Spiderbite

Actually, the stories being self-contained in one issue was one of the things I loved about the comics books of the 70's and early 80's when I was growing up as a kid. I didn't always have the money to get every issue of a series and would possibly miss some for months at a time or wanted to pick up a different character's comic because I liked the artwork. You could grab any comic, and if there was any reference to a prior event, they would be a two-panel flashback or thought bubble and even a small editor's note at the bottom (or top of the first page) explaining what had been happening. And then off you went. No reason to have to read the 12 different character issue tie-ins, separate mini-series, one shots and annuals. It was all taken care of in two panels or less. You could typically, easily just collect Amazing Spider-Man and not collect PP Spectacular Spider-Man and not get confused or really miss anything back then.

It was cool that I could pick up a copy of The Incredible Hulk one month and Spider-Man the next and know what was going on.

Even with Secret Wars, they would just catch you up. But then Crisis happened, and DC and Marvel went tie-in crazy after that. That and the constant alternate covers, #1s, renumbering, etc. were the main reasons I pretty much dropped collecting comics around 1990. That and I was 17 and needed gas money. Trying to keep up with all that and the massive price jumps for the "premium paper" or whatever back then just killed my tiny wallet.

And it appears comics and now the movies never learned their lesson from all that stuff.

Josh-da-man

But it didn't did it?

Marvel really struck gold by casting RDJ as Tony Stark. That first Iron Man movie really captured the public's imagination and laid the foundation for the MCU. They did manage to make a lot of solid casting choices early on that brought a lot of charisma to these characters, and were skillful with the Marvel branding so they moviegoing public could instantly identify their product.

But as the MCU dragged on, it seems like the movies stopped capturing the public's imagination. Captain Marvel, The Eternals, and Shang-Chi didn't capture the public's imagination they way the earlier properties did. Some of it comes down to casting -- Brie Larsen doesn't really command the screen the way she should, and Simu Lu, similarly, just feels like he's along for the ride. And The Eternals had this huge ensemble cast with A-listers, up-and-comers, and Starks, but never quite gelled into anything interesting and just felt like a plodding mess.

To use a sports analogy, their all-stars have all retired or moved on to better deals, and they're currently in a rebuilding phase, trying to craft a workable team with a bunch of rookies and a couple of the burned-out veterans. Sort of like the Royals after they played back-to-back World Series a few years ago, lost their best players, and now they're struggling to stay out of last place every season.

windom

I saw the movie but still don't understand what caused them to start switching places. Also why those 3 specifically? It seemed like the only connection was that 2 of them new each other and one was a superfan of one of them. It also seemed like they didn't switch every time they used their powers but just sometimes.

Maybe I don't remember the original Captain Marvel that well, but how is it possible for the cat creatures to swallow large objects and even people and then regurgitate them without any damage? Are they like a TARDIS, bigger on the inside or something? Also, why did the cats just swallow the random crew members and not any of the main or supporting characters?

Draven

Photon and Captain Marvel touched the portal that was created by the counterpart to Ms. Marvel's band. That entangled them together.

They are just aliens. We saw Goose swallow people in Captain Marvel as well as the Tesseract which he then spit back up. As for who they swallowed, some people needed to stay outside the Flerkens to get them all on the pods and operate them. And also because the actors with lines needed to stay onscreen

I won't deny that RDJ was a huge part of the success but I think people are forgetting that things like Iron Man 2 and the first Thor movie weren't super well-received. It took time to build them up even then.

And I couldn't disagree more. It's not "dragging on" for me - it's getting bigger and better. I want more than just the core Avengers. I was just rewatching Shang-Chi last night and that movie is a fucking blast (and has a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and 98% from the audience). Someone like Shang-Chi or Ms. Marvel just might have a bigger following if they got the screen-time that Iron Man did. Remember that RDJ is in Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Age of Ultron, Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Infinity War and Endgame. Of course he's a "heavy hitter". Shang-Chi has been in one very well-received movie. If he had followed the same timeframe as RDJ, Simu Liu would have cameoed in another Marvel movie and gotten a sequel by now.

Of course it's a rebuilding phase but I still think people aren't remembering how small the MCU was when it began. It didn't really kick in until The Avengers, which happened 4 years after the first Iron Man.

Spiderbite

You appear to be in the minority on that thought.

Draven

I am approaching this as a comic book fan. The current MCU (and DCEU to a certain extent) is a what I’ve wanted to see on-screen since I started reading comics in the 80s. The fact that we get fantastic movies like The Marvels is a good thing. It doesn’t feel like burnout to me because I enjoy the quantity of content.

Plus Marvel movies remain one of the only reasons to go to the theater.

mndtrp

My family and I enjoyed it. The only thing I wasn't sold on was the singing planet, but that didn't last very long. I thought it was pretty fun, there were a few heavy moments that didn't devolve into a stupid joke, and the initial swapping places fight was fantastic.

candyrocket786

We are approaching that marker now. This must be the " extended rebuilding" phase for the MCU, followed by the "Ok, we fucked up... please come back" phase starting next year and then the X-men phase starting in 2026.

Draven

The pandemic threw a bit of a wrench into the timeline, don’t you think?

Spiderbite

The pandemic made them make bad movies and bad TV shows?

Draven

I don't think they are bad - I think they are about what they've always been. Some good, some not as good.

You can see the critics scores for the movies from Rotten Tomatoes here. Most of the Marvel movies are rated good to great. Only The Eternals and Quantumania got really low scores.

And the only TV series I didn't really enjoy was Secret Invasion.

candyrocket786

That seems to be the excuse for everything that's doing piss- poor these days.

Top Gun Maverick, NWH, and Avatar did pretty damn good despite the pandemic.

Nesbit

If it weren’t for the pandemic we would have first met Julia Louis Dreyfus’ character which no one cares about in the end credit scene of Black Widow which was pretty meh instead of the Cap and Winter Soldier show which was very ehhh.

Game changer.

cultshock

The pandemic definitely messed up Falcon and Winter Soldier a bit, they removed a whole subplot because of it, which made some remaining scenes nonsensical. And release dates being shuffled around resulted in Quantumania having some visual effects left rather rushed and half-baked. I'm not saying the pandemic caused all the current problems, not even close, but it sure didn't help.

Double_Oh_7

I wish they had used the time during the pandemic to reflect on what was coming up and make the necessary changes.

Runaway

Yet half of the 10 lowest rated movies where released post Endgame, you hardly can't deny a downward tendency. You might still enjoy most of the movies, which is totally cool, but the general mood has changed.

Boba Fett

I saw it tonight. Expected a really mediocre movie; ended up enjoying it. Low stakes, lighter tone and a non-convoluted plot. A few moments actually made me laugh. One of the better post-Endgame films although that’s not saying much.

Solid B

DJariya

I realize a lot of you don't care for promotional interviews. But, Iman Vellani was on Late Night a day ago and I found this interview delightful. Charming and funny young woman. She was one of the best parts of The Marvels. She's a big Billy Joel and is a big comic geek and is very proud of writing a series of Ms. Marvel comics.

cultshock

I've seen other interviews with her and she is incredibly charming. And I agree that she was one of the best parts of The Marvels (well, maybe other than Goose and her brood ).

MrX

Saw it this afternoon and enjoyed it. Up there with Shang-Chi and Guardians 3 as the best post-Endgame movies in the MCU.

The only negative was I agree with others than Dar-Benn wasn’t a very compelling villain.

Abob Teff

I think I started this bit with Captain Marvel, so . . .

Abob Teff's Drunken Movie Review is back!

Yeah, so I saw the new Captain Marvel movie, Captain Marvel Gets Around. The movie starts with . . . things? Eventually Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, and Hot Marvel get their quantum thingies entangled by . . . things? There was no title card, or I missed it. Our big bad guy, not a guy, Darkman, not a man, Darwin? Anyway, she goes to the moon to search for . . . the Lost Bracelet of the Covenant? She saw Kamala on TV and really liked her bracelet, so she wanted to get one like it. So, her PA and his man-bun-pony-tail takes her to the moon which apparently has oxygen, because at one point in the movie Darwin's people need oxygen and wear masks, but NOBODY else needs one in SPACE . . . anyway . . . Darwin's PA finds a statue which Darwin goes all Mario in Donkey Kong on and smashes with Ronin's hammer -- no, not Hawkeye Ronin, Guardians of the Galaxy Ronin. The statue breaks and she gets a bracelet, but then she gets all greedy like and tells her douchebag ponytail PA that she needs TWO bracelets, and if he loved her, he would have gotten them for her.

They leave and Captain Marvel shows up to see a purple hole in the sky. Hot Marvel is doing something else in space and Nick Fury is all up in her shit because he has a conference call going with Captain Marvel and he's telling them they need to get back together. Captain Marvel says, "Hey, I'm going to go touch this glowing hole and shit!" Hot Marvel also finds a space hole and says, "Yeah, I'm going to got touch this hole, too!"

Then they start Freaky Fridaying and switch places. Ms. Marvel's bracelet starts glowing and she gets in on the body swapping thing, too. Captain Marvel goes to do some secret James Bond shit and spy on Darwin, but she finds out Darwin is up to no good and starts a really cool space fight with the Freaky Friday stuff going on. At one point, the fight goes to Kamala's house and her family is fighting, and then the Flurkin Goose starts eating things.

At some point, Darwin goes to see the Squirrels and they piss her off, so she opens a hole in the sky and starts to flush their world into her space toilet. The poor Squirrels, they just get screwed no matter where they go. It's like a parallel Rick and Morty universe where they fucked with Morties and have to keep finding new realities.



Between the original Captain Marvel movie, Secret Invasion, and now this . . . the Squirrels should have done told humans to knacker off already. Every time they run into us, their new home world gets destroyed. They seem pretty dejected and have to pack their shit -- again. Captain Marvel calls on Valkyrie (who I still think is Loki) to come get the Squirrels and take them back to New Asguard, and we get our first hint that Captain Marvel Gets Around, because she and Valkyrie (who is still acting all Loki-like) 'share a moment.' Anyway . . .

The Marvels have a girl's night slumber party montage and figure out that Captain Marvel screwed up Darwin's home planet, you know, the one with no oxygen that nobody needs, and that Darwin is trying to be the fittest survivor by attacking all the places Captain Marvel loves. They all change outfits a few times and learn how to fight through their body-swapping. Then we find out again that Captain Marvel Gets Around because they go to a WaterWorld planet and don't meet Kevin Costner or blue monkeys. They do meet Androgynous Asian Loki who we find out Captain Marvel is married to. We get a Bollywood number followed by another fight sequence.

Meanwhile, Nick Furry and his flurking man-eating-octopus-cat, who is a flurking goose, kidnap Ms. Marvel's family and take them to a space slumber party. Seriously, did everybody in this movie pack, like, six outfit changes? At Nick Furry's space treehouse . . . brains start popping up in the engine of the clubhouse. But it's OK, because FLURKING AMC ALREADY SPOILED THIS . . . Anyway, the goose-cat-octopus thing has kittens from the brain-eggs. Nick Furry has an intergalactic army of space matre des who suck at their job, because at one point he feeds them to the flurking cat and hires Ms. Marvel's family to run the ship instead.

Fight. Darwin is not the fittest (Hot Marvel is and I loved the shorts-jumper outfit that it was a good thing she had packed). So Darwin loses, but Hot Marvel foolishly sacrifices herself and ends up seeing her mom and Blue Bigfoot. Captain Marvel goes back to the house she shared with Hot Marvel's mom because, Captain Marvel Gets Around.

This a convoluted mess and I kind of gave up. But I had fun. The actresses were great as their characters! You could tell they were having fun, and so was the audience I saw it with.

Draven

My son is home for the week from college and wanted to see it so I went back for a second time. Even better than the first. Love the dynamic of the team and really appreciated what all of the Marvels brought to the table. And Kamala remains a goddamn delight. Can't wait to see the Young Avengers in action.

RocShemp

Can we petition Disney/Marvel to legitimately name the next movie Captain Marvel Gets Around?

Meathead

Saw it for the 3rd time last night (last Premium 3D showing). I'd change my rating to 5/5 if I could. One of my favorite MCU movies now.

DJariya

I know people love to rip apart movies with poor box office. But I read an interview with Iman. And the question was brought up to her about this movie’s disappointing performance. She said that’s not my concern. Thats Bob Iger’s.

https://www.indiewire.com/news/gener...em-1234927944/


And she did a great job here. And I have not seen anyone complain about her or her work.