from the ipad they used to get her to look in the right direction

Reptile Room Part 1

Once again, gorgeous aesthetics and incredible book accuracy

Minus points for the spyglass subplot

Higher than part 2 because of Aasif Mandvi’s wonderful portrayal of Monty

I love the conservatory reptile room

Reptile Room Part 2

Very book accurate and entertaining

This is the episode where Violet’s outfits begin to slap

Minus points because with Monty’s death they made the colour grading less bright which makes sense but is less fun to look at

Also not a fan of how comedic and bafoonish the troupe is, it’s really more of an overall problem but it really just undermines how impactful Monty’s death is

Bad Beginning Part 2

Let’s be real, the Bad Beginning episodes were the most book accurate of the whole show

Loved the entire Marvelous Marriage bit, the play and marriage were done spectacularly

Lots of Jewish references, we stan

I actually like Jacquelyn’s presence in the first season, it works and adds a new element to the story

I also like Gustav being a major part of this episode because we never saw him in the original books and it’s nice to see his character before he dies (also symbolism with his death and Dewey’s)

Hostile Hospital Part 2

Do I even need to explain why this is so high on the list?

Higher than the first part because of the absolute horror of the whole operating theatre, it’s done so well

The aesthetics and filming work perfectly to underline the horror of everything

Only so low because I personally am not a fan of horror aesthetics

Bad Beginning Part 1

Once again, Bad Beginning episodes were the most book accurate and I love Jacquelyn

Strongest opening of any episode aside from Pentultimate 1

Only so low because of the cheesy CGI and NPH’s comedic Olaf

Hostile Hospital Part 1

ESME IN THE LIBRARY OF RECORDS HOLY FUCK

Low because aside from Esme being fucking fabulous in that scene I found the rest of the episode to be a bit boring at times

However, very accurate to the books and the chase scene in Last Chance was sufficiently freaky, as was the scaring Babs scene

For that matter, absolutely loved that we got to see Babs

Penultimate Peril Part 2

The Baudelaires in the trial scene made me🥺

The scene with Justice Strauss and Olaf with the kids was amazing

The ending made me cry

So low because of the opera scene, like how many issues did that have? It was pretty though

Also low for confirming Justice Strauss to have survived the fire, we don’t like getting answers to our questions

AND ANOTHER THING Esme’s ending was really lackluster? To the point of just being shitty? Especially given that while she is comedic, Lucy Punch hasn’t played up the comedy aspect of her character as much as NPH has, so Esme feels scarier and like more of a villain at this point so giving her that ending really fell flat

A very strong ending that really should have been the ending to the whole story

Grim Grotto Part 2

Grim Grotto was brought so low because of the absence of Widdershins but at least with part two you can pretend the first part had him and he left like in the books

Ansolutely in love with the submarines and Esme’s dress

Grim Grotto was one of my favorite books of the series as a kid so naturally it’s gonna be pretty high on the list

Also I think K Todd Freeman brings a needed likeability to Mr Poe, so when th Baudelaires are on Briny Beach again you do get the feeling they’re torn between going with him or Kit. Like they distrust and dislike him at this point but they don’t want to distrust him

Slippery Slope Part 2

The sinister duo are fab

Sunny is at her cutest in this episode, we’re talking peak cute

It’s pretty low because there’s a lot of stuff in the headquarters with Quigley that got cut, didn’t really make much of a difference but I missed it

I feel like Esme in the headquarters had so much potential to be as freaky as her Library of Records scene and it just fell short

Ersatz Elevator Part 2

Minus points for the VFD subplot but part 2 had less of that which is why it’s higher

Also in the ranking of Sunny being the cutest, this episode comes in at a close second to Slippery Slope

That being said overall I really adored the aesthetics of both episodes, absolutely love the mix of film noir and art deco

Jerome at the In Auction was amazing but Larry, Jacquelyn, Olivia, and Jacques was less so

Also still not a fan of the writing of the Quagmires

Ersatz Elevator Part 1

Once again, adore the aesthetics

Love the casting for the Squalors

Gunther’s disguise was *chef’s kiss*

so low because of the VFD subplot and the gratuitous musical number

That being said I did like the cuts between Keep Chasing Your Schemes and the Baudelaires finding the Quagmires, it worked well

Grim Grotto Part 1

Very low because of the absence of Widdershins and what this did to Fiona’s character

In general the way they wrote Fiona’s character was even less sympathetic than the books

Why, dear god, oh why was Quigley at Anwhistle Aquatics

Why, dear god, oh why does the Medusoid Mycelium look like that

Carnivorous Carnival Part 1

This was in fact my all time favorite book in the series as a kid and I just remember being a little disappointed I guess? By the episodes and I could never put my finger on why

Olivia’s character 😒

Higher than the second episode because I do love the creepy carnival feel and the feeling of unease before the Baudelaires know who Madame Lulu is

Also Esme’s gold outfit

As far as gratuitous musical numbers go, I do enjoy House of Freaks

Carnivorous Carnival Part 2

Cool carnival aesthetics

Chabo the wolf baby is adorable

Olivia’s death was more impactful and upsetting than Jacques’s, I’m just gonna say it

We miss a morally gray neutral character who is more interesting than a copy pasted Jacquelyn/Mrs Quagmire

Wide Window Part 2

This is really only so low because the colour grading is still kinda dull and it works within the episode but also makes it boring to look at

That being said the whole Hurricane Herman scene was phenomenal

rEaL eStAtE aGeNtS

The Colours in this episode were pretty, with the Lavender Lighthouse and the raincoats

Violet’s outfits remain slapping

The change to Josephine’s character is a good change (until season two when they do that to every single other character and take away any and all moral ambiguity but still)

Slippery Slope Part 1

we weRNT EXPELLED

I did love the Mortmain Mountains set

so low for the killing of the freaks, Sporty Kit, and for the heavy handed way they got rid of Jacquelyn

Wide Window Part 1

Boring and dull

Only this high because of Violet’s poppin outfits, the beautiful set, and Alfre Woodard as Josephine

Also the Captain Sham disguise is my favorite after Gunther

Austere Academy Part 2

The only reason part two is so high is because it has more Carmelita

who is the only good bit of these episodes

Like they’re both relatively book accurate, especially with the casting but like

I did not think it possible to make the Quagmires in this book more boring and yet

I get that it’s supposed to be dark and gloomy and depressing but it shouldn’t be so much that people just don’t want to watch it

Sunny running after the Quagmires in her little uniform does put this episode at like number 5 in her cuteness ranking though so points for that

Miserable Mill Part 2

While I miss the sword fight, I do understand why it was changed so I can accept it

Part 2 is higher because of Georgina’s slappin purple pantsuit

As far as MM goes I did actually like it but it still is kinda boring in comparison to the rest of the episodes

But I did like the mill scenes and Sir

Also a really strong ending that sets up season two nicely

Miserable Mill Part 1

See above

A little lower that Part 2 because of more Quagmire scenes

I actually liked the Quagmire scenes in season one and how it was handled but less so in this episode? Maybe it was the cheesy effects with the fighting

Also CGI Sunny. Her least cute episode

Vile Village Part 2

Vile Village was definitely one of my favorite books and I was so disappointed by the episodes

While I liked the western aesthetic, I don’t think it felt right with the feel of the book

Also crow nazis

Now that Jacques is dead there’s no bad VFD subplot so that’s why it’s higher than part 1

I really like how they handled Sunny not being able to take her first steps because she’s too old now. This is also definitely a good episode for the Sunny Being Cute scale

Vile Village Part 1

I really think the only thing this episode has going for it is the costumes, specifically Violet and Sunny’s

the watercolor dress, flannel, overalls, jesse hat, tricolor dress? fashion legends

disappointing, kinda boring, bland to look at, horrible VFD subplot, D+V???, bad CGI

however cute donkey

also a fan of Esme’s accent, idk what it’s supposed to be but it made my russian friend laugh

Austere Academy Part 1

Same as the first part however less Carmelita and Larry and Jacquelyn are at their most useless

Just the least entertaining episode overall

The End

honestly do I even need to explain this

I get what they were going for with the pink sheep and I quite like the tents but the pink robes were not flattering on anyone

Kit. Sugar. why is she in a white dress? when did she have time to change? overt christian symbolism after 14 episodes of Jewishness. Ishmael founded VFD. Ishmael can walk

The bad CGI. I haven’t seen CGI this bad since season one

The arboretum was disappointing and didn’t give the feel of years worth of buildup and it didn’t feel like the Baudelaires could live off of this stuff

That being said I loved chapter fourteen and BL

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events #asoue netflix #asoue thoughts #i would love to hear other peoples opinions on this

2 notes · View notes

moistwithgender · 6 years

Text

Curry Read 60s Marvel, King-Size, Nuff Said

According to my tag, it took me about a month to get through this decade (eight years, technically), spending most of my free time reading. I’ve been following Comic Book Herald’s “My Marvelous Year” reading guide because it seemed like the quickest way through while cutting out the chaff. This was not...consistently the case. But, I’m still glad I followed it because this started out with me just chewing through early Spider-Man in black and white (don’t do this to yourself, nice flat colors do wonders for these older stories). I’m gonna go ahead and give the disclaimer that because I was following a speedy reading guide, I missed a lot of stuff, so if you know some really good issues I missed feel free to say so.

I’m afraid to type all this out because it’s a lot and idk where to start!

Okay well I have one idea of where to start.

Fantastic Four

This is Marvel’s best series up to this point and the fact that we’ve had so many garbage movies is a tragedy (don’t @ me about The Incredibles, I know). The FF comics are consistently the most fun, the weirdest, and the most creative.

Going through my reading list, I had to skip parts of FF, which is probably going to be where more of the good stuff was. Though, I will say that I prefer the latter half of the decade over the first half. FF started off with Mole Man, Skrulls (something I first realized was a thing back when they showed up in MvC3), The Puppet Master, The Red Ghost... The first few years of FF was probably best whenever it involved Namor and Doctor Doom. I don’t think anyone’s gonna argue with that. The latter half had The Inhumans, Galactus, The Silver Surfer, Black Panther, the Negative Zone... a whole lot of neat stuff! I actually missed the introduction of the Negative Zone, so all of a sudden Reed’s just got a portal to A Very Bad Place in the middle of his lab and he keeps opening it whenever things get slightly inconvenient. Stop doing that, Reed.

Highlights: - Namor being Namor. Usually at his best as a fish out of water (heh) in human society. With his absurd monarchic pride, and his occasional anti-hero tendencies, he’s...kind of like a wet Vegeta in hot pants. - The Thing. For a while he was back and forth as a character I liked or tolerated, and his incessant backtalk would occasionally become one of those “telling an unfunny joke until eventually it’s hilarious” things. - The Watcher. A being so committed to his vow to never interfere with the fate of the universe that he jack-knifes out of his lane every single time he gets the chance. EXCEPT FOR THE TIME HE WATCHED THE BIRTH OF GALACTUS AND DID NOTHING. THANKS UATU. - The fact that Doctor Doom is a Romani character being written by Jewish authors. That’s a lot to unpack. - The Sandman. Wait, you say, you mean that one Spider-Man villain who was played by the guy from the sitcom Wings? Yeah, it turns out once he’s done being a Sinister Six villain, he goes on to harass the Fantastic Four and gets his own Jack Kirby style super villain outfit!

Look at that badboy. Also he teams up with an angry furry made of explosions from the hell dimension that is the negative zone. - The Inhumans. All of these kids are cool, Lockjaw is an adorable giant bulldog that can teleport across infinite distances, and even Maximus is some sort of play on Shakespeare villains. The fact that differentiating these guys from mutants is really awkward. The short version (if I have it right) is that mutants are born with a unique x-gene, and inhumans come from a hidden society that commonly did genetic manipulation on its citizens at birth. - Galactus. He is arguably the weirdest thing Marvel has in this decade. A thirty foot tall man who flies around the universe and eats planets. He’s literally so powerful that he and the narrative both treat his eating habits as natural, and any victims that happen to get in the way as unfortunate but unintended sacrifices because GALACTUS MUST NOT DIE. Galactus is a vegan metaphor (maybe). - The Silver Surfer. The shiniest, angstiest boy in the multiverse. Originally from a planet where global society had literally hit its logical utopic conclusion, he was bored as shit. Galactus comes along, the entire planet gets spooked and blows itself the fuck up on accident, and Norrin Rad agrees to be Galactus’ herald and pick out planets safe to eat if he leaves his planet alone. Sometime after that he gets punished for trying to fight Galactus, and is punished to remain on Earth, where he would play around with being a very obvious Jesus analogy for a while. - That time where a guy impersonates The Thing in order to kill Reed, and then ends up getting respect for Reed and sacrificing himself atop a meteorite speeding off into an atmosphere of explosions. Really fucked up issue, honestly. - Black Panther. Wakanda is not as cool as it would eventually be portrayed, and BP’s first appearance is as an antagonist (he kidnaps the FF and hunts them for sport), but he has a fucking slick cape. - That time Doctor Doom stole The Silver Surfer’s infinite cosmic power and nearly fucked up everything for everybody for four straight issues. Also he got into a fist fight with the Thing, which is like...hell yeah. - The Negative Zone. WHY DO YOU HAVE A WINDOW TO HELL IN YOUR HOUSE, REED. - The Kree. I have no idea why the Kree are just white people in space. Bad move imo, even Namor’s race are mostly blue people. Anyway, there’s a rad fight with a sentry robot, and a decent introduction to Ronan the Accuser, who you might remember was the (reasonably overshadowed) villain in the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 1 movie, where he is blue. - Psycho Man. This guy has a remote control that makes you feel emotions and that’s kinda dumb but more importantly he’s from a microscopic universe and controls a non-microscopic robot version of himself to fight the FF and the implications of all that is absurd. - Reed goes into the negative zone (again) to try and find something he knows nothing about that might help his pregnant wife and unborn child survive the gamma radiation they still have in their bodies. He gets pretty lucky. Jesus christ, dude.

The worst parts of the FF this decade is probably every time Susan gets the shaft because she’s a woman, whether it’s her being talked down to by Reed or whether it’s her being written as way more concerned about ~lady things~ when things are going to hell. In the issue where her life is on the line and the baby is coming and Reed has to go into the negative zone, she doesn’t even make an appearance until like the last page. Susan deserves better. My reading guide actually didn’t recommend any 1969 issues of FF? I wonder what was going on...

Oh, skrulls impersonating 1920s gangsters and doing super-human trafficking, of course. Well, let’s move on.

The Incredible Hulk (Tales to Astonish)

I have had a soft spot for the Sulk ever since...probably the 2003 three Ang Lee film? Where I realized that 1) Bruce has bad dad issues and no one likes him, and 2) Hulk isn’t just a big boy, he is really fast and jumps crazy far and that’s a physical concept my teenage brain had never considered. I hadn’t even considered liking the Hulk growing up because I was so uncomfortable with almost all expressions of masculinity and machismo. My mom in fact was the one who told me “Don’t you want to see the Hulk? He’s big and scary like a bad guy, but he’s a good guy!” and I assume that’s what helped change my mind?

Anyway, Hulk has had a rough time in terms of popularity as well. His magazine lasted some six or seven issues before being canceled and his stories would continue, shorter, in Tales to Astonish, alongside Ant-Man (and eventually Namor’s own series). In the last few years of the decade he’d get a new magazine starting with The Incredible Hulk #102 (following Tales to Astonish #101... comic numbering is extremely bad), and...it’s okay so far! In the modern era, Hulk had a cartoon I never watched, a few nonstarter films, there was that series with Lou Ferrigno I know nothing about... He seems to always function best as a side hero. It doesn’t help that all the villains in his series are, like. Weird? Not like FF crazy weird, just like weird and not seemingly a great match for Hulk himself. Most of the ones that come to mind are dudes who are also mutated by gamma radiation or something else (and sometimes also green? why is the green supposed to be a common thread, that feels coincidental).

Which reminds me, Bruce is almost never present in what I’ve read so far. It’s just Hulk, usually talking way more than feels natural for him (it took a while for him to start speaking mostly in the third person). As a result, Hulk is usually given a very limited range of characterization and expected to coast on that, and it doesn’t often work. You have to put Hulk in casts and settings that complement him. For a while there he has a support character in Rick Jones, a (very uninteresting) teen boy who eventually can’t keep up with the increasingly antagonistic Hulk, bounces over to Captain America as a ward, eventually is confused by a cosmic cube-wielding, Cap-impersonating Red Skull, and fucks off on his own. He is immediately possessed by, and becomes a host for, Mar-Vell/Captain Marvel. I do not give a single fuck about Rick Jones.

In the earliest issues, the Hulk is gray, and also...just a non-furry werewolf. HE changes at night, until issue #102 retconned this.

Highlights: - That first issue has some really nice panels but I’m gonna say that’s all Jack Kirby’s doing. - Ends up harassing the FF, Spider-Man, the Avengers (after being one of them and then getting buttmad and running off), the Silver Surfer, the US military (regularly)... - Hulk goes to the far dystopic future?? He gets back I guess. - Hulk goes to Asgard! This is arguably the most interesting place to put him because all Odin’s warriors try to fight him and then decide lol this guy’s cool let’s go hang out. Meanwhile, Loki keeps fucking with him. But then the Enchantress and the Executioner become the villains and things get kinda boring again. - The Leader (that’s actually the name of a villain) makes a big robot and Hulk throws it into a volcano and then activates said volcano with his FISTS to fuck it up. Then he manually diverts a nuclear missile into the atmosphere after suddenly caring about people even though he has no reason to. Shrug! - Hulk goes to Attilan, the hidden nation of the Inhumans! There’s potential for interesting stuff here, but it’s mostly wasted by a full cast of extremely uninteresting one-off characters. This is all in a double length annual issue with a gorgeous cover by Jim Steranko, but the issue itself is drawn by Marie Severin. She does good stuff! But Steranko’s work is gorgeous.

Whatever!

The Mighty Thor (Journey into Mystery)

Thor’s winged helmet is really dumb, goodnight everybody!

Okay but yeah Thor started out in the Journey into Mystery magazine, and I guess I’d describe his stuff as... Dungeons and Dragons by Marvel? I struggle with it aesthetically but I like some of the ideas. Mjolnir is fucking cool, Asgard is both a real place and an planet (a flat one, even?), fucking Olympus is also a place and Hercules exists, Loki is... well, Loki hasn’t come into his own yet, but we’ll get there one day. On the other hand, some of the villains are dull as dishwater and a number of the good guys took their time getting interesting. Clearly there was some appeal, because he did eventually get his own magazine starting with Thor #126, I think? There’s that bad numbering again.

A big weird problem with Thor is that originally he has a secret identity. Like. Donald Blake is a surgeon who needs to use a cane to walk, and he goes hiking by himself and gets lost I guess and finds a stick and it turns out oops it’s Mjolnir and he becomes Thor! And Thor is not just a new identity, but also a person that is both the Thor of Norse myth, and the actual son of Odin up in Asgard and has been so forever and aaaaaaa

Donald Blake is not super important. He mostly exists to give Thor a weakness in that he can’t let go of his hammer for 60 seconds or he’ll turn back into a guy with a PhD. Eventually, in the latter half of the 60s, they add on to his backstory in a way I like, by saying “oh no no, he was always Thor. At one point Odin punished him by sending him to Earth with amnesia and in the guise of a handicapped guy getting through medical school. For some reason.” Which really only makes his dual identities more confusing, and I actually dig that. The MCU does not fuck with this at all, and I’m assuming the comics throw it out in the decades to come. Also, this semi-retcon was not included in the reading guide, I found it on accident. Anyway.

Highlights: - Thor joins the Avengers! I mean, duh, of course he does. He eventually leaves because he’s too popular and needs his own series or something. He occasionally pops back in to do cool stuff. - Thor accidentally ends up on Olympus and gets into a big sweaty fight with Hercules. They decide they are pals. This was an annual issue. - Thor goes into space! This is where things get good, and I really like Thor’s archaic ass as a cosmic sci-fi hero. Great juxtaposition. - Thor meets/fights Ego, the Living Planet! Okay, I said Galactus was the weirdest thing, and I was wrong. Ego is. Ego is almost as described on the tin, because he is actually described as an entire “bioverse”, and capable of changing the entirety of his physical makeup at any time. It is intensely cool. He’s also kind of evil and wants to spread out to control everywhere. Also, Thor makes friends with a nice recording robot and becomes an ally of robot rights. - Thor dies! A guy with a giant crowbar is accidentally given asgardian power by Loki, and then kills Thor because Thor has lost his power because Odin is punishing him again. And then Hela shows up as the goddess of death and says hey Thor. And he says hold on I got this and gets back in his body and saves the day and it’s fine. Hela does what she does best, stand there and look cool and do nothing else.

god she’s hot

- Thor rescues Ego from Galactus? Kind of on accident, he’s just trying to save the people inbetween who got their planets ate. Actually though, this arc fucking kicks, and he hangs out with the recorder bot too. In the end, Ego is grateful and lets the planetless nomads live on him. - Thor hangs out with Galactus and listens to his tragic backstory! Then Thor decides he’s gonna hit him anyway, and Odin decides “that’s enough for this story arc” and whisks Thor off to fight a robot instead. - Volstagg. - Volstagg.

- VOLSTAGG.

- Thor’s dudes go to the human world and there are shenanigans. It is good.

The Amazing Spider-Man

We all knew this was coming. Marvel’s own Pikachu. Possibly the most popular superhero alive (well, second to Batman anyway). And probably the hero I cared about the most growing up. We got associated a lot because we share a name. Spidey is probably the coolest idea for a superhero anyone has ever had, and they better CGI gets, the better his fights look. I do not care how many QTEs are gonna be in that new videogame, I wanna look at Spidey swing. Spider-man is just cool cool cool cool.

Early Spider-Man comics are fucking boring! Goodnight everybody!

Okay just kidding sort of. Spider-Man takes a while to pick up, in my opinion, and I’m 100% positive part of that is because I’ve seen these early stories retold in better and better definition so many times. I watched the cartoon as a kid, but the Sam Raimi movies are probably what comes to mind when I think of Spider-Man. Steve Ditko nailed a fucking iconic costume design, and did a great job of visually communicating Spidey’s agility on paper. But, in the earliest issues there was rarely any variation in panel size and shape, and action scenes were laid out like diagrams. Both those factors, along with the fact that each panel had dialogue because Peter kind of never shuts up, meant that pacing slowed to a crawl, and I had to chew through those issues. Also sometimes he just fought, like, mobsters with lassos. Jesus christ that’s boring. As the decade goes on, we start getting some good stuff, and to be completely honest, I’m looking forward to the weird dumb 90s stuff the most?

Highlights: - Peter has a persecution complex and uses his secret identity to be an asshole! Even after Peter’s iconic and still very well written origin story, he spends a lot of time harassing people, good and bad. He regularly breaks into JJ’s office in costume and makes fun of him, he crashes the Torch’s party to beat him up and flirt with his girlfriend, he breaks into the Baxter building to fight the FF in hopes they’ll recruit him with pay, he...gets into an argument with black students who are very passionate about affordable housing? He wasn’t even in costume for that one. Jesus, Peter, go to a therapist. - Nobody likes Spider-Man! Kind of makes sense why he’s got those personality issues, though those start with jocks calling him a nerd (he’s a nerd). Half the city doesn’t trust him, he works for a newspaper that is dedicated to anti-Spidey propaganda (Peter, you’re partially at fault for this), even the X-Men just assume he’s a bad guy, and that’s usually a problem they have to deal with. - Really appropriate villains! Wow! The Vulture matches his high up action, Doc Ock is both another victim of weird science and an intellectual rival. Also, like, their namesakes have a lot of legs. The Lizard is...Florida Man. Maybe the better argument is that many of these villains are memorable, in a decade that featured a concerning amount of “large humanoid monster/robot” baddies in all of the running series. - Like the Green Goblin. Who knew that would be Spider-Man’s Joker? Maybe that’s a bad comparison. Also bats and clowns aren’t usually connected with each other. Where was I going with this. - Spider-Man tries to quit the superhero gig twice, I think? He’s the only Marvel hero to consider this, as far as I know. Part of Peter’s appeal is that not only is he a young adult, unlike the rest of Marvel’s adult cast, but he’s also financially disadvantaged, has a non-nuclear model family, and has to look out for his often ailing Aunt. He has to work a side job while going to school while fighting bad guys, and it’s a lot more interesting than what Tony Stark’s doing up to this point. This has all been said so many times by so many people, but it’s an obligatory mention. - Peter donates blood to Aunt May at one point and accidentally gets a radioactive particle in her body. OOPS. Spider-Man goes on a rampage to find an antidote and tears a metal stairwell off its hinges. He also, like, completely destroys a villain’s underwater base and nearly doesn’t get out himself. - The Green Goblin discovers Peter is Spider-Man! Most of the Marvel heroes have this anxiety, but it never ends up a problem, so this is pretty big. The Goblin kidnaps him in broad daylight, ties him to a chair in a secluded place, and infodumps his origin story that he’s actually the father of Peter’s college roommate and is kind of very unhinged and obsessed with Spider-Man? In the end, Gobby gets amnesia and forgets the whole supervillain and mental illness thing and turns back into a good dad. - Spidey goes to the Casbah! Yeah, go figure. He learns his parents were traitors to America, and it fucks him up so much he flies there to find the truth. He ends up exploding the Red Skull and learns his parents were actually double double agents and were spying for America and so things are a-okay!

also peter kills a dude with a missile

- That aforementioned thing about affordable housing happens! Some black college students are unhappy that the university is taking old dorms that could be used as low rent housing for students and instead giving it to visiting alumni, and start a big protest and the narrative actually pins them as sympathetic even when they get overzealous and physical? I’m...kind of surprised, to be honest. Not used to seeing this at all.

Ant-Man, and...other identities. (Tales to Astonish)

ima keep it real with u founding member of the avengers hank pym, this will not improve marvel’s declining sales

This guy is a goddamn mess.

People like to say “pfffft there’s an ant-man? that’s goofy! that’s the weirdest thing ever! that’s a bad idea!” and buddy let me tell you, Hank Pym has a career specializing in bad ideas. Let’s list them!

- Adopt a young woman while she is grieving over the loss of her father and take her in as both a crime-fighting ward (The Wasp!) and also a love interest. Feel bad about it for about five minutes so it’s okay. - Develop a “growth capsule” that allows you to turn huge and decide to adopt two super hero identities, Ant-Man and Giant-Man. Assume this will not confuse anyone. - Eventually do weird science to make it so you can grow and shrink at will. Assume this will not have negative repercussions on your body. - Change the name Giant-Man to Goliath because you feel like Giant-Man is a dumb name. Confuse everyone for multiple issues. - Get stuck as a twelve-foot tall 90s beverage mascot lookin ass motherfucker (you are terrible at costume design, hank) and get real mad at everyone all the time about it. - Create an evil robot called Ultron and forget about it. Oops! Surely this will be fine.

IT’LL BE FINE

- Fail to relate to your robot-grandson-turned-avenger The Vision. Be a bad grandpa. - Inhale chemicals and get all fucked up on temporary schizophrenia (???), adopting a second personality. Call yourself Yellowjacket, claim to have killed Hank, and kidnap your girlfriend and force her to make out with you. - When assaulting your girlfriend makes her, uh, somehow realize that you are Hank, she will rope you into marrying her, thereby...uh...legally cuckolding yourself I guess? Realize you are Hank during/after the wedding, and be perfectly fine with this egregious violation of consent. Nothing about this will have lasting negative consequences. - Adopt the identity of Yellowjacket, and abandon Goliath. Continue to confuse people. On the bright side, finally have a nice costume. - Make a new Goliath costume in celebration of refusing to ever be Goliath again (WHY), and store it and a beaker of growth serum (WHY) in an unlocked locker out in the open (WHY). Hawkeye will steal it and become the new Goliath II.

So far that’s everything about Hank-Man! Stay tuned to see more of this trainwreck.

Iron Man (Tales of Suspense)

YO THIS DUDE SUCKS

I really like Iron Man’s origin story and his overall concept but the tech culture would not advance far enough to match it for a while. Also this was in the era of the Vietnam War and so Tony’s greatest enemy is The Mandarin, an extremely awkward asian stereotype and I! Ain’t! Got! Time! For! That!

Avengers

The Avengers are, at their most interesting, characters already in their own magazines. At their worst, they’re a bunch of characters no one cares about, fighting villains no one cares about, with last second ass-pull victories. There was a brief period there were I suspected the Avengers magazine was going to be true gristle of Marvel I was gonna have to chew on for hours to get through. Thankfully we are eventually given Marvel’s goodest boy, Vision. After that, things start to pick up a lot.

bless him and his little intangible heart

Highlights: - Captain America is found frozen in an ice cube! He’s been in cryo for twenty years, wow how the world has changed. I guess. Another case of time passing eventually making an origin story better. At this point Marvel has revived three 1940s comics properties: Cap, Namor, and the Human Torch (the lattermost in this case being an entirely different person). - Kang the Conqueror! Kang is a hell of a villain concept. He’s a time traveler who once ruled ancient Egypt as a pharaoh named Rama Tut and, uh, will eventually rule over Earth in the 41st century. He keeps harassing the 20th century for some reason. Also he is hint hint maybe related to Doctor Doom, I guess. - Hawkeye joins, having previously been a one-off villain, and proceeds to be an asshole to everyone forever. Eventually he becomes Goliath II because why not I guess. - Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver join, having recently bailed on Magneto’s Brotherhood, and they are...kinda boring, tbh. Wanda’s “hex power” isn’t very well defined (it makes unlucky things happen), and neither of them have much personality yet. At one point they fight Doctor Doom and he uses a machine to cancel out the hex power (???) and outpaces Quicksilver without using any enhancements (???). Some of these issues really blow. Quicksilver’s costume is lazy as hell. - Hercules joins for some reason, even though he says he doesn’t wanna be part of a team. - Magneto does some sneaky bullshit and tricks Quicksilver into thinking someone at the UN shoots at Wanda on purpose. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch join Magneto again because fuck normies. - The Avengers are killed (sort of) by the Grim Reaper! Their newest member, the Black Panther, rescues them.

Pick a color you trilobite.

- The Vision joins, Ultron-5 is introduced, and things finally settle in for the good stuff. - Ultron rebuilds himself in adamantium as Ultron-6 and replaces his legs with a rocket chariot thing. No one is brave enough to tell him it looks dumb.

no shut up its cool and i can fit still fit through doorways

immediately the next chapter he re-rebuilds himself with legs and calls himself Ultimate Ultron. mmmhm.

sounds like somebody was havin some self esteem issues about their body. sounds like a talk that ultron and their dad hank pym could probably relate to each other over.

- The decade ends with an arc where Kang abducts the Avengers and ends up himself wrapped up in a proxy wargame with the Grandmaster. Kang uses the Avengers as his pawns, and the GM creates four superhumans that he totally didn’t get from DC no sir. Perfectly original characters, do not steal.

I just...I just really feel like that last one could have used a few more minutes in the boardroom.

- Even better, the second half of the arc pits the avengers against Captain America, Namor, and the Human Torch...in their 1940s renditions!

Hank even comments on the fact that Namor’s diction is different. It’s great.

The Uncanny X-Men

So I grew up in the 90s, and despite never really engaging with comics, I was quite aware that Marvel’s hottest shit at the time was Spider-Man and X-Men. The X-Men had a slow start, but once they caught on, they never really dropped off. Actually, I think they might be less popular now? They’re at least not the ever-present icons they used to be, and I suspect that is partially to do with middling-quality movies diluting the brand.

But, the appeal is there from the start. Children born unique but feared by society are adopted by Patrick Stewart and spirited away to a special boarding school that is secretly dedicated to teaching them to use their powers for the sake of fighting evil. This was the proto-Harry Potter, though Snape’s gonna win no contests against Wolverine.

Unfortunately, we don’t have Wolverine, yet. We’ve got...these guys!

(Not pictured: Marvel Girl/Jean Grey)

The creative potential in mutant design has not quite picked up yet, so the main team (of five teens and an old man) includes such marvels as Guy With Wings, and Guy What Got Big Feet. Seriously, Beast’s feet get way too much attention.

I cannot wait until you are a blue cat instead of this.

I wish I could comment on the political commentary on the series, but it hasn’t quite started up yet, whether that is intentional or not. The rampant fear of mutants is there, we’ve even had a Sentinels arc, but it’s mostly just surface stuff. I had a lot to say about Spider-Man, so I feel kind of silly coming up short here!

Highlights: - Magneto. Despite the slow start this series is going through, Magneto is immediately introduced and has his wonderful costume design and his super threatening magnetism powers. I am a bit confused as to how his magnetism affects all things, not just metal, but magnets are an irl mystery and I’m willing to let it slide. - The Juggernaut. The two-issue arc introducing Juggz himself are effectively told, if not sliiightly silly in structure. The first issue has the X-Men building up defenses because he’s coming, and later, as he tears through each single one, unseen to both the kids and the reader, Xavier explains his and the Juggernaut’s tumultuous childhood together. It builds the tension really well, but it’s a bit funny by the fourth time the X-Men are saying “we gotta go meet him before he breaks in here where we are!” and Xavier’s like “I’M NOT DONE TELLING MY ORIGIN STORY.” - The Sentinels. This is probably the last interesting arc in the 60s, published as early as ‘65. It’s almost the last material in the reading guide, next to an issue where they all get into a fight with Spider-Man for no reason. If I understand correctly, the Sentinels are later depicted as humongous robots, where here they’re closer to ten feet tall or so. I’d always thought the idea of “a bunch of mass produced robots designed to kill mutants” seemed uncreative growing up, especially given that they don’t, like, have an x-gene suppressing ray or anything, but it works well enough in the moment. - Wholly unnecessary amounts of sexual harassment towards Jean Grey. All the boys have the hots for her (well, maybe not Iceman (pun not intended)), including even Xavier saying that she’s attractive when she first arrives. What the fuck, dudes.

X-MANS IS CANCELED

Doctor Strange (Strange Tales)

The reading guide included a ton of Strange Tales to read, including an 11-issue arc at one point. Good grief it was a lot.

Steve Ditko, of early Spider-Man, did the art for Strange for a good while, and I found that contrast between the diagram like action of Spider-Man, and the much more fantastic illustrations of Strange to be the most interesting thing. Eventually Marie Severin would take over as the penciller, and it would take a bit of time to adjust, but the more abstract it got, the better. Also, I don’t really like the footie pajamas Severin draws him in.

This is Steve Ditko. He has thin lines and exact shapes and while you don’t see it here, his magic fights are very clear and easy to follow.

This is Marie Severin. In comparison her lines are thick and smudged (well, okay, we have to give credit to the inkers for these as well, though I think she did her own inking?), but is capable of uniquely evocative images like this. Her action scenes are harder to follow, but she is equally capable of the kind of surreality that appears in Doctor Strange’s comics.

Also, while the topic has been touched on a lot, especially around the time the movie came out, it still bears repeating that Doctor Strange is built on a foundation of cultural appropriation and mystic eastern boogie woogie nonsense. I’m parroting the words of people that know this much better than me, but it’s a problematic and somewhat common trope that media will depict a white protagonist in a foreign setting who not just excels but surpasses everyone else, particularly peers who are native to the setting. At best it’s well-meaning and oblivious, at worst it perpetuates a narrow worldview where everything has to revolve around white people.

Anyway, when the comics focus more on the dread dark dimension of Dormammu, most of these problems aren’t around, and you get lots of fun and bizarre imagery and goofy spell casting.

Highlights: - Dormammu. He’s a prideful otherworldy being who refuses to be caught explicitly going back on his word when beaten at a game of skill, but easily breaks down and claws at loopholes with which he can attempt his petty revenge against Strange. He is also portrayed as a necessary evil, in that he uses his power to erect a barrier that keeps his servants safe from mindless laser-eye cyclops monsters that are just perpetually punching each other. That conflict makes for complicated situations where usurping him may be more harm than help. Also his head is always on fire, and that’s cool. - Trippy visuals. Ditko’s backgrounds lean closer to pop art with abstract shapes, bright colors, and twisting pathways. Severin’s art, if I can remember (there hasn’t been a lot yet) leans closer to mysterious and somewhat vague settings. I’m describing it very poorly.

That’s kind of it for Strange, I guess!

Daredevil

oh my god how many of these have I done now im so tired

I haven’t read much Daredevil yet! The reading guide has given me some seven issues so far out of the full decade, and while there has been some good stuff, I don’t know if I can draw a big mental picture.

DD is, theoretically, in that same category as Captain America, where rather than being a super powerful character, he is merely very very good at what he has. DD got hit in the face with a radioactive dildo or something and it blinded him but enhanced his other senses so intensely that if you sneeze he can tell what brand of nasal spray you use. Also, he’s super acrobatic and has a swiss army walking cane that he can use to do just about anything. And he’s a working attorney. Fuck you and your eyeballs, Batman.

Marvel has not begun to embrace noir, and as I understand it, that seems to be the genre most people know DD for aligning with. As a result, things are kinda silly! DD’s first outfit was yellow and he fought a man who had robot stilts in broad daylight.

Highlights: - Killgrave, the...Purple Man.

I can’t believe this is how Jessica Jones starts.

Uhh, Killgrave got some pheromones or something embedded in his skin on accident and now everyone just does what he says to no matter what. He’s purple now, too. This has not been taken to its terrifying possibilities yet, but I’m very excited to see where it goes. - Daredevil fights Namor. Okay, seriously? Seriously? This is my favorite issue, no joke. Namor busts out of the ocean demanding a lawyer (Matt himself) so he can sue the human race. Shenanigans ensue, and a trial is attempted, but ultimately falls apart when Namor decides “you know what? fuck this I’m gonna start breakin shit”. Matt changes into the DD costume and takes on Namor with everything he can think of, including construction equipment, but fails.

Out of respect, Namor leaves.

- Stilt-Man.

Stilt-Man. (Stilt-Man eventually shrinks into a quantum state that he remains trapped in for months until he suddenly isn’t.)

- And finally, Mike Murdock. In an attempt to ward off suspicion that he might be Daredevil, Matt...pretends to be his twin brother who is never in the same room at the same time as him. As Mike, he is a cocky jerk to everyone and insists that he is Daredevil. And people believe him.

As you would expect (for once), this nearly gets people killed.

Nick Fury (Strange Tales, Agent of Shield)

NICK FURY IS THE BEST GOD DAMN SONNUVA BITCH IN THE WHOLE MARVEL LINE UP

Nick Fury is like if you took James Bond and made it not suck. You get to keep all the gadgets and world traveling but swap out the “ooh, I’m so cool and serious” with kicking open doors and telling fascists to go fuck themselves. Most importantly, it’s a near-parody of the overwrought machismo that the series runs on. It’s so busy getting from point A to point B in as fun a way as possible that it’s impossible to take seriously.

Actually, it might be like if Battle Tendency was less sympathetic to real world fascists. Which is to say, it’s the pinnacle of evolution.

Look me in the eye and tell me this isn’t a JJBA action scene. (Also, Jim Steranko blessed us with a shirtless Fury in latex pants.)

A highlights list would be ridiculously long because I love these comics, so I’ll instead focus on one thing in particular.

- Jim Steranko’s art is gorgeous

Yes, these are all Nick Fury title pages.

Captain America (Tales of Suspense)

Steve is just now starting to get interesting, mostly through his own series, but he’s had plenty of time for notable moments throughout his screentime (pagetime?) in Tales of Suspense and Avengers. While talking about Daredevil I mentioned Captain America and how he’s less of a nigh-supernatural being like most heroes, and more of a particularly exceptional human. He hits really hard, but more impressive is his stamina and agility. Something that I’ve liked in the MCU is how they’ve portrayed him as always capable of what is just one step beyond what people think is possible of him. He can’t fly, but he’ll do as many impossible leaps as necessary. He’s not super strong (well, not to the degree of Spider-Man), but he sure can run for miles, and he knows his way around that shield.

I feel like a lot of what I’m writing is surface level readings of these comics, but the characteristics of Steve that really identify him haven’t quite shown themselves yet, I think. When I think of him, what always comes to mind is that his “american good boy” values take priority over allegiances, and so you’ll see Captain America himself abandon his title if America no longer represents the values of protecting the weak. Steve Rogers is kind of a perfect flawless human (when not written terribly), but that’s pretty okay at the end of the day, when a superhero is more of an icon than a person.

Highlights: - That time the Red Skull got the Cosmic Cube (not the Tesseract), and became a god for like five minutes.

- That time Cap fought a giant baby.

- That time Cap pretended to be dead and then stopped Hydra from burying all the avengers alive even Vision who would...be able to just phase out of the grave. I’m not really sure what the plan there was. - That other time the Red Skull got the cosmic cube and then switched bodies with Cap and they made a lot of facial expressions.

- That time Rick Jones thought Captain America didn’t like him, meanwhile Cap was stranded on a desert island and hanging out with The Falcon and it was cool. Nobody cares about Rick Jones.

Namor, The Sub-Mariner (Tales to Astonish)

I didn’t read a fuck shit about this dude! Sorry!

Captain Marvel

we’re so close to being done

The reading guide gave me nearly nothing on this dude. Issues #1-3 and then #17. He’s a Kree (whoa!) named Mar-Vell (lol) who should be helping to fuck up Earth but ends up liking it and chooses to defend it. He’s got a jet pack and a laser and a really shit costume and he’s NOT BLUE.

Marvy, I need you to move over, the more interesting hero is behind you.

He’s got an asshole commanding officer who keeps trying to get him killed because he wants to fuck his girlfriend and SNORE, I do not care. Come on dude. I have been psyched to learn about

At some point in-between chapters #3 and #17, and...shit, I’ll just quote wikipedia for this:

After aiding humanity several times, Mar-Vell is found guilty of treason against the Kree Empire and sentenced to death by firing squad. Mar-Vell escapes in a stolen rocket, but becomes lost in space. After drifting for 112 days, he is weak and on the verge of madness. He is manipulated by Ronan the Accuser and Kree Minister Zarek into helping them overthrow the Supreme Intelligence. To better help them, Mar-Vell is given a new costume and enhanced abilities. After the conspiracy is foiled, Mar-Vell tries to return to Earth. On the way, he is hit by a blast of radiation that traps him in the Negative Zone.[16]

The Supreme Intelligence enables Mar-Vell to telepathically contact Rick Jones, which he uses to lead Jones to a set of "nega-bands" at an abandoned Kree base. When Jones puts on the bands and strikes them together, he trades places with Mar-Vell and is encased in a protective aura in the Negative Zone. The pair discover they are able to maintain telepathic contact. Using this method, Mar-Vell can remain in the positive universe for a period of three hours.

well what the fuck that might have been worth reading, thanks reading guide

Anyway, so yeah, Rick Jones! Both of these characters were pretty boring, and mayyybe this will help the both of them. Or not. At least the new costume is cool.

Silver Surfer

IT’S THE LAST ONE THANK GOD

Once again, I don’t have much to say here! I wrote all my thoughts on the surfer up in the Fantastic Four section, so you can read that if you haven’t. The reading guide only gave me three issues to read, though they were quite good. The first was his origin story, which I already wrote about above. The second one was about invisible aliens that manipulated the surfer and people’s distrust of him (part of this is because he keeps occasionally attacking humans because he thinks it’ll make them be nicer to each other). And in the third issue, Mephisto kidnaps his long lost girlfriend from his home planet. It works out kind of badly for everyone involved.

begone, thought

And that’s everything for the 60s. Phew! This took a long time and I don’t know if it was worth it. Let me know if you read it, if you enjoyed it, if you pity me, whatever. I got more comics to read.

#curry reads comics #long post #very long post #fantastic four #the incredible hulk #thor #the amazing spider man #tales to astonish #journey into mystery #tales of suspense #avengers #uncanny x men #strange tales #daredevil #captain marvel #nick fury agent of shield #silver surfer #marvel

25 notes · View notes

laezelofkliir · 6 years

Note

so if you are bitter bout mcu what are your unpopular opinions?

so a few people have actually asked me this since i said something vague about mcu yesterday haha so i figured i’ll just make a big long post under the cut and i am sorry if anyone takes this offensively, i just have to rant about some of this stuff so read at your own risk (spoiler i get mad and it is longgggg)

I do also want to say i love the mcu despite its many problems and i do my best to separate it from the comics because i understand a movie/tv show can’t develop characters the same way decades of comics can and different versions of their personalities/backstories are okay but still there is some corruption i can’t take

First off - the maximoffs. Like … no! I really am not a fan of the mcu versions. I could deal with their new personalities/upbringings if it wasn’t at the expense of their ethnicity. Like for those of you that don’t know, the maximoffs are jewish and romani, they are basically whitepassing pocs and they were very poor and are even children of holocaust survivors … so how the fuck and why the fuck did they volunteer to work for hydra ?!?! just completely corrupting everything that made them who they were is so disrespectful and to make them fucking work for A NAZI ORGANIZATION is not a small personality/backstory change, it goes against everything from the original characters.

Wanda maximoff also just walked into the avengers with barely any accountability for her actions, yes she had to deal with the pain of what she caused at the beginning of civil war but hardly anyone is bringing up the fact that she toyed with bruce/hulk in aou which caused so much damage and very likely resulted in a loss of many civilian lives, how is no one realizing it is her fault ?! she was pardoned for everything she did when tony was painted as villain WHY

Also in civil war i was more on tony’s side, i do think that cap was right in thinking that they shouldn’t be solely controlled by the government because sometimes there are fights they need to do that they wouldn’t necessarily be allowed to go to. B U T they do have to understand the effects of their often reckless actions. Yes they are saving the world but they could very well destroy it by not taking accountability for the damage they cause.

And okay civil war, like really? I just think it was forced and happened too fast, i know it can’t be like the comics always, but the civil war in the comics actually served a real purpose and in the mcu it was just like 12 people fighting in a parking lot ??

Also the villainization of tony is just … NO. like stop please. Tony makes mistakes, he does as everyone does and yes they are colossal ones too - i mean ultron for just one example. But he should not be seen as a villain for trying to protect the world. He saw infinity war coming a mile away and everybody was upset about it. Ultron was a disaster yes, but how is it that tony wasn’t pardoned when wanda and bucky were? I am not trying to say bucky shouldn’t be pardoned, because he was rightfully forgiven as he had no control over what hydra made him do, but wanda did … and she isn’t really apologizing or realizing the effects of some of her actions so … why is everyone pissed at tony??

And god okay i’m gonna be brief with mcu nat because ugh but just fuck scar jo and get her out of my sight, black widow deserves a solo movie with an actually talented actress who isn’t trying to steal minority roles alongside bucky barnes, i refuse to believe a black widow movie with no bucky could ever work

Guardians of the galaxy … jesus they did my babies dirty. Mcu peter quill … i don’t really like him and maybe it is because i’m not super fond of chris “i have a gun arsenal” pratt but tbh i just think they portray quill as a dick who can be misogynistic and a has a very delicate ego. His changed backstory was meh which i can live with but he is so fragile with his masculinity and it demeans gamora. I do like gamora and peter together but it would be so much better if he wasn’t always trying to be better than her or got offended anytime she was smarter or a better fighter than him (which is always sooo). Then mantis was done dirty she should not be some slave to a weird planet man ?? i think pom is a wonderful mantis but she was given crap to work with because mantis is a celestial being like an actual GODDESS so why is she working for a planet ??? and drax ugh he is not an idiot like mcu portrays him i’m so bitter about that

I understand why scott lang was chosen to be ant man over hank pym i mean if paul rudd was going to be scott it makes perfect sense. Hank is also just … i don’t quite know how to describe hank other than controversial i guess but that’s another story, and scott would come off waaaaay better to audiences as ant man, the thing i am just so mad about is the fact that janet was practically erased from the avengers. I mean please don’t get me wrong i love hope van dyne and a young janet shouldn’t be falling in love with scott, but i just wish they could have at least included the REAL janet, not michelle pfiefer (no offense to michelle either because she’s doing great with what she’s given) being an old knock off janet, and not even like her own movie (which would be fucking fantastic though) but like janet gave so much of her life to the avengers and was a founding member. A FOUNDING MEMBER. And her purpose in the mcu was basically just to give hank manpain like whyyyyyyyyyy

And CLINT! God clint barton was screwed over, comics clint is amazing and is 80% deaf (he has a frickin hearing aid!!) and loves dogs and coffee and pizza and i could even handle jeremy renner being this version of clint, i don’t really have a problem with jeremy but i hate that marvel just made him be loki’s slave for awhile then just randomly give him a family AHA PUH LEASE MARVEL clint barton is a hoe (okay not really a hoe but he has been romantically involved with many of the super ladies) he would not have some secret family also with someone not in the same business as him, and also clint is a survivor of abuse and represents someone with a disability and mcu took all of that away from him ughhh

Okay and spider-man … i think smhc was a great movie and tom is so cute and pure and an amazing peter parker but … why? Like why were we given a THIRD peter parker when we could have fucking had miles morales ?! for those of you who don’t know miles morlaes, he is black and is spiderman in a different universe (the ultimate universe) and so i mean marvel come on if you’re going to put in a new spiderman why couldn’t it be miles? And i mean this with no offense to tom but i just wish we could’ve had a poc lead sooner and now we get into the spiderverse as the introduction to miles which also don’t get me wrong, i am very excited about that movie but to me it just seems like we won’t have a great shot at getting miles in the mcu if they do a series of new animated films about the spiderverse

And doctor strange ugh the whitewashing just ugh and then stephen too like idk benedict cumberbatch is an amazing actor but stephen was made so arrogantly in mcu and he comes off as this hotshot doctor who did it for money and to show off how amazing he is but he actually became a doctor because he witnessed his sister’s death and then soon after his mother died

And then the whitewashing of the ancient one jesusssss the ancient one is not some eccentric white woman, the ancient one is an asian man … i could even understand making the character a woman as the only other female character would be rachel mcadams’s character (she was so unimportant i don’t even know her name whoops) but do not take away the asian identity !!

And iron fist man … it just sucked, there’s really not much more to say

Then elektra fucking natchios was done SO DIRTY elodie yung is the absolute best elektra, i can’t imagine anyone else playing her and she did so well for the shit she was given but they decided to take a route that made her a sociopath ?? i mean i am okay with the changed backstory but elektra just doesn’t go around killing people for the fun of it like she does it because she has been through a lot and wants to take bad people out of the world like the ones that killed her father and yes maybe she is a little misguided and lost but still she doesn’t think killing people is a fun thing to do on a saturday night like why marvel ?? and just the black sky thing was weird … never a thing in the comics but whatever

And also okay … i love peggy carter and i loved hayley atwell being peggy but sharon is ultimately cap’s main love interest and is the main woman in all of cap’s storylines. And sharon was set up SO well but because stucky fans are ruthless sharon doesn’t even exist anymore and i’m so bitter about that, emily vancamp was a great agent 13 and marvel actually did a great job of bringing her into the universe in catws but look what happened, everyone forgot about her and are obsessed with peggy instead … which as i said, i’m not trying to diss peggy or hayley because i loved agent carter and her in catfa, but everyone decided sharon was nothing compared to peggy and i just don’t see why we can’t have both ??

Another thing … why vision? Like why the heck was vision put into the mcu it really doesn’t make sense to me i mean i think paul bettany is great but he just .. why this weird robot? i’m guessing to bring more in about the infinity stones but still idk because that didn’t really happen ??

And rhodey … poor poor rhodey, the casting change was actually a pretty good idea because i think don cheadle is the perfect rhodey (with no offense to terrence howard’s version, i just think don cheadle should’ve been there from the start) but they didn’t really introduce him into becoming war machine at all, they just gave him a suit and were like boom you’re a superhero now go be an avenger ?? with barely any development to why ?? i demand a war machine solo movie please, we all damn well know don cheadle would be great and ryan coogler should direct it, we’ll have no tony (no offense to tony just no more white men) and we’ll get sam in there and they will be a fucking badass team

And i am so bitter that it took 10 FUCKING YEARS to not have a white male lead a movie … marvel you have so many amazing characters of so many different ethnicities and backgrounds and genders and sexualities like why is carol only coming in now and why did black panther just become a huge movie?! should’ve been there from the start ugh

In my eyes, the only flawless mcu pieces that i would never bash are thor: ragnarok, and black panther (and maybe runaways because we finally got our first canon lgbtq couple) and catws if scar jo wasn’t in it. Marvel needs to realize the success of these films, that taika waititi and ryan coogler are the best directors they have and should be directing more films *cough cough* GUARDIANS 3 *cough*

So wow … that’s a lot and it’s a lot of bashing marvel but i just … if you don’t know shit about the comics the mcu seems amazing like i was there once i didn’t start reading comics until a few years ago when i heard about the young avengers and i have loved the movies since iron man came out ten years ago, but the mcu is very corrupting of a lot of the best parts of these characters, and a lot of people don’t realize that

Thanks for letting me rant and as i have said i really don’t mean to offend anyone who is a fan of the mcu or (most of) the actors of the mcu because they’re just doing their job, so please realize a lot of this is my opinion, i’m just expressing how i feel about marvel and for the record, i do love the mcu i just don’t like a lot of what goes on behind the scenes.

#anon #answered #so yeah i know i kind of bashed a lot of peoples faves #but its more marvel's fault than the actual character/actor #sorry kinda not sorry

11 notes · View notes

kevinbaxter · 3 years

Text

The face of evil

In pro-Wrestling the Heel (Bad Guy) is the one who insults the fans, uses illegal choke holds behind the Referee’s back uses a steel chair, removes the padding from the turnbuckle, removes the safety mat to expose the hard concrete and has their cronies’ gang up on the babyface (Good Guy) everything that makes you boo them. You ultimately want to see the heel get their comeuppance.

Evil is a point of view; one person’s Terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. One person’s conspiracy theorist is another person’s free thinker just having somebody do bad sh*t for no apparent reason makes no dam sense. Good vs Bad isn’t as simple as black and white; it’s that big grey void in the centre where lines are blurred and it’s there that the scales can get tipped one way or another. Theoretically speaking good people can do bad things for the “Greater Good” and it is this “Greater Good” that is ultimately the deal breaker.

If someone was running in your direction seriously injured crying and bleeding and they said, “Please help me.” then they ducked behind a parked car. Shortly afterwards an angry mob approach you and said, “We’re looking for someone” and they proceeded to give you a description of that person; nobody would blame you for misdirecting the mob with a small fib, so you lied which is bad but potentially saved a life which is good. It’s all about motivation.

IMAGE SOURCE: Fantastic Four #5, (July 1962), Marvel Comics

My favourite Supervillain of all time is Marvel’s Doctor Doom. That may surprise a few people who would assume that it would be Darth Vader from Star Wars, but no it’s Doctor Doom all day long. When the Antagonist is involved in a fuel with the Protagonist you really want to feel that you can understand where the villain is coming from. You may not agree with their methods, but you at least can relate to why they do the things that they do.

Doctor Doom wants to rule the World but unlike some greedy evil entity he doesn’t want to steal resources and make himself rich at the expense of making others poor, in fact quite the contrary. He is a sovereign monarch; he has diplomatic immunity his ambition is to bring order to the World and level up the playing field. His subjects revere him; he protects them and ensures they live the best lives possible under his reign. He wants the world to be one kingdom under Doom and you see how that would be a problem. Ultimately, it’s his sense of honour that I admire the most about the guy.

IMAGE Source: Fantastic Four #361, (Feb 1992), Marvel Comics

In Fantastic Four issue 361 “Miracle on Yancy Street” Ben Grimm “The Thing” is approached by an old friend requesting help to find his missing son. Drug addicts were going missing from Ben’s old neighbourhood. Fast forward to the reveal that it was Doctor Doom behind the abductions a battle kicks off between the two. Ben had broken his arm in an earlier adventure when Doctor Doom realised that Ben’s arm was broken he refused to continue fighting as attacking an injured foe was beneath him and he would rather battle the Thing when he was at full strength. It was also revealed that the reason that Doctor Doom was arranging for Drug addicts to be taken from the streets was because he did not want to rule a World of Drug addicted citizens and was using his scientific knowledge to find a cure.

IMAGE Source: Fantastic Four #361, (Feb 1992), Marvel Comics

I believe villains still need boundaries, now imagine it’s a quiet mid-week afternoon then suddenly a Bank is stormed by a team of armed robbers. What are the robbers’ objectives? To get in, get the money then get out. If they can achieve this with minimum fuss, then it’s a win. Imagine not that the Robbers have secured the premises and the Police are on the scene it’s now a stand off in my version of events if one of the Robbers started to take Wallets and jewellery from the members of the Public I would have the leader of the gang question that robber then insist that “We are here to taken money from the Bank, they are insured we do not rob personal possessions from hostages” he would then make his associate return the goods and apologies.

Suddenly he notices that one of his men is missing and then he sees a very upset and distressed female coming in crying with rips on her clothes and bruising on her arms. He then sees the missing man. He calls one of the other female hostages to attend to the woman he then takes his man into another room for “questioning” and if it is confirmed that the scene is as bad as it looked, he beats him within an inch of his life then drags this injured man to the entrance of the Bank throwing him to the Police. He then makes a leadership decision to release women, children and families keeping back some hostages to keep negotiations viable. I am not sure how the rest of the story would play out at this stage, but I really wanted to make the point that even bad guys should have boundaries.

IMAGE SOURCE: X-Men, (1963) Artist Jack Kirby, Marvel Comics

Motivation is an important factor for both antagonists and protagonists. Marvel’s Magneto, master of magnetism and arch-nemesis of the X-Men was the leader of the brotherhood of evil mutants. It was only years later when they peeled back the layers of complexities behind Magneto’s character that you realise, he isn’t evil at all. He was a Jewish holocaust survivor and witnessed and experience horrific atrocities and these affected him deeply. He saw that those with power abused and victimised those who had none, and he vowed never to be a victim again. He saw humanity as brutal and oppressive and so when his innate powers manifested themselves, he decided to strike at the very core of this humanity that he found was so oppressive.

0 notes

infectedworldmind · 6 years

Text

On an unseasonably warm Saturday morning in early February, my wife suggested that I take a break to go see the new Black Panther movie on our way back from a local Chinese New Year parade. We were having a very good day after an exhausting, impossible week. At the time, I did not know that this pattern would repeat itself over the following four months. We had a great breakfast at one of our favorite local spots (Zoi’s, which makes terrific breakfast sandwiches) and I successfully convinced my son that the colorful dragons marching in the parade were fun and not frightening (“See? They’re not real dragons, they’re just costumes!” <man under dragon costume gives a friendly wave to skeptical son>).

We discussed the Black Panther phenomenon while we munched hash browns and sipped coffee – it had premiered a few days earlier and was already a giant success at the box office and in the culture. I was curious and she was ambivalent – while the concept and creative folk involved piqued her interest, she mostly checked out on Marvel movies after the underwhelming Avengers film in 2010. When she made her offer later that morning, I thought about declining until I realized that if I didn’t accept, I probably wouldn’t see Black Panther until it arrived on Netflix (or whatever over the top digital service Disney comes up with). So I accepted her offer and was surprised by how excited I felt.

I found an amazing seat at our local theater (a spot that made up for its lack of modern features with decent screens and pleasant staff). I was surrounded by a representative sample of New Haven – earnest college students from a wide variety of backgrounds, excited African Americans from the local community and pleasant Yale/Yale New Haven Hospital retirees. There was a lot of conversation in the room that died down when the trailers and commercials and PSAs ended. Everyone focused their attention on a dark screen and heard a boy ask his father to tell him a story.

A few hours later, another curious boy asked a man who he was, and the screen faded to black. There were two more scenes tucked in a seemingly endless scroll of credits, but they felt like post-film trailers for future Marvel movies, a reminder that Black Panther takes place in a larger (and quite lucrative) narrative and a suggestion that the cinematic Wakanda will play a much more prominent role in the Marvel movie universe than its comic book counterpart. Some stayed for the scenes, and others did not, but it was clear that the boy’s question was the end of the story that Ryan Coogler spent 200 million dollars to tell. Some people were energized, others were talking about their favorite scene or which one of the many attractive actors in the film was the most stunning. I saw a few people with tears in their eyes, a few repeating Michael B. Jordan’s last line in the film.

Black Panther is an excellent film, possibly the first Marvel movie that feels completely engaged with our world. Coogler sustains an emotional resonance throughout the entire film that can only be found in isolated sequences in other Marvel films – a glance from Jeff Daniels, a provocative question asked by Cate Blanchett, a moment of intimacy between Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan. These genuine, emotionally honest moments are as important to the Marvel Studios storytelling formula as all of the third acts filled with expensive digital effect sequences and schematic plots. Black Panther departs from this formula by grounding these moments in a personal story with meaningful stakes. The stakes of the story matter because all of the artists involved in the movie – from the director, writers and cast to the costume designer, the makeup and hair people and the experts who helped with dialects – worked to make all the characters feel fully realized, with hopes, dreams and flaws independent from our hero and his journey. We care about the fate of Wakanda because we care about the characters who inhabit it – and T’Challa’s family turmoil matters because the love, joy and resentment expressed by the family members feels real.

Coogler reminds us that the desire for representation in the African American community isn’t just about seeing black faces on a screen. We want to be taken seriously, to feel like our gaze is as valid and important as the white gaze that we are accustomed to seeing in Hollywood films. We want to see a dramatization of the kinds of debates and tensions that exist within the black community without an explainer for everyone else. We want movies where dark skinned people are properly lit and stories that aren’t mediated by the perspective of outsiders (even the very well meaning ones).

Coogler uses a familiar hero’s journey framework to tell a story about community, societal boundaries and black liberation. Black Panther dramatizes the discourse within the black community about identity and freedom in mythic, larger than life terms without sacrificing the black perspective. He invites the audience to view in-group conversations without translating anything for them. It’s a mainstream movie about black lives that cheerfully ignores the urge to reassure or defy the “little white man deep inside all of us” who wants to limit our freedom to imagine and create fictional worlds.

Coogler trusts his audience. He trusts them to tease out the distinctions between and within the liberal and radical visions for black liberation presented in the scenes and layers the narrative with allusions to events and ideas relevant to the African American experience.

There are limits to the scope of ideas explored in Black Panther. The film is set in Africa and is filled with images and items that we associate with Africa, but its narrative is driven by the concerns, dreams and dilemmas of the members of the African diaspora who were brought to America hundreds of years ago. In one sense, there aren’t many African American characters in Black Panther, but in another, we are everywhere. We are asked to reflect on the obligations that a privileged black community owes to less privileged black communities and while the characters do reference the struggle against white supremacy (not named, but you know…) in global terms, the visual reminders of oppression and that struggle are all tied to America, and the African American civil rights movement (in the early nineties) serves as the catalyst for the story.

This dynamic is not confined to the film version of Black Panther. In the late winter, I planned to (and may still) write about Black Panther and Wakanda as incomplete afrofuturist projects. Here’s the gist: Black Panther and Wakanda were created by two Jewish American comic book creators in the 1960’s, and while a number of Afro-diasporic writers and artists have helped shape our understanding of the Black Panther’s world over the years, almost all were telling stories from a perspective that was both African and American. They explored African American hopes and fears about empowerment, colonialism and intergroup conflict, but rarely incorporated the viewpoints of other members of the diaspora, particularly those who remained in Africa. I found great value in exploring the dreams and possibilities of the African American experience through a story like Black Panther (and a nation like Wakanda), but wondered if the absence of non-American perspectives (particularly African ones) blunted its potential impact. I also wondered how much sharper – and more transformative – the story would be if we were reading/watching a story that Africans were telling us about their world.

Black Panther is also a Marvel Studios movie, and cannot escape the positive and negative associations of that corporate relationship.

It shares the basic plot structure as many of their films centered around a solo hero, from the role of the two villains in the narrative (and how they are introduced) to the hero’s fall from grace and eventual triumph in a CGI fueled battle.

I wonder if that relationship contributes to the intriguing tension between the radical and conventional elements in Black Panther. The film’s visuals shake mainstream (at least in the world of blockbuster commercial Hollywood filmmaking) assumptions around beauty and power, with a diverse, nearly all-black cast presented as larger than life figures and shot in a manner that highlights the richness of their individual skin tones.

We are shown pieces of culture from all over Africa in a way that makes them feel modern and vital (and not ancient or exotic). But while the story gestures towards quasi-radical politics, it ultimately delivers a full throated defense of traditional monarchy that would’ve seemed downright reactionary in another film. The dialogue that evokes a long history of black nationalism/radicalism is delivered by a character presented as a violent faux populist tyrant. T’Challa’s plan to reengage with the world felt audacious on my first viewing, but upon reflection, it sounded pretty vague. My wife (who watched the movie with me when it was released on Blu Ray) remarked that she expected T’Challa to announce an initiative that would improve the material circumstances of the people of Oakland – a housing or education or employment program.

The Africana spread throughout Black Panther highlights this tension. The visual look of the scenes set in Wakanda is thoughtfully considered and creates a distinctly non-American context for the story. The interviews and profiles surrounding the movie make it clear that the visual aesthetic for the film is intended as a celebration of a wide range of African cultures, a rare thing for mainstream American films. This celebration is complicated by the film’s narrative, which is mostly set in a fictional isolated African nation. In this context, the blend of different African cultures in a single place without any in-text explanation becomes a reminder of our troubling habit of treating Africa as if it were a single location. A cinematic Latveria (the fictional Central European home of Fantastic Four villain Dr. Doom) that just combined elements of Greek, Czech, French and British visual and physical culture wouldn’t seem authentically ‘European’, it would feel artificial, the product of an outsider unfamiliar with the diverse cultures and societies on the continent.

Latveria, from a bad Fantastic Four movie. This needs some Greek columns and a couple of domes. Maybe a circuitry covered henge in the background.

The mix of conventional and radical elements make Black Panther feel less satisfying and more substantial. I would have wholeheartedly welcomed a mainstream Hollywood funded full throated meditation on dismantling white supremacy and the pain caused by colonialism, but I know that Americans – that we – have a limited appetite for blockbuster films that unnerve or threaten. I still want to see a movie that shows the non fictional black community – my community – through a non-tragic lens. Many countries in Africa still face huge challenges, but there have been a number of meaningful improvements of social and economic conditions in nations throughout the continent over the last two decades. African Americans still face a wide range of disadvantages relative to European Americans, but there has been (some) progress (particularly in the areas of education and wages). We are more than nameless youth at an urban basketball court. The scenes set in Wakanda are triumphant and transporting, but I couldn’t shake the thought that there are also happy and prosperous and successful (in the broadest definition of the word) black people who live in actual neighborhoods in real countries.

Coogler’s Black Panther is a piece of entertainment, a commodity owned by a multi billion dollar corporation that has a mixed history with black people and social justice and which is unlikely to green light a blockbuster with radical politics or that challenges viewers. It’s also a thrilling and thought provoking work of art made by a promising young African American director who has successfully infused social commentary and emotional honesty in a series of mainstream films of steadily increasing size and scope. Black Panther’s success is a win for films made by and starring black people, but it’s also a big win for Disney shareholders. It’s a story that excites by centering the perspective of African Americans (even in allegorical terms), but leaves one hungry for more that reflects the experiences of people from other parts of the diaspora.

It’s a movie that entertains and inspires, but as Yasiin Bey might say, it can’t save us. Thankfully, no one promised that it would.

Next Week: Second Take (Four Things).

Black Panther: First Take. In which I finally put some thoughts about a popular movie into writing. On an unseasonably warm Saturday morning in early February, my wife suggested that I take a break to go see the new…

#Afrofuturism #Black Panther #Ryan Coogler

2 notes · View notes

doctorbrycebanner · 6 years

Text

((Even if you don’t agree with what I have to say, I just want people to hear me out because I am giving my two cents as a actual Jewish person, which I think gives me some authority to speak on this topic.

As a Jew I am explicitly telling you that rping nazis ain’t cool.

I know there are people already arguing against this idea, or rather the broader issue involved (namely about whether or not its okay to write about certain topics) and admittedly my opinion is that some topics are grayer than others and it really depends upon the issue at hand.

In the Marvel fandom the nazism issue is complicated by the question of whether or not Hydra counts as a nazi organization despite it having splintered off from the main movement and I would personally argue that it still is, as many of the end goals are the same even if the methods are different but I’d also say it doesn’t matter because Hydra’s function in the story was always to be an allegory for nazism. You see, when the Captain America writers created the concept of Hydra, it was to create a baddie that wasn’t explicitly nazis (because they were drawing a lot of flack for the anti-nazi flavor of their comics). So Hydra was always meant to be a stand-in for nazis and you cannot escape that history even now and in a different medium.

It’s one thing to write a story where the nazis are are straight up the villains, that’s perfectly fine! But the act of roleplaying a nazi is by nature humanizing them to at least some extent. You can’t make a whole blog for a character without humanizing them because you’re getting in their head and looking at their motivations. The only circumstance in which it would be okay to roleplay a Nazi is if a nazi is an NPC that is there to be the bad guy and be defeated.

In this case, this is you being completely fine with normalizing and humanizing nazism because you want to "explore" it or probably get off on it or whatever. It ends up creates the same problem that oversaturation of movies with nazis does: it makes nazis into something treated like fiction and causes people to trivialize what nazis are and what they doing. In many ways, shit like this contributes to the rise of nazism because we start treating nazism like something that can't happen in real life. This is a problem that exists with other hot button issues too of young people being more easily groomed into stuff by gross people because they take advantage of people uploading this sort of content (even in the creators would “never do this in real life”) and use it to their advantage.

To boil it down, I am largely against humanizing characters that do irredeemable things along the lines of violent bigotry and rape (even if yes, our definition of irreedemable is technically subjective). Historically only bad things happen when you try to do that. Simply look at the impact the book Lolita had on our culture in normalizing pedophilia despite the author intending the novel to be about how unromantic and horrifying pedophilia is. When you play around with a heavy topic like nazism or pedophilia, especially in a public space like tumblr, it is absolutely your own fault if/when you draw heavy criticism. Sure there’s no law stopping you from writing about rape or incest, but that doesn’t mean you get a free pass when people judge you for it. That’s the price of being on a public website and sharing content here.

I think what hurts the most is that a lot of arguments that are for allowing people to roleplay nazis/pedophiles/etc end up explicitly ignoring the voices of people who are victims of these things that aren’t just fiction, that are very real.

Believe me, as a jew, I wish nazis were fiction, that no one could be capable of doing what they did, but the fact is they were real, they murdered people in my family, their actions are still in living memory, and they are real now and threatening to murder me and my people, and it is not a topic to play with lightly just for funsies.

You put your desire to play out something "edgy" over real people and their feelings and that's... well frankly I think it’s selfish. You can say everything you want about “Don’t Like Don’t Read” or whatever but when you are on a public website like this one, you need to be very aware of the content you are putting out because although roleplay is fiction and you may roleplay doing something that you wouldn’t do in real life, it still says something about you when you outright dismiss people when they tell you that what you are writing about is hurting them.))

#gamma free #i know i have followers that are going to disagree #and im sorry but i stand by this #if you feel that its best to unfollow me then that is your choice

3 notes · View notes

lovecanbesostrange · 6 years

Text

Crisis on Earth X is a thing that really happened and I was surprised how many little things were in there that made me very happy. Of course it will always be a sour subject, because wtf did they think that literal Nazis were necessary?

I’m sure there are hundreds of posts talking about this anyway, it all started when news broke, what would happen and now seeing it... WHY? I am not against evil doppelgangers, I love the concept. Especially if they meet and we can see how paths diverge and the good twin, who is in some sort of emotional crisis, finds new strength/faith/believe/confidence. And this would’ve been so easy here.

I like the concept of evil Supergirl. But just have Earth X be a world that was conquered by Superman first. History changed blablabla and now there is this place where physical power reigns and while the few good people killed Superman, everything was worse when Supergirl arrived and took his place. Wow, is she pissed off, losing her planet and learning how humans killed her cousin (her last piece of family). And build the world from there.

It can still be a fascist regime, but it’s enough to have like some sort of stand-in Nazis. I don’t need swastikas, a fucking SS emblem on Supergirl’s chest and concentration camps complete with historical accurate stars of David and pink triangles. Fuck you!

And this evil Kara would still tie in perfectly with our Kara. Better than humans, doing whatever she wants, because she can. In “Supergirl” Kara had to deal with being worshipped and she there is this loneliness, because yes, she is not human and it has become a shield for her. And seeing such a perverted version of herself can be a great inner journey. But the whole Führer crap (lol Kara second-in-command, really????) takes away from that.

I’m somewhat “glad” they remembered that Felicity and Stein are jewish. Then again this came in handy for more revolting drama. I didn’t need to see Earth-X Felicity brought in like that. Also having the “Arbeit macht frei” sign including the upside down b felt so wrong, there is a very specific story behind it. It’s not like superhero stories can’t use this, it’s just... look, seeing Magneto visit Auschwitz means something. Marvel fucked up enough with Hydra!Steve. I don’t need a four episode crossover event of overall lighthearted superhero shows to crank the Nazi shit up to 11. Yes, they are getting punched and everybody gets a “I hate Nazis” line... but you fucking still tortured you two jewish characters and KILLED ONE OF THEM!!

Okay, so Professor Martin Stein was going. You wanted a big heroic death scene/sacrifice as a sucker punch for the end. Have this big loss. I get it. But don’t kill dear jewish Grandpa by faceless swastika wearing nazi soldiers............ PROTECT FELICITY AND STEIN HERE AT ALL COSTS!

I can’t even enjoy seeing The Ray and Earth-X Leo Snart smooching. It’s tainted, because remembering that other minorities were targeted (and having Alex and Sara exchange a glance there, when Stein explains the pink triangles)....... just FUCK YOU ALL.

And that very sweet double wedding ending... it’s spoiled a little bit. Because I do remember the Ronnie/Caitlin wedding, WITH STEIN OFFICIATING! Btw thank you for every moment Stein and Caitlin had. Those were amazing. And that you mentioned that wedding. (Also Caitlin clearifying that she helped with that serum and it isn’t just Cisco and Harry who do the science thing... even though FUCK YOU again, because taking it was so horrible in the end.)

Let all the doppelgangers be super-assholes, let them be villains who out-evil all the main villains. Let Eobard look like the least threatening of them all somehow. Let them kill and conquer and oppress. But you don’t need to put real life monstrosities in there for that.

Okay, okay, so that overshadows everything, but if I step back and look at this as a all-the-superheroes-meet-and-fight-and-save-each-other crossover event. It worked very well. Definitely better than last year (where Kara’s presence was not necessary, guess that’s why she was so prominent this time?) and I liked how everybody could pitch in. And getting some nice personal scenes, before and during the crisis.

I’m very much okay that Central City and “The Flash” family are like the anchor to all of this. “Arrow” was first, sure, but it’s too doom and gloom all the time. Star LABS is a great base of operations and who wouldn’t love Barry and Iris? Sara started out on “Arrow” and thank you, that she always keeps a special connection to Ollie. And Ray was in Star City first as well. Yet somehow the Legends work better in connection to “The Flash” and metahumans and all.

Alex having a little panic attack, because she had her first one night stand was somewhat cute. And I guess there’s no better person to share this with than Sara. XD And Kara cheering her on was hilarious. Yay, sorry you two had a vacation in hell there... tbh if this team needed a leader, I still think Alex would be better qualified than Oliver. Except it turned out to be about Kara and with her sister in danger all rational thought went bye-bye. We are in S6 of “Arrow” and Ollie pulls the same bs as always and I still don’t buy into him as a leader. And sorry, but Sara is the one I want in my corner when shit hits the fan, but the leading aspect... Alex is the best trained for this (as long as J’onn isn’t around), but the biggest handicap for her is not knowing these people yet. And the writers love putting Ollie front and center (on fucking both sides).

I have had a lot of ups and downs with my liking of Felicity (mainly due to rubbish writing for unnecessary drama), but she got to put her best foot forth. OMG when she stood in front of helpless Kara, bodyshielding her. PRAISE! Teaming up with Iris was really cool.

Speaking of cool, I love you, Killer Frost. :3 a) I’m pissed Führer!Ollie didn’t lose his arm to her power, she was freezing him, come on! b) Can she team up with The Ray? Because that money shot with the whole team for the last fight they gave off this Firestar/Iceman vibe. Or c) let her hang out with Amaya and Zari, that was a great girl power moment.

Look, I don’t care too much about the plot. I’m okay with “let’s conquer another earth, and we choose the one day where the most superheroes are grouped up, because we are super confident we can take them; and then we take the heart of one for a transplant”. The most important part about a crossover like this to me are the character moments. (Same goes for event comics, where writers still believe anybody gives a rat’s ass about a convuluted plot with twists they pulled out of their ass. NO WE DON’T!) Know what had me clapping with joy? The caterer at the wedding, don’t try to tell me that was anybody but the daughter of Barry and Iris from the future. That is exciting!

The only other plot device I want to UGH about was the use of Red Tornado. Loved seeing General Schott as the resistance leader. And you know what, I understand why he didn’t want to give them time in the first place. But then he does, but oh no, he orders the strike earlier anyway and suddenly Flash and Ray have to fight the weapon that would help weaken the evil that destroys this Earth. Okay, so evil Oliver and Kara die anyway and Earth-X Felicity was just send off with a gun and will inspire hope I guess... but still... the Crisis on Earth-X is not totally over.

I could go on and on. Even with some nice parts. But again, fuck you for making me cry like that. EVERYBODY PLEASE HUG JEFFERSON SOME MORE!

#Crisis on Earth X #Supergirl #Arrow #The Flash #Legends of Tomorrow

2 notes · View notes

traincat · 4 years

Note

I like MCU Spider-Man, but I agree with nearly all of your critiques. The 3rd film will have the same director and writers, so I don't expect the problems to be fixed, but I'm curious: do you think MCU Spider-Man is salvageable? If you could be completely in charge, how would you write the story and fix the problems?

Yeah, I don’t really expect the problems to be fixed in the third film, no matter how many times they promise it’s going to be something “different.” If I’m honest, besides the incredibly weak scripts, I think a big part of the problem is that Jon Watts is a bad director for a Spider-Man project. Which, to be fair, I think is actually why he was hired �� he’s got a pretty short list of credits under his name. I mean, “Cop Car”? “Clown”? Nothing about his repertoire suggests he was going to give the studio the kind of artistic pushback they have a history of receiving from their more experienced directors. He’s basically the director version of Jell-O – easy to mold and bland to boot. The perfect guy to direct a car commercial I mean mainstream superhero film.

This is actually part of the reason I’m disappointed that the Sony-Marvel rights deal ended up sticking after all. I think that if the film rights had reverted entirely back to Sony, there might have been some damage control. We know that they intended to keep Tom Holland, if not the whole cast, for at least one more movie even if the rights had reverted entirely back to Sony so I don’t really get what the raising of arms was about. The rights reversion would’ve cut the apron strings with the rest of the MCU which would have been good, forcing both this Spider-Man to stand on his own two feet within his own narrative and also forcing the movie to focus solely on Spider-Man and on his cast. Sony’s recent Spider-Man films as of the time of writing this (I no idea what the hell they’re gonna do with Morbius and I don’t really care) have dealt with some element of “corporations are evil” – Oscorp pulling the strings in TASM/2 and Venom’s whole entire deal – and I would really like to see this version of Spider-Man be thrust into a plot where that’s the reality and that’s something he has to deal with and where he’s actually forced to defend normal people not just against a costumed villain with a grudge but against an entire system that is set up to exploit and abuse the vulnerable. I think that would have gone a long way towards if not fixing the damage inflicted upon the narrative, then at least course correcting it for the future. But that’s not happening now so whatever.

I find it kind of hard to think of what I would do if I was handed complete control of MCU Spider-Man with the caveat that I had to go forward using the two previous films as my background just because I dislike so many of the choices they made so much. On the other hand, I do like money and inflicting my own opinions on a captive audience, so. I think I would want to scale back the stakes a lot – keep Peter in New York for the entirety of the movie’s plot and film mostly there if at all possible. I would want to cute the ties to all Iron Man cast members so sorry, Jon Favreau, but you’re out, while at the same time redirecting the film’s focus into something more oriented in Peter’s civilian community. Bringing in a character like Leo Zelinsky, a Holocaust survivor who works as a tailor specializing in super-clients, would be a really good way to give Peter and the audience a personal connection to Peter’s Queens community while also tying this Peter back to the Jewish subtext of Spider-Man, and it could work in a plot where cut the Iron Man cast – this Peter isn’t an experienced craftsman when it comes to creating his own costume, so bringing in Leo Zelinsky would make sense, and a costume created by the both of them could be quite meaningful if it was played out well.

I would definitely want to give May Parker much more screentime and rework her relationship from the “big sister” role (the writers’ words, not mine) to that of Peter’s mother, someone who realistically worries about the dangers of Spider-Man but also provides a strong moral backbone for him. I’d want to establish the exact circumstances of Ben’s death – I don’t know exactly what I’d do, but given this Peter’s development has failed to track with most other Peters I would definitely want to switch Ben’s death up somehow to kind of shed some light on that. Peter and May would have to talk about him. I would definitely want to bring Peter’s classic college friends group closer together, starting with Peter and Flash since I really like Tony Revolori as an actor. I find this MJ to be an incredibly inscrutable character, and not in a good way, so I’d want to shed some better light on her, her family circumstances, and what makes her tick. I’d bring Liz back and give her some of her comic counterpart’s fire (perhaps literally, given Ultimate Liz’s Firestar status) and also I’d get Betty’s actress a brunette bob stat. There would definitely be a bigger focus on women and on Peter navigating complicated friendships with women, not just letting him have a romantic interest and that’s the end of that. I’m very conflicted on what to do with Ned Leeds because I think Jacob Batalon has some of the best screen presence of that cast, but I find it hard to get past the “Ganke Lee with a minor Peter antagonist’s name pasted on him” aspect of the character. Honestly? I might rework Ned’s role to go full villain, skipping directly to the Hobgoblin with the shadow of the Green Goblin and the Kingpin behind him. That would solve my problem of wanting to give Batalon massive amounts of screen time and a big role but absolutely detesting the reworking of Ned Leed’s into the best friend sidekick position. I would say I’d want Ned to then have a romantic subplot with a young Richard Fisk, who would be here for some reason (it’s not like it’s the worst continuity crime the MCU would have ever committed) but I don’t want yet another Disney’s first ever gay character spotlight moment to be given to the villains, so. It would take some finangling. Maybe I would reinvent Aunt May’s one time fiance Nathan Lubensky as a woman so we’d have some nice balance.

And we defend not one single bank within the movie.

Alternatively, I go mad with the power and reveal that this entire cast is made up of clones created by the Jackal, thus explaining all the Ben Reilly-inspired costumes, and subject everyone to my five movie Clone Saga adaptation dreams.

What I would really want to do given full creative control and being told I could wipe the slate clean and restart Spider-Man within the MCU, no questions asked, would be to have Peter as a retired superhero who was active underground years and years before Iron Man or the Avengers were ever on the scene, and have his daughter Mayday be the young teenage Spider-Man of the MCU, someone fresh and new who carries her father’s legacy while living in a world saturated by the Avengers legacy.

Or I’d just kill Peter and bring in a great team to do a Miles movie. I maybe think about this theoretical where I can get my claws into things a lot.

#*replies #traincat talks comics #traincat talks homecoming #mcu critical/#Anonymous

68 notes · View notes

hellyeahheroes · 6 years

Text

Bendis is moving to DC y’all

DC has Marvel’s highest seller writer, Brian Michael Bendis, the mind behind Marvel hits like Modern day Spider-man and Peter Parker, Jessica Jones, and the revival of Luke Cage. Miles Morales, and Riri Williams.The man that weave interpersonal and intense storylines such as Peter’s first and failed attempt at tacking the Kingpin and Avengers spending most of their time playing poker.Love him, hate him, or wish he would stop dragging on arcs, this is undoubtedly big news in comic circles.

Now, I have been a big follower of Bendis. I have read all 160 issues of Ultimate Spider-man and the 40 plus issues of Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-man. I read Daredevil, Moon Knight,Guardians of the Galaxy and stopped reading Guardians of the Galaxy, regrettably Civil War II, Age of Ultron, Alias, and so much more. So I know Bendis’s strengths and weaknesses as a writer. I know his quirks and tendencies.Like how random characters who have up to a point have been depicted as protestant or non-religious just randomly start using Yiddish slang(Peter Parker and fucking Mary Jane randomly say tuchas a lot).

With that said, the question on everyone’s mind is what is he going to write? As a connoisseur of Bendis’s bullshit, I can say that Bendis specializes in grounded characters. “A super hero that is grounded? What sense does that make?” I know right, but he has been kicking DC’s ass for nearly two decades so it is something of a speciality of his that people are willing to consume in bunches. And quite frankly, it is a good hire because DC, in general, when it comes to heroes, they write heroes as symbols and not heroes as ordinary people. Marvel writes heroes as people and because they are people, they become symbolic if that makes sense.

What I mean by grounded, I mean characters with daily middle to low class lives. People on their grind trying to work a 9-5 in the day and put on costumes and beat up thugs during the night. He is also great a noir and crime fiction, gritty or not so gritty. So the type of Superheroes that fight crime on a relatively low level. Street crime fighters.

We did some discussion and agreed Jaime Reyes would thrive under Bendis’s pen because he is pretty much Peter Parker except instead of Spider-bite, dude gets a hostile alien implant. It has been said that the character has been struggling and sales so Bendis’s name recognition would work.

Batman? Sure. Bendis did make a great Daredevil run, some would say it was his magnum opus, and Batman is Daredevil without the idealism and riches. Honestly, the only Batman I accept is DCAU and has nothing to do with Kevin Conroy as it does have to do with people writing the character as this infallible borderline sociopath that just does not kill. The problem with this is that Bruce Wayne is rich and you can just glance at Bendis’s Invincible Iron Man run and see how quickly he ditched the character in favor of a more down to Earth Riri Williams.

Now honestly, I think Superman is a bad idea. Bendis likes personable characters and Superman is a symbolic character. A symbol whose significance worn thin because he was supposed to be emblematic of American immigration in that even with his homeworld destroyed and essentially being an alien, he is still American as anyone. Yes, Bendis being Jewish and Superman being derived from Hebrew mythology would make you think it’s a match made for heaven, but the issue is that in spite of Clark’s mundane life, Clark Kent’s life is modeled after trying to be Clark Kent, a normal person, and less like Superman. If Superman gets pissed and has a bad day, we got Injustice like totalitarian rule. Superman’s entire struggle is that he has so much power that in everything he does, he has to walk around eggshells. It’s a world of cardboard for him. And that is okay. I am not knacking him, but in terms of superheroes, Bendis is out of his element. or would be.

Bendis is not great with narratively busy comics. I know this because if there are too many plots going on at once, he starts making characters talk in his voice, and so they are out of character. He does not explain things and just wants to get to the next moment. Read Civil War II and Age of Ultron for examples of this. These events are emblematic to why you should not give this man very complicated and heavy stories. Do not give him Justice League. It is a bad idea.

So we have narratively condensed, everyman characters with an aspect of crime noir. These are what brought Bendis to the dance.

@ubernegro

While I’m not as much a Bendis connoisseur, he’s been always around at Marvel, shaping it whenever he went, around the same time I came back to comics as a teenager. In fact, he’s been such a stable of Marvel for so long the sudden news he is jumping ships sounds so bizarre to me I’m half expecting to find out somebody spiced my coffee with drugs and this is all a hallucination. This is not the first time a writer unexpectedly jumped ships but might be the largest one since Grant Morrison had enough of being treated like shit by X-Men editorial and that one even Joe Quesada didn’t see coming before they announced it. It makes me worried how bad exactly are things at Marvel that even a company powerhouse like Bendis is leaving.

I’ve been checking out other sites and aside 4chan tearing itself over like they always do, it’s also trending on Twitter, with people like Tom King openly welcoming him with warm arms while others, like Gail Simone, are making their own guesses what he will get. In fact, here is hers:

Which is as far away from everything said above as possible. I mean, nothing speaks “grounded” like a team of aliens in far future.... buuuut apparently Bendis once admitted he would want to write a Legion book one day. I’m almost hoping DC really got Hickman, with whom they were apparently in talks, to do a Legion book instead and I’m not a fan of Hickman.

Back to the predictions, I agree that Batman might not be the best fit for Bendis. But I also think that one of his strengths is how rich the setting and supporting cast he provides. I could totally see him on a book about one of more grounded Batfamily members, like Red Hood and the Outlaws or maybe someone who don’t have a book right now (Azrael or Batwing?) or maybe even one of the villains. I could actually see him try Nightwing at some point, if given good editor it could be a midpoint between his Spider-Man and Daredevil books.

Gotham also proved it can be a solid backdrop for a series about normal humans in an absolutely batshit, no pun intended, setting. Gotham Central and Gotham Academy, with solid, beloved runs, really prove it. And while I wouldn’t trust Bendis with Renee Montoya or Maggie Sawyer, I could see him taking over Rebirth of Gotham Central, especially as he always got along with Ed Brubaker, one of its original co-creators. On the other hand, they might try to give him some street-level character like the Question, whom they messed up in New 52, to Rebirth.

Jaime is also a possible choice, as his book has been struggling to have good sales and seems to be sadly heading the way of Superwoman, with a writer change that in the latter’s case was followed by cancellation announcement. Bendis is the kind of writer who could bring to Jaime numbers Dan DiDio would want right now.

Which brings me to I think an important question - who managed to catch him? If Dan DiDio, then Bendis might join crew working on his pet project, Dark Matter imprint. And considering how much people compare Teriffics to Fantastic Four, Damage to Hulk and Sideways to Spider-Man already, this would be a whole new level of sticking it to Marvel. ESPECIALLY if he gets on Sideways, whom DiDio is co-writing with different writer every arc - first being Justin Jordan, second the abovementioned Morrison.

On the other hand, Bendis is friends with Geoff Johns, who, according to rumors I heard, is apparently in a bit of a power struggle with DiDio and had gotten an upper hand thanks to Rebirth. And when you consider what project Johns is working on right now. And what characters will it likely introduce to DC Universe. And who in comics inevitably come to mind when you think of terms like “grounded”, “narratively condensed”, “flawed”, “everyman” and “crime noir”.

youtube

- Admin

#Blue Beetle #Jaime Reyes #Batfamily #Legion of the Superheroes #Sideways #Dark Matter #DC

59 notes · View notes