Marvel Cinematic Universe

I don't know if this means anything in connection to anything, but one of the 3,000 Avengers comic titles available at the moment - US Avengers I think? - has a variant cover for their coming first issue with an Avenger for every US state - and Spectrum is the one for Louisiana. Now I don't know how popular a character she is, but she was one of eight (?) covers released earlier than the rest, and all the others of these were characters that are both well-known and popular (and aside from Beast, they are all in the MCU (with Luke Cage being the one TV person)).

edited 21st Oct '16 2:34:06 PM by hollygoolightly

I'd say being in Nextwave definitely gave Monica some notoriety and a devoted fanbase even if it might not be huge.

The movies will definitely get to her eventually. She's pretty much the only other semi-notable black heroine other than Storm and Misty Knight (unless they do Moon Girl, which would kinda be fucking awesome).

Moon Girl would be a good fit for a cartoon.

Marvel unfortunately doesn't have access to Storm.

Misty Knight is in the Netflixs.

There's always the most recent Captain Universe but that'd be three captains in the movies. And her deal was kind of. Continuity and end of all things heavy.

There's a lot of good marvel black heroines but they're mostly with the X-Men rights so yeah, Monica◊ is the best bet.

Moon Girl would be a good G-rated film for younger audiences if they plan on genre diversification and shifting towards smaller self-enclosed films once Infnity War is past.

And I guess they could bring Ironheart into the films, but it's still super early so it'd justifiably be seen as Character Shilling for her to replace Tony directly since she hasn't really had any chance to stand out on her own in the comics yet.

edited 21st Oct '16 3:25:17 PM by AlleyOop

Yeah, far too early. I do think there's a chance they might close the book on Iron Man in Infinity War 2 (if they're serious about getting in a new Avengers team for real this time) but I don't think they'll be doing outright replacements yet. You run the risk of getting Replacement Scrappy backlash.

Moon Girl would be awesome though.

edited 21st Oct '16 3:33:24 PM by comicwriter

There's also Ironheart, though given that she is a very new character they'll probably want to see if the character can find a dedicated audience in the comics before they decide how to use her in the movies.

Wong will be in Infinity War.

Interesting. Can't imagine it'll be a huge role given how packed the movie is going to be, but nice to see he'll be there regardless.

My guess is that if anyone on Earth has any information on the Infinity Stones (aside from Tesseract research by Hydra and SHIELD of course) it'll be the mystics. So Wong's role in the movie will primarily be to relay that information.

Or Thanos kicks his ass when he shows up to take Strange's Eye of Agamotto (assuming it's the Time Stone like pretty much everyone assumes).

I love me some Benedict Wong.

Or Wong kicks Thanos's ass.

"You came to the Wong neighborhood, motherfucker."

So I was thinking about little bits of Fridge Brilliance -or things that look like it in hindsight- in the mcu films I've seen. Like in Avengers it made sense for Tony not to die as soon as he was in space, because we'd already seen Iron Man working underwater-thus establishing that the armor is airtight. Or in Winter Soldier when Natasha shorts out Pierce's kill switch by shocking herself with a Widow's Bite; it makes sense that it worked (and that she knew it would) because earlier in the film she did the same thing to Bucky's metal arm.

Which leads me to this: I'll swear with my last breath that HYDRA had no need to use the Winter Soldier to kill Tony's parents; any operative worth his salt could've faked a car accident. That served no purpose except making that last confrontation between Steve and Tony much more ugly and personal than it would've been otherwise. But. In the previous movie, how did the Soldier try to kill Fury the first time? He took out his car. When Natasha tells the story of her own encounter with the Soldier, it took two tries for him to kill the scientist she was escorting. His first attempt? He shot out the tires and sent their car over a cliff. So even with no knowledge of the source material (the comics) I feel like it should've been obvious as soon as it was confirmed that HYDRA was involved with the 'car accident' that killed the Starks.

Although I'm willing to admit it's possible I ignored the obvious just because I was so damn irritated by it. The mcu is not shy about changing details as it suits them, why keep one that serves no purpose but adding drama? Maybe I'm just weird, but to me that's almost as bad as killing a character off for shock value. But like I said, that's just my own preference.

In my headcanon, hydra send Bucky as a test. That is also the reason why there were cameras around and why Hydra has the tape, to study how deep the brain-washing goes. But even if I didn't need some explanation for the camera and the tape, why not send Bucky? Howard Stark was, after all, one of the leaders of Shield. If you take out a high priority target like this, why not send you best asset? After all, the also send Bucky to kill JFK and he got away with it.

Monica's powers aren't Kree based, they are mystical based. Anyway, the more I think about it, the more I realize that she would be a great character to introduce in the spot while the current Avenger's fade out of the MCU and before legacy characters like Cassie are a realistic option.

Ironheart...there are too many characters in flying suits already and the audience would most likely resent it if Tony leaves and suddenly she is there.

Winter Soldier was pretty useful for faking a car accident because of his sheer strength. No need to disguise gunshot wounds or tire sabotage or explosives or multiple counter drivers. All he had to do was deal a hard whack to the engine and a few to their heads, and it would all be mistaken for blunt force trauma from the crash.

edited 21st Oct '16 11:04:12 PM by nervmeister

Not sure if this was posted yet, since I have ignored the last teasers for Doctor Strange (I will watch it anyway, no need to spoil myself, it's only one week waiting left after all), but this one was pointed out to me and it is really cool.

So....who else takes this for confirmation that there is a specific infinity stone in the movie?

Oh, I am pretty sure that Shield noticed that one person in the car got strangled....I have the feeling that Shield ensured that everyone believed it was an accident.

So I just watched the trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

And my God, that hugging scene. I just know that I will love this one.

Lets be honest here, they could just do a movie about Baby groot doing cute stuff for two hours, and we will all love it and then buy the figure....

I wonder if the version in the uniform will be available in time for Christmas....

* counts money to see if Baby Groot can end up under personal Christmas tree *

Regarding HYDRA sending Bucky to kill the Starks, I figured it was also a "fuck you" of sorts to Howard - he was one of their most dedicated enemies, and not only did they thrive right under his nose, they managed to crack the super serum formula, and they turned one of his colleagues into their (more or less) obedient killing machine. Sending that guy to kill him when he just managed to possibly recreate the serum himself, doubtlessly in the hopes he'd recognize him, only drives the humiliation home.

edited 22nd Oct '16 3:28:54 AM by hollygoolightly

Monica Rambeau's a tough character for me because, on the one hand, I like what she does for representation. She's a popular and much-beloved Woman of Color. There aren't enough of those.

But the issue is that she's got one of those powersets that constantly feels like she's jobbing to everyone because she should reasonably be OP as f*ck. She's, like, living light. A recent Ultimates comic had her lamenting that she should have turned into light, gone in through Thanos's eyes, and exploded his brain in a recent battle.

And it's like, why doesn't she? Why doesn't she do that in every battle ever? Why is she not an unstoppable super-god moving at the speed of light all the time forever? Why is it even possible for her to lose a fight?

The answer, of course, is that there would be no drama if she was actually as powerful as she's supposed to be, so she is constantly nerfed in every fight. The end result is a powerset that is too awesome to exist and a character consequentially torn between being boring or useless.

You can easily solve that in the MCU with limiting her power from the get go. Like, she can travel as fast as light and turn nearly invisible by turning herself into pure light, but she can't materialize in spaces smaller than her body.

The ability to move as fast as light is still a Story-Breaker Power even without that.

Not just light, she can turn into, sense and channel any form of energy on the electromagnetic spectrum (infared, magnetic, electric, light/photons, alpha, gamma, etc.).

Just have her go on cosmic-level adventures. OR make her struggle to stay in touch with the carbon-based fleshbags that she now sees merely as concentrated electrical signals.

edited 22nd Oct '16 7:59:18 AM by nervmeister