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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Gotcha.
I liked the 2/3 of the season that weren't related to The Hand, but for that 1/3, they definitely hammered the Yellow Peril stereotype about as hard as humanly possible, so that certainly is troublesome. Still, I'm willing to give them some benefit of the doubt and hope for the best.
edited 15th Apr '16 10:22:54 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Trying to decide if that's better or worse than the one they did with the Avengers and Harley Davidson
.
Wait, this is worse. The cast of the first Avengers movie only had two flyers. The Civil War cast has at least six people who couldn't possibly need a car.
edited 15th Apr '16 10:57:12 AM by comicwriter
That's because Rhodey's whole bit is being a supporting character who acts on the side of what Tony is doing, rather than a character who gets attention on his own - at best, he's been a Hero of Another Story. He's not Tony's sidekick or anything (if so, he might've ironically gotten more development a la Falcon), he's more like Commissioner Gordon who gets development on the side while not being a main and is largely important in how other characters react to him.
It worked in the first couple films, but ever since it's one of those things that's always bugged me, and is a good example of how despite being a universe the MCU is still a bunch of films, where making a Focus Episode is expensive and there's not a lot of branching outside the central characters.
Still, would it have really hurt them to give him a more personal role in Ultron?
Rhodey is the equivalent to a badly written love interest. The first movie actually does fairly right by him during the first half. We learn that he and Tony go way back (though this begs the question why Tony says that he has no one waiting for him back home, but, well), that he is a soldier because he likes the brotherhood aspect of it and the moment when he picks up Tony in the desert is one of the highlights of the movie. But after that he is kind of a dick. He tells Stane about the arc reactor in Tony's chest and seems overall be more interested in Tony going back to weapon design than anything else. In the second movie, he is even less sympathetic. I guess he did warn Tony concerning the report he was supposed to write and he does ensure that he reads more from it than the Senator wants him to, but he is also way too concerned with him going back in line. Even after he finds Tony with the burned out arc reactor, he is more interested in his behaviour than his health. Overall, he is a really shitty best friend and the only thing I give him credit for is that he doesn't allow anyone to take apart the War machine suit...but let's be realistic here, all his saying "no" could easily be ignored by anyone who wants. I guess he at least does nothing outright annoying in Iron Man 3, but they also never show how he reacted when he learned that Tony's home was attacked. All in all, he comes off more as a guy Tony happens to know and who might fight by his side once in a while than his best friend.
Let's compare that to Falcon (not because he is also black, but because his role comes the closest to what Rhodey's role is): In the very first scene we learn that he is a Vet, how many tours he had, that he likes soul, that he list his partner on a mission, that he had trouble "coming home" and that he is now working with other vets. Five minutes and I have a complete read on the character - though it certainly helps that I like his sense of humour and the way he flirts with Natasha (yes, I ship those two!). And then he spends the rest of the movie supporting Cap all the way. He talks about Cap's feeling, he provides shelter and he stands unwavering by his side, while proving to be very competent and helpful overall. He is basically an example of a well-written love interest (without the romance, naturally), since Natasha take the role of the hero's buddy. And I enjoy every second of it. His role in Age of Ultron isn't big, but it does establish that he is still helping Steve out (though I do wonder what happened to his daytime job at this point - but I guess he is now a full-time avenger), and in Ant-man, it was really cute how much he doesn't want Steve to know that he got bested by some shrinking guy.
I don't dislike Rhodey, I am just not interested in him, and I have nearly given up on the notion that I ever will be. Of all the Avengers he has the most boring power, since he is basically a lesser version of Iron Man (Age of Ultron even went out of its way to establish that War machine stories are nothing to write home about compared to Avenger stories). I also don't necessarily want him to die, I just felt that his death would have the most emotional impact on Tony. Though I would prefer it even more if he survived crippled. If he were forced to wear some version of his suit permanently in order to be able to walk, that might add an aspect to the character which could develop into something interesting. But if he died at this point, I wouldn't particularly care for him being gone. Not at all. I would mostly feel for Tony.
edited 15th Apr '16 12:41:47 PM by Swanpride
Or just not kill anyone. The only people going into this saying someone has to die at the end of Civil War are people online. Thus far, I haven't seen anyone in the production saying the movie ends with someone's death.
I've heard them say the ending will be "controversial", but that could mean any number of things.
edited 15th Apr '16 12:49:27 PM by comicwriter
Aaaand we have the first rotten review...I didn't read it, though, because it seemed to go too much into detail for my taste (I stopped reading when it started to summarize the start of the movie). Might be just a click-bait review though.
sigh....blocked ín Germany....
edited 15th Apr '16 1:07:43 PM by Swanpride
The sourcefeed review is up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kmil1GaMY4
I have to say, no matter what one thinks about Grant Ward, you have to love Brett Dalton....
Brett Dalton is fantastic. His character may have gone down the drain, but the actor never stopped being really good.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Tony Revolori has been cast in Spider-Man: Homecoming
as one of Peter's classmates. So has Laura Harrier
.
edited 15th Apr '16 4:04:13 PM by comicwriter

They were the showrunners for season two of Daredevil.
Which I hated.
I think I'm gonna give Defenders a miss, as I had been planning on doing with any Daredevil season three that had them involved. I don't think I could bare to see them handle Jessica Jones or Luke Cage.
edited 15th Apr '16 10:15:29 AM by Wackd
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.