Marvel Cinematic Universe

[Daniel]

Also --

General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross is also a possibility since he is the person in the comics who assembles the first team - hence the name - but that is unconfirmed as no deal for any actor has closed.

This is incorrect. The first team started in the 90s and was created by Zemo. Ross had no connection to them until 2012.

[Bill1978]

Correct me if I'm wrong and this question is truly inspired by skimming the Wikipedia page for the Tunderbolts:

Are the Thunderbolts Marvel's version of DC's Suicide Squad?

[Ben]

Kinda, sorta, basically, yes.

[Randall]

The original Thunderbolts were supervillains masquerading as heroes. The later version was more similar to Suicide Squad.

[Daniel]

I enjoyed the first episode of "Ms. Marvel". I liked the imagination scenes and how they showed the texting. Iman embodies Kamala so much. Thought Bruno was spot on, all the main characters really. The giAnt-Man head + hammer sequence was a bit contrived, though. Digged hearing authentic Indian music in the background and the credits with imagery from the original comics. Real nice touch.

[Randall]

I haven't watched yet, but was it not Pakistani music? True, the Indian and Pakistani cultures can be closely related, but it seems odd to specify Indian music when Kamala's family is Pakistani.

[Daniel]

Looked into it, the song is "Ko Ko Korina" and it is a pop song of Pakistan. My bad! But yeah, it's pretty catchy.

[Daniel]

Disney Movie Club exclusive slipcover for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness:

[gaastra]

Wonder man getting a show.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv ... 235166956/

[EricJ]

As HR correctly guessed, Disney+ wants a WandaVision S2 for the ratings, even without Vision, and remembered that Simon had some feelings for Wanda in the old West Coast Avengers comics.
(Which is about the only thing I remember Wonder Man FROM.)

Disney+ is following in the MCU tradition of making entire movies just to explain one plot point in another movie, and now Kevin Feige believes that applies to TV miniseries as well.

[Randall]

Well, sure. Just like comics!

[EricJ]

And, bumping the discussion back up to the Doc (and the Multiverse, the one Phase IV idea MCU threw at the wall that actually stuck)--

Finally caught this one on D+, and, unusually, was actually looking forward to it.
Knowing you're watching Un Filme du Sam Raimi is half the enjoyment, as the last two MCU features reminded us how important it is to get a director with actual experience reading and directing Marvel comics (ahemchloezhao), who knows where the cool stuff is.
The opening street battle had more of a Spiderman 2 vibe than even the last Spiderman film did.

That said, however, being a Raimi film, it was ungrounding, and a bit depressing to see

Old Bruce Campbell doing his cameo, as Pizza Poppa (okay, it's been thirty-five years since Evil Dead 2, rub it in! ),

but not quite as much as

seeing very, very, VERY old Patrick Stewart as Professor X--I was already worried about him in "X-Men: Days of Future Past", and that was two Star Trek series ago...At this point, I wouldn't mind if they recast or officially gave James McAvoy the job, as I keep worrying Stewart's going to die with his boots on in the next Marvel/Trek outing that thinks it's "sacrilege" not to let him play Picard or the Professor.
When Stewart's Professor comes onscreen, however, there is the moment of coolness when the music plays the X-Men theme in the background...The cartoon one. Although the subtitles identified it as "X-Men '97 theme", since, y'know, Disney/MCU ownership.

I was worried about going into a movie that presumptuously assumed we liked WandaVision, and would sympathize with tragic outrages of Lifetime-movie maternal hysteria, but the plot twists managed to satisfy even that, and stay true to the Avengers/West Coast Avengers source material.

[Ben]

So we ran this last night and, to be honest, I can’t hardly remember a thing about it, and have forgotten twice to add some comments both times I have checked the boards today!

So that must have really made an impact on me…

If I had to boil it down, it would be "samey samey samey" all the way through, with not nearly enough of a multitude of mad multiverses, or even multiverse madness, as I was looking forward to and expecting after the spoiling smorgasbord of Spidey.

I like Cumberbatch as Sherlock, but find him a touch too odd in other roles, but Stephen Strange suits him perfectly and nary has their been an actor or actress that has so well fit a character stepping out of the comic books, save for Chris Reeve and Shelley Duvall aside. But he's always had the look and that goes a long way towards me wanting to see this new film, but…wow…did it feel long and way more than the almost dead on two hours it said it was.

The opening felt like a The Suicide Squad ending rerun, the trips to other universes were waaaay to brief — how about a couple of full sequences set in some places that weren’t just our usual universe dressed up a little? — and other fan point references felt unearned or random, including what Eric hid above (indeed, it’s time to recast or use the younger version, because I was worried he wasn’t even going to make it through his brief appearance here!).

Absolutely anyone could have been directing this. It’s a Sam Raimi film, but perhaps only in name. Yes, as we know, the MCU is basically planned out and the films are made by a committee of writers, set craftspeople and post-production VFX wizards, so the director really only gets to work on performances and camera shots…mostly. Even then, a lot of them are pre-worked out, or in service of story points that have to be hit, and even with the performances, any director is (usually) working with preexisting characters and actors that have done this before and need to be consistent with earlier versions.

Bruce Campbell aside (who has looked a little creaky since a lot of face work in the late 90s/early 2000s), who really knew this was a Raimi film, specifically, perhaps the Danny Elfman score aside — and even then Elfman has been scoring other superheroes for years, including in the MCU already.

I wasn’t a big fan of making Scarlet Witch the big bad, since it kind of ramps up what has already been dealt with before and felt exactly that, like warmed up leftovers. And once established (which didn’t make sense in that scene where Strange guessed/she revealed the truth, since how did he get there…?), that was all the film had to offer: those two swishing their Honda and arms around over and over and projecting CGI sparkles at each other for the rest of the film and leaving America feeling like a secondary character from another movie or series who…just turns up? I was actually wondering if, Emperor Palpatine like, I had missed her actual intro in a previously unseen MCU show…

I’m glad that someone addressed the really obvious plot whole and reason why Scarlet Witch is doing what she wants to do, because it was glaringly left unsaid until that point, although the explanation for why she kept going was pretty useless in providing an adequate or even reasonable explanation. But so t worry about that, let’s just get back to more arm swishing and flashy projectiles…

Yeah, this was "okay", but nowhere near as exciting or tied to Spidey as it looked like it was going to be, or really even tied to the previous MCU as it could ha been. I’ve been taking an unintentional "break" from Marvel over the last handful of films and series — only through not having the time to catch them yet — but this actually made me think I might make that more an intended thing and not rush to anything at the moment.

Not only are all these properties basically doing the same old thing every time out, but even within the films the action sequences are starting to repeat themselves not long after the last big scene has only just played out! And unlike the Infinity Saga, there’s still no feeling that Phase 4 is really working towards anything, with a growing amount of too many characters to start juggling around. It really will be a mad multiverse the way they are going, and in danger of unraveling just as much as it does in this outing…

[GeffreyDrogon]

I can tell you, Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness was definitely a disappointing film. It tried being the MCU's first "horror" film, but it falls flat on its face when it relies on a superhero film's typical overuse of CGI and Raimi kowtowing to Disney by staying purely PG-13.

Heck, Stranger Things is FAR better at being scary than this.

[Daniel]

Honest trailer:



"Witness a film that explores the limitless possibilities of the multiverse for one whole scene"

Yeah, I was disappointed by it too. Just felt like a poor rehash of "WandaVision"...