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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Someone mentioned MODOK last page: I really feel he'd be perfectly at home as an Ant-Man villain given the very comedic and breezy tone of the Ant-Man franchise thus far (plus scientist villain suits well the science hero tone of the franchise). My hope was that he'd be the villain of Ant-Man 2 but with that dashed I'm hoping for MODOK In Ant Man 3.
"I AM SCIENCE. I AM GENIUS!"
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Bruce Banner's high school science fair project
That'll learn you to bully him
Let's think about which of the big name scientists would be likely to create a horrible abomination
edited 22nd Apr '18 4:34:48 PM by Bocaj
Forever liveblogging the AvengersSounds like there's gonna be globe-trotting in the Homecoming sequel
.
And sounds like Marvel is looking at Novas a possibility in Phase 4.
It was probably a good idea to save Nova for after Infinity War
You have the big shakeups already happen that superpowered helmeted Novas can be a reaction to and you don't have to worry about another movie dictating things for you
Forever liveblogging the Avengers![]()
I can actually buy that.
Sh*t will inevitably go 'round the billy blue bollocks once Thanos wrecks Xandar for the Power Stone, then when the Thanos storm dies down, the Nova Corps (or what's left of them) will come to the conclusion of "screw it, we need to up our game. Hey, I know! Let's develop a helmet that can give its wearer powered armor that let's 'em fly and breathe in space and shoot beams through their arms! It's foolproof!"
So just watched Guardians of the Galaxy. I did see this one before, and definitely enjoyed it the first time around, so was looking forward to rewatching.
GOTG is probably my favorite MCU movie I've seen. The plot feels personal, but has real stakes to it. The characters are all interesting and well-developed. The action is fun and feels weighty, while simultaneously adding to characterization (ie, different characters fight differently, in ways that display their personalities). The acting is uniformly excellent. And probably most importantly, the writing is rock solid. Everything that everyone does makes sense for that character, rather than feeling like it happens just for the sake of moving the plot along. And the dialogue is brilliantly dense — it conveys a lot of meaning in just a few lines.
Here's a quick example that struck me while I was watching. During the chase scene in Knowhere, Peter, Rocket, and Gamora are all in travel pods being chased by Ronan's fighters. They're focusing on Gamora since she has the stone, so Peter and Rocket are trying to cover her. They have a quick back and forth:
[Peter] These pods are industrial-grade, they're practically indestructible. [Rocket] Not against necroblasters they aren't! [Peter] Not what I had in mind. [Rocket] Oh. Oh. Heheheh...
Then they start using the pods themselves as weapons, smashing them through the (comparatively) fragile fighters. This is just a couple seconds of dialogue, but it establishes a bunch of things. 1) Peter is knowledgeable about technology. He may not have Rocket's raw intelligence, but he's got practical experience. 2) Peter is clever. While Rocket can make custom-designed, purpose-built devices, Peter is better at making do with the tools he has on hand. 3) Even though the pods are "practically indestructible", they can still be destroyed by actual weapons fire. This is important for maintaining tension in the scene (where, you know, they're being shot at). Without that line, the audience might be left asking "well, if they're basically indestructible, then why are they even worried about Ronan's fighters?". 4) Rocket, though he's not as much of a lateral thinker as Peter, is still smart enough to catch his meaning without too much prompting.
And all that's in just a couple seconds of dialogue. It's fantastic. The whole movie is like that.
Other random things that I liked:
The fact that Xandar, although it's depicted as a peaceful utopian world whose citizens are shocked and appalled by violence, still has an active and effective military force. They're not just wimpy pacifists or something. The Nova Corps are led by a Reasonable Authority Figure, and when Ronan attacks Xandar, they're actually able to stop his ship with their shield-net thing. (It's not until Ronan shoots at them with the Infinity Stone that their shield collapses and his ship gets through.) I admit that I'm also a sucker for when the Redshirt Army is allowed to make a Heroic Sacrifice doing something marginally effective rather than making a Senseless Sacrifice and die without accomplishing anything at all. The fact that their first response to an attack is a shield (like their earlier response to the fight scene on the surface was to immobilize and restrain everyone) is also a nice bit of characterization.
The fact that Yondu's telekinetic arrow thing wasn't actually used until after he'd been threatening people with it for the whole movie was also great. It would have been easy to have him use it on some random mooks at some point to establish the threat, but it's actually much more effective this way. We know enough about it for it to be a legitimate threat when it's used as such — it's a pointy object that can move around with some force, so when he puts it up to someone's throat, we definitely know he can kill them with it. But having it not be actually used until near the climax builds tension that the scene where he uses it releases, while also making the audience go back and reevaluate just how dangerous the situation was in those earlier scenes where he'd threatened people with it.
The relationship between Peter and Yondu is great. On the one hand, Yondu is a father figure for Peter. On the other, he's an abusive father figure, which Peter understands and calls out. At the same time, your feelings about a parent(al figure) don't just go away because they're abusive, and that comes through as well. And on top of all that, they're also rivals, which means they're genuinely trying to outwit one another (with potentially lethal consequences), but when Peter comes out ahead, Yondu also has a sense of fatherly pride. It's nuanced, but at the same time easy to understand.
That said, there are definitely some issues with the movie. The main one is that it's very dense, which is both good (because it means there's a lot of content packed into it) and bad (because it means it can be a bit overwhelming). It's definitely a movie that benefits from multiple watches. Other than that, the "Peter distracts Ronan by dancing at him" scene at the very end is one of the few in the entire film that fell flat, which is unfortunate since it's such a key part of the climax. I can see Peter doing it, but I'm not sold on Ronan's response. He's never displayed anything but disgust and contempt for other cultures, so his bout of confused curiosity seemed out of character. (How It Should Have Ended, naturally, had a field day with this
.) And finally, I'm not sold on the "Peter's only half-human" thing. I mean, yeah, they foreshadowed it in the first scene (disguised as his mom just being crazy), but it came off as just obvious sequel bait, which was meh.
Final thought: Howard The Duck has to be the weirdest cameo in the MCU. (Edit — Other final thought: it still surprises me that John C. Reilly and Colm Meaney are, in fact, different people. Seriously. It's legit uncanny
.)
I think I'm going to keep going and watch Age of Ultron tonight too. GOTG was the last MCU movie I've seen before, so it's all uncharted territory from here. I might not post about it until tomorrow, though, depending on if I'm falling asleep by the end (it's already lateish in my time zone).
edited 22nd Apr '18 6:29:20 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Peter's been half-human in the comics as well (though his father J'sonn is a militaristic Spartax navy leader, not Ego).
What I like about Guardians of the Galaxy is that it shows repentance is not an immediate flip, it's a process. The central characters start out as petty criminals with some redeeming traits, and have little desire to improve themselves because this is how they've been surviving. Once they get their first inkling that they're dealing with a bigger responsibility than they ever thought (an Infinity Stone capable of rapid genocide), their first inclination is to run and abandon it with someone else rather than prevent it from being misused. It takes until Peter's rescue of Gamora and the team's subsequent talk that they realize they're being called to a higher standard to help their world.
And after all their heroic acts, they demonstrate as they leave Xandar that they're still messed up. They know a little bit more about being good, but they've still got a long way to go before they have weaned off all their old habits. And that's pretty revolutionary for the MCU, considering other films like Thor or Age of Ultron have depicted moral redemption as far too easy and free of consequences or lingering bad habits.
Thor 1 is because Thor jerk behivor feel artificial most of the time, like it was made so he could learn a lession, like he is still bold head dude who charge at problems most of the times, is just not a dick about it.
And I feel ragnarok kinda forgive some people about some stuff: Valkarie work in slave planet it just brush off that, Loki past as invader of earth in avenger is also brush off too, and I already make my complain about Odin being kinda karma houdini.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"So here's an update, true believers.
In an effort to let us pull ourselves together after Infinity War, Marvel Studios won't be having its Hall H Panel at this year's San Diego Comic-Con.
So we can forget about hearing anything pertaining to Avengers 4 on July. Though considering how a lot sh*t is apparently about to hit the fan in a few days, maybe it's for the best?
edited 22nd Apr '18 7:01:18 PM by TargetmasterJoe

Is kinda diferent from unperson Hela like He did, is the kind of thing it boggles the mind.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"