DC, MARVEL, Dark Horse Comics / Graphic Novels, TV Shows, Movies etc

Poor timing with the burning down.

Also F sexists as seen loads moaning that Disney have a agenda and turning Hulk to a female, even though She Hulk has been around for almost 50 years.

Well, yeah, they're currently burning down the wrong bit of the world. . .

She-hulk is great, I've of my favourite marvel heroes. She was actually created in a similar rights mix up to the ones we see these days. Marvel were concerned the makers of the 70s hulk tv show would introduce a female Hulk before marvel had the chance and would subsequently own the rights, so marvel jumped the gun.

Same thing kinda here as Universal owns the Hulk Universe rights for films but not shows, that Disney has been clever to do a She-Hulk show instead.

Wait... Wait... Wait... People are having issues with She Hulk?... Really?

I've only seen a few have issues with Ms.Marvel (yes because they are racist)

I honestly wish they'd announced those projects over what they announced at Comicon. I've only heard good things about She-Hulk, Kamala (aka Ms. Marvel) is a great character and someone I've been wanting to get a movie for a while now, and Ewan returning for a Kenobi show is not only awesome but a sign Disney might be doing that course-correction I've been wanting. As for Moon Knight, not too familiar with him, but from what I've seen he is certainly a character with potential for a great series.

So, in short, and likely to the shock of everyone present, I'm pretty pleased with the announcements regarding Marvel's second crop of shows and Kenobi. Just a shame they're probably so far off.

Been watching Spectacular Spider-Man. It's excellent.

Rewatched Infinity War the other night.  Yep, still stands up.  It's ridiculous how good it is for a movie that's basically Marvel smashing their collection of action figures against each other for two and a half hours.  Thanos remains, of course, the highlight.  It's amazing what giving your main villain a backstory and motivation does for a movie.  

Will get around to Endgame in a few days.  I'm aware of the bigger "spoilers" (which I knew about before IW anyway because contract expiration dates are things. Hell half the spoilers I expected to occur in Infinity War), but of course I'll be interested to see how well Marvel sticks the landing for myself.  And, of course, I'm sure I'll have plenty of my much loved "hot takes" when the dust has settled.

Finally watched Endgame.  Normally I'd do some sort of write-up, but cosnidering my depression right now I honestly can't be stuffed.  So here's the TLDR breakdown.  Oh, and UNMARKED SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS ENDGAME FROM HERE ON.  Spoiler-tags are eyesores and everyone here has seen it anyway, so this is a warning for any lurkers who might not have seen the film and plan on it.  

What rocked:

-Everything in the first ten minutes (besides Captain Dues Ex Machina)
-Thanos geting the last laugh and being a smart awesome villain up to the end.  Even in the second movie he's still winning baby!
-Cap vs Cap
-America's Ass
-Thanos STILL being smart and intimidating
-Thor with his mother
-Everything Rocket Racoon
-Nebula's character arc
-RDJ's performance.  He absolutely knocked it out of the park for his final film.  
-The bombardment
-Stark, Thor, Rogers vs Thanos (Cap vs Thanos was, for me, the best fight in the film.  Y'all know why I'm sure)
-Nebula vs Nebula
-AVENGERS!.  Assemble.  
-Thanos going ONE PUNCH MAN on Captain Deus Ex Machina
-"I am inevitable."  "Yeah, and I am Iron Man."
-Old man Cap (even though it made no fucking sense when you think about it)

What sucked:

-14 million to one rat saves the universe.  
-Hulk getting shafted out of any resolution to his character arc (seriously you spend four movies building an arc for the guy and then f***ing TIME JUMP PAST THE RSOLUTION?  Come on.)

-Thor being a bad joke for the entire film.  "haha gettit?  Cuz he's fat!  Because he has PTSD and depression from half his people getting massacred, his brother dying in front of him, and his personally failing to stop Thanos genociding half the universe!  FUNNY FUN FUN RIGHT!"

-Time travel making NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.  

-The entire plot falling the pieces the moment you give it even an ounce of logical thought (this is what happens when you throw in time travel without either properly setting it up and implementing rules guys)

-Hawkeye's entire arc being, what, two scenes?

-The entire five years being handwaved aside while the movie wasted over half an hour on a pointless fanservice sidestory.  Can we have a movie following Hawkeye on his killing spree that shows the fallout of the snap plz?

-Captain Deus Ex Machina.  Lets ignore all the shit regarding her own movie for a minute and look at what she means for Endgame.  She is literally Superman, turns even Thanos himself into a joke (only being stopped because he uses the power of f***ing creation to punch her as hard as possible), oh, and she comes out of absolutely nowhere at the start of the movie.  Like can we at least have a line to explain how she knew where Tony was in SPACE?  No?  Okay.  -_____-  Like seriously the movie is a thousand times better without her around, and this isn't because I don't like her character (honestly she was fine personality-wise in the movie), this is just the fact she turns the stakes of the movie into a non-factor when she's involved because she's basically Ultra Instinct Goku in old-school Dragon Ball.  

-Did I already mention how the time travel was awfully implemented?  "So guys, we can literally warp to any point in time and space to get these stones, where do we go?"  "Hmm, well there was this time in 2012 where three were in one location, how about there?"  "Oh, yeah, and wasn't there this time where there were four in one gauntlet where a guy with a certain axe could just rush in, chop off the arm, and kthxbye with them?"

Like seriously the movie was enjoyable, but this is some seriously eyerolling gaps in logic.  No lines like "eh, how about we just avoid Thanos because he wrecked out shit twice already, k guys?" to at least lipservice it away (like they did for Strange not stopping Star Lord in IW)?  No?  Okay. . .  

Like, these issues are big.  I'm sorry, but this stuff even retroactively hurts IW.  Because it yet again begs the question of why Strange didn't just use his magic to stop Star Lord, we know now that it absolutely could have worked, and once Thanos is down the stones the hell is he going to do to them anyway?  Strange can be back on Earth in no time setting up a strikeforce of Captain Marvel, Scarlet Witch, and Thor ready to take Thanos out with ease once he gets there (which'll be a looooong while without the Space Stone).  

I gave this a pass in IW because I assumed Thanos had ways of thrawting Strange's magic even without the stones, but this movie showed with Scarlet Witch making him her b**** that that is not the case at all.  Hell she could probably kill Thanos on her own.  

FINAL THOUGHTS

Endgame is a mixed bag.  So much of it hinges on crappy logic where the cast can easily figure out better solutions.  BUT!  The payoffs.  Oh sweet lord the payoffs and fanservice.  

If I'm being critical and objective the movie is a mess.  If I'm being subjective and squeeing like a fanboy it's a god tier finale to the most ambitious cinematic saga in history.  

Did I like it?  Yes.  I think I established that I did with my "what rocked" list.  Even when the back of my mind was screaming about how bad the time-travel was I was still having an absolute blast.  But could it have been better?  I think anyone that says otherwise is kidding themselves to be honest.  I mean just look at the big issues with time travel, so much of that could've been avoided by the Russo's sitting down and going "okay, if we were in the plot how would we completely break the story with this power?  And then how do we make rules so we can't break the story?"  

That sort of stuff is what drags what could've been a 10/10 film down to a 7/10.  And so, like I expected, Infinity War remains king of the MCU.  But Endgame was, at least, a satisfying conclusion to a long saga story.  And in this modern age that is a tough achievement on its own, hats off to the Russo's for pulling it off and mostly sticking the landing.  

I think the problem with 90% of all comic book movies (and probably the comics themselves) is that they do crumble if you try to think about the "why" behind certain scenes and plot points. To be honest, I've found movies and entertainment as a whole to be much more enjoyable when I try to take them at face value. I got wrapped up in that Cinema Sins YouTube channel years ago but I've stopped watching it because personally, nitpicking to that degree sucks the enjoyment out of things. I'm not saying there's not value in looking at the logic behind shows/films and so on and some of it really does need looking at - looking at you, GoT - but that I try to avoid it.

Athrun888 wrote:

-Hawkeye's entire arc being, what, two scenes?

I reckon this will be expanded on in the Disney+ series.

Also, Hawkeye only deserves two scenes.

The thing with taking something at face value is it entirely depends on avoiding destroying the viewers suspension of disbelief.  

I know this next might seem like I'm taking the piss given how furious my critiques can get sometimes but I don't tend to spend my time when I first watch, read, or play a piece of entertainment thinking to myself "alright, lets see what flaws this thing has so I can take it apart!   "

Instead my first experience is typically a fairly passive one.  The piece of entertainment has to actively do something big enough to break my suspension of disbelief for me to switch from passively letting it wash over me and soak in to actively looking for problems.  I tend to keep that sort of thing for the hours/day after I've finished something (and even then something has to be really bothering me. I'm easy to please, but when something gets under my skin you better have a bomb shelter ready. . .)

Great ways of breaking my suspension of disbelief include, for instance, characters breaking (or being put in situations that are so transparently to force them out of character, rather than creating an organic situation) or established rules and concepts and established logic being contradicted.  

Endgame did two of those pretty badly in its second act (and I would argue nobody even tossing the idea of taking the gauntlet from Thanos pre-snap around in their brainstorm sessions would constitute the first point).

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Like I said, it all comes down to consistency.  It being genre doesn't give it a pass, many many many other genre films avoided the sorts of logical inconsistencies Endgame has (and plenty of them are well before the time when writing has been honed to the level it is now).  

As far as nitpicking is concerned I wouldn't call any of the above a nitpick.  These are chasms of logic and consistency that the writters have established as being very capable and adept at avoiding.  A nitpick would be, for example, my "14 million to 1 rat saves the world" remark.  

Cinemasins isn't a good place for well-done film analysis though, won't disagree there.  Extremely shallow (and often outright incorrect) nitpicks do not a film analysis make.  

Balladeer wrote:

Also, Hawkeye only deserves two scenes.

You take that insult to seventh-best Avenger back!

I saw Joker last night, got to say phoenix was excellent and some of the cinematography is top notch.

However the film has some holes in it plotwise (unless it's me) and of course it did a thing.

I'm gonna have to watch it, I guess. I've heard very mixed things.

Going to be watching it in the next hour and a half