Wednesday, August 02, 2023

Links - 2nd August 2023 (2 - MCU)

Meme - "Fury, since you've been gone... MCU have become total shit."

Marvel's Secret Invasion Finale is Lowest-Rated Episode Ever - "The series earned a 56% score overall and a 59% audience score"

Secret Invasion Director Ali Selim on Season Finale, Mixed Reviews - "Marvel has a very devoted — even rabid — fan base who have expectations and when their expectations aren’t fulfilled, they move in the other direction; they give it a thumbs down.  I don’t know — is it our job to fulfill their expectations? Or to tell the story that we’re telling? So, it’s a tricky thing. I would love it if everybody loved it, but I also don’t have that expectation myself, so I feel great about the response to it."
This is a great way to excuse bad reviews. "Subverting expectations" strikes again, especially when they're expectations of a good product!

Secret Invasion Just Ruined Nick Fury's First Leading Role in the MCU - "Now that the sixth and final episode of Marvel Studios’ Secret Invasion is available on Disney+, it’s fair to say that we should stop talking about “superhero movie fatigue” and focus on what may be the real problem: Marvel’s creative funk.  If there’s one thing gained from watching that dour, messy, and ultimately pointless show that was relentlessly promoted as an “event series,” it’s that the streaming TV arm of the MCU is in dire need of a rethink... Advance footage of the series during 2022’s San Diego Comic-Con and D23 suggested a series steeped in paranoia and menace, a political thriller with similarities to Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Instead, the show turned out to be dull, meandering, and low-stakes, frustrating in its creative decisions, and flat-out boring at times. It also wasted MCU OG Samuel L. Jackson’s first true starring role for Marvel. On top of that, Secret Invasion’s creative team took an uru hammer to the mystique of Nick Fury, Marvel’s greatest spymaster, undermining his entire legacy episode by episode... Is the damage to Fury’s spymaster brand permanent? It depends. Captain America: The Winter Soldier chipped away at the character in many ways, with Robert Redford’s Alexander Pierce, Fury’s kind-of mentor, proving to be a bitter betrayal. But it didn’t kneecap the greatest weapon in Nick Fury’s arsenal: his mystique."

Meme - "And what if the Avengers come back?"
"You don't think I thought of that? The only Avenger who is signed on for this show is Don Cheadle, and he is only here to do a random lecture about racism for some reason."

Meme - ""sCrEeNwRiTeRs aReNt gEtTiNg pAiD eNoUgH"
Also screenwriters:
"I will be called emotional or difficult or might just literally get murdered. So I'm an expert at controlling my anger, because I do infinitely more than you.""

Meme - "She-Hulk Fails To Make Nielsen's Streaming Charts, A First For Marvel"
"MEETOO STRONG"
"America Chavez. Legit disarmed Wanda & save Strange in his own sequel. Mastered her powers in 2 hours.
She-Hulk. Automatically an expert at controlling her transformation in episode 1.
Shuri. Scientist that was Black Panther for 5 minutes and beat Namor
Reva. Became boss inquisitor. Survived Vader ass whipping."

Meme - Black Widow: "Bruce?"
Bruce Banner: *pained look of exertion*
Black Widow: *looks backward, grimacing* *mouth open in shock*

Meme - "who did this."
"Stop it Peter 2, it's not funny"
"Haha look at me I'm Gwen, ouch my neck"

Meme - Kieran Coors Crocker: "Want something to laugh about? How about I get your family killed and grind them up in chilli and feed it to you sick dirty fuck like that South Park episode. The MCU is still bad ass, Quantumania was awesome, and you're the crazy ry one not me. Go fucking die
This person is unavailable on Messenger."

Why Ironheart SUCKS - A Scene Comparison - YouTube - "You fucking morons, you had an opportunity here to show Ironheart using her suit to protect her civilians and police from the reckless Wakandans much like they did with Cap and Bucky or like they did with Daredevil and Punisher. It's what you do when you care about the morality of your characters...  now we're in the no accountability era where nothing matters. Superheroes no longer save people...  unlike Tony who was hardened by his experience in captivity and ready to risk it all, I have no idea why the student who didn't even want to come in the first place because she had class is somehow fully ready for battle. From blowing up members of her own city to fighting mutants overseas, there's nothing she can't handle... the forced humor make it impossible to get an understanding of her personality to completely skipping the development of any of her technology which is something that's essential if you want to create a believable replacement for Iron Man, all the way to her complete lack of care for the safety of others just for an action scene. With the process of Tony going from warmonger to vigilante was clear to follow, I have no idea what their goal was with her. From her morality to her motivation they somehow managed to botch everything. The time dedicated to developing characters is what made this franchise work in the first place and now they have traded in the attention to detail that built such a loyal fan base in exchange for forced characters that nobody wants expecting the same results...  she built a machine to spite her teacher because he said she sucks and couldn't do it... this machine started a war that got innocent people killed and when asked to help she tells them fuck off because she has math class...  the fact that you put so little effort into a character this important is another cold reminder of why the MCU is dying a slow embarrassing death"

Marvel: Sir Anthony Hopkins says Thor role was 'pointless acting' - ""If you're sitting in front of a green screen, it's pointless acting it"... "They put me in armour; they shoved a beard on me," he told the magazine.  "Sit on the throne, shout a bit.""
Clearly he knows nothing about acting and is just jealous of the MCU's success

How the Marvel Cinematic Universe Swallowed Hollywood | The New Yorker - "Marvel’s success, he added, has “sucked the air out of” more human-scaled entertainments. Whole species of movies—adult dramas, rom-coms—have become endangered... even prestige television has become overrun with Marvel, “Star Wars,” and “The Lord of the Rings” series, which use the small screen to map out new corners of their trademarked galaxies. Hollywood writers, who are currently striking over the constricted economics of streaming, also complain of the constricted imaginations of TV executives: instead of searching for the next “Mad Men,” they’re hunting for Batman spinoffs. Marvel’s fanciful house style has rubbed off even on Oscar winners... “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” had a Marvel-ish meld of walloping action, goofy humor, and multiverse mythology; it could have easily functioned as the origin story for a new Avenger. Marvel, meanwhile, has colonized nearly every other genre... An executive at a rival studio, who called the M.C.U. “the Death of All Cinema,” told me that the dominance of Marvel movies “has served to accelerate the squeezing out of the mid-range movie.”... “If people want a comedy, they’re going to go see ‘Thor’ or ‘Ant-Man’ as their comedy now.” In some ways, Marvel harks back to the old studio system, in which Paramount and Warner Bros. kept stables of stars under seven-year contracts and M-G-M’s Freed Unit cranked out movie musicals on an assembly line... It may be easier to count the conscientious objectors who haven’t gone Marvel, among them Timothée Chalamet, who has said that Leonardo DiCaprio once advised him, “No hard drugs and no superhero movies.” (This was after Chalamet auditioned for Spider-Man.)... Portraying a Marvel character often means not just headlining movies but also filming cameos and crossovers, to the point that even the actor gets confused. Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays Iron Man’s paramour, Pepper Potts, had no idea that she appeared in “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” until the Marvel director Jon Favreau mentioned it to her on his cooking show. It can be dispiriting to see so much acting talent sucked into the quantum realm of the M.C.U., presumably for a tidy sum, but the paychecks alone don’t explain Marvel’s hold over stars. “At some point, you want to be relevant,” an agent who represents several M.C.U. actors said. “Success is the best drug.”... The result is a lot of hand-wringing over “the death of the movie star.” In an I.P.-driven ecosystem, individual stars no longer attract audiences to theatres the way they used to, with a handful of exceptions (Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts). You go to a Marvel movie to see Captain America, not Chris Evans. “It’s actually surprising to me how almost none of them have careers outside of the Marvel universe”... you can’t wish a universe into existence, Genesis style. Marvel, which had a preëxisting tangle of comic-book plots to draw on, rolled out its movies methodically, gaining the audience’s trust. Goetz, the audience analyst, compared it to Apple... “The expression ‘preach to the choir’ often implies a certain niche-ness,” Christopher Markus, one of the writers of “Endgame,” said. “There was a very gratifying, unduplicatable sense with that movie that the choir was nearly global.”... Most plots boil down to “Keep glowy thing away from bad guy,” and the stakes are nothing less than the fate of the world, which come to feel like no stakes at all... Feige’s zeal belies a cannier managerial skill. “He’s really good at getting what he wants, but at the same time making everybody feel like they got what they wanted”... M.C.U. filmmakers talk about their projects so personally, as if unloading to a shrink... M.C.U. movies are often metaphors for themselves. .. CBS dropped a planned Human Torch show, worried that it would inspire kids to set themselves on fire... I spoke to several VFX artists, under the condition of anonymity. (Marvel is said to blackball firms that push back.) Some said that Marvel stress was a symptom of larger problems in the effects industry, which is decentralized across the globe, owing to tax incentives, and clearly in need of labor protections. “Marvel is the easy punching bag,” one said. But another told me, “They have a tendency to change their minds pretty late, and in effects that’s where we take all the heat.” He pointed out one scene, in “Endgame,” in which the Avengers go back in time. During production, the actors wore placeholder motion-capture suits, which were then gussied up with C.G.I. “They could have just worn the costumes, and it would have been a billion times easier”... Disney abruptly fired Victoria Alonso, Marvel’s long-serving head of postproduction and a member of the Trio, fuelling speculation that she was responsible—or being scapegoated—for the VFX issues. Disney said that Alonso had violated her contract by promoting an Oscar-nominated feature that she had produced for another studio. She declined to comment, but a source close to the matter told a different story: Alonso, a gay Latina, had been barred from the “Wakanda Forever” press tour after she gave a speech accepting an award from GLAAD which criticized Disney’s handling of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. When her team was then asked to edit out rainbow flags and other pride symbols from a San Francisco street scene in “Quantumania” for certain release territories, she refused, and the outside film she’d produced was used as a pretext to fire her. (“It’s not credible,” the former executive I spoke to said, of this narrative. “We’ve been doing whatever was asked of us by China, Russia, and the Middle East for twenty years.”)... “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”—which grossed twenty-eight million dollars less on its opening weekend than the previous installment—did little to dispel the feeling that Marvel fatigue is real, and that Feige is spread too thin for the avalanche of content. “The one downside to Marvel is that it all bottlenecks at Kevin,” the former executive said. “I think everyone’s agreeing that this is not the optimal amount of stuff.” Scientists predict that our own universe will begin to contract in the next hundred million years; the Marvel Cinematic Universe, having reached its outer limits, may be subject to a similar law of nature."

"He ain't missing anything": Fans Troll Marvel After Charlie Cox Says He Hasn't Watched His Own She-Hulk Episodes - "Many fans are also disappointed by the show’s main theme as well as the lackluster CGI that was employed in the production of the show, which also led many to believe that Cox may have similar concerns about the show."

Meme - "14 reasons Why MARVEL is bigger than DC
Scarlett Johanson
Hayley Atwell
Elizabeth Olsen
Kat Dennings
Brie Larson
Emily VanCamp
Salma Hayek"

Meme - "Marvel fans waiting for the 20 minute long credits to finish just to watch some guy show up and say "im skippy mcdippy" then cut to black"

Exclusive: Expert Toy Industry Insider Reveals Marvel and Star Wars Merch Struggles - "Do you remember the images of modern Star Wars novels sitting on the floor while Timothy Zahn books fill what was supposed to be High Republic premiere shelf space?... 'The new stuff is failing to generate the level 2 and level 3 interest that brings in the big $ branded dollars at retail (level 1 interest is going to see the movie, level 2 and 3 are deeper down the trickle down interest chain where you are willing to buy branded merchandise that is further and further removed from the “source”)  Spider-Man, Cap and Iron Man are holding everything together at this point. Spider-Man is the only sub brand showing growth in units and dollars and in fan interest (confirmed by quanti and focus).  Eternals was the worst across the board, but here is the general statement : female heroes do not sell merchandise.'... This is not a new fad. Lucasfilm attempted this same strategy when they pitched the Sequel Trilogy to Bob Iger on the idea that Rey could see toys just as well as Luke Skywalker… but Rey would also sell to girls. In the end, Rey did poorly with both genders. Perhaps it’s not the ideal world you wish to live in, but the reality is that little boys want to play mostly with action figures they can roleplay their most heroic selves into… and that means boys want to dream of being male superheroes. And girls, even when given the option to play with masculine female heroes, often choose toys that are more feminine or maternal in nature. Maybe you think that’s wrong or a bad thing, but it’s the reality we live in... we have heard from other sources that Marvel has been trying to force merchandise contracts that required failing properties like The Eternals be shipped with the popular franchises. It’s essentially an attempt to manipulate the market. Your licensed manufacturers don’t want to produce a line of items that receive abysmal focus group reaction, so you force them under the belief that you know better and the flood of products will have parents buying it just because “it’s Marvel.”... The really big toy companies can handle this sort of inefficiency, miscalculation and forced equity of IP inclusion. It’s the smaller companies out there who are getting absolutely hammered."

Rumor: Alleged Insider Claims Marvel Studios’ Diversity Push Meant To Recoup Financial Losses From Brand’s Death In China - "According to an alleged insider, Marvel Studios’ recent diversity push is not intended to send a message of denigration towards the ‘acceptable target’ demographic of straight white men, but rather cynically squeeze what extra money that can be from American audiences in order to make up for the fact that their sales in China are going less spectacularly than they expected – to the point where the brand is pretty much “dead” within the borders of the communist country... the Marvel Insider informed WDW Pro that “the new stuff isn’t selling.”  “What is going on right now with Marvel is the same thing that happened with Star Wars,” they explained. “It’s a vicious loop. It all comes down to two big factors > China and ego.”...   “Lucasfilm mismanaged Star Wars in China, made it all too hard to get into for an audience that was new, so that killed the market,” they recalled. “For Marvel, Beijing has a vendetta against us. We got too big and the communist hand has slapped us down. So now we have to find a new place to grow. That’s why we pushed hard into ‘diversity.’” Moving to explain their use of quotation marks around the term “diversity” in their message, the insider informed WDW Pro, “Diversity at Marvel doesn’t mean what you think it means. It isn’t races and religions and disabilities. Diversity is equal with representation.”... “We don’t do Christians or Jews, we don’t do strong male white leads in heroic spots,” they acknowledged of the elephant in the room, though this was followed by the surprising revelation that “it’s not that those are bad at Marvel going forward, it’s that we’re told we already have the market for those groups.”... “It’s not enough to have diversity based on background, we have to have diversity based on the way people act,” the insider added. “Why do you think She-Hulk is how it is? They’re trying to create a new Marvel market for neo feminist women. We’re trying to grow in every direction all at once and have the belief the old fans will stick with it through all of this.”  Unfortunately for Marvel, the insider asserted, “that isn’t the case.” “They know it and can’t hide it,” they said. “The flops have been gigantic embarrassments. People aren’t turning to Disney+ to get the Marvel shows the way it was planned. Same time, they aren’t willing to change because this is a Feige strat and it is all about his ego.”... “But the Feige strat is failing,” the insider continued. “Everyone knows it. Your toy expert knows it. Our partners know it. But then people when the phones are away will ask, “why aren’t you adjusting — why don’t you go back to what works?” That comes down to ego.”  “Feige thinks he can hold out long enough to build the new markets with all the DEI on screen, then he thinks he can buy back the old fans with a huge spending spree for multiverse stuff,” they said.   Noting that Feige plans to bring back “everybody they can get” in the coming Secret War-building phases of the MCU – save Robert Downey Jr., with whom they allege Disney’s relationship has soured – the insider admitted that though it will “work for a while”, they company is ultimately just “putting bandages on the boat.”  “When Hugh Jackman Wolverine shows up through a portal, fans will go nuts like for Spider-Man,” they predicted. “But then what? That’s the Star Wars problem. We’re going to blow everything on getting the fans back but the holes will still be there. After we spend all this money, all this investment, Feige will still push DEI and new stories so he can change his legacy.” Drawing their message to an end, the insider offered two asides to WDW Pro, first explaining that though CEO “Bob Chapek says he wants to get the company out of politics,” he “doesn’t want out of politics the way you guys think”.  “He wants Disney out of policy but he wants to go hard at the representation we talked about,” they clarified. “Only one direction though. It’s $$$. They already have the white market, the Christian market, the moderates market. And they don’t boycott. At least they didn’t. Strategy might change now that we’re seeing a drop.”... offering an answer to the question of “why does Disney allow Feige’s current strategy to continue if it’s doing so poorly?”, the insider revealed that the Marvel producer is allowed to persist in his current ways because he “has a Chapek at his side” in the form of Bob’s son, Brian."

Marvel CEO: Female Superhero Movies Have Been 'A Disaster' - "A new exchange dug out of the trove of leaked Sony emails suggests that Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter questioned the profitability of a female-led superhero film just months before the company announced the upcoming Captain Marvel movie."
From 2015. Then in 2023 he got fired. Ironic given the Phase 4/5 experience

Meme - Tony @ratatatvandal: "white family confronts and harrasses successful black man in his own home *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania poster*"

Meme - "Ant-Man Quantumania is a Disney movie about an intelligent black scientist and visionary, who is trying to save the universe, and who builds a society over decades in his own dimension, but then, white colonizers come into his dimension with their more advanced tech and destroy the kingdom which he worked tirelessly to build, and then they kill him."

Meme - "Brie Larson's reaction to being told that she's being fired from the MCU after guest-starring in a final scene in the X-Men reboot involving Rogue:"

Meme - "If you don't love me at my *Brie Larson during Captain Marvel filming with flat ass*
then you don't deserve me at my *Brie Larson in white tank top from The Marvels trailer*"

Meme - "Amazon Prime's The Boys outperforms all of Marvel Studios' Disney+ series to become 2022's most watched superhero program."
"Because it's good and original and not political or all woke."

Correct Chinese characters in the ten rings. (details in comment) : marvelstudios

Meme - "Hank Pym: Pym Particles reduce the distance between atoms, increasing the density, but not losing mass and weight!
also Hank Pym: *miniaturised cars, tank and research lab building*"

Meme - Cassie to MODOK in Ant Man 3: "Don't be a dick."
"My goodness, what an idea. Why didn't i think of that."

Ant-Man 3's box office woes: What went wrong? - "Possible factors contributing to Ant-Man 3's predicted underperformance include a lack of real character arcs. While the first two films in the franchise had clear character development for Scott Lang, the third film reportedly failed to give him and other characters substantial growth. This may make audiences feel less invested in the characters and their journey.  Additionally, some critics have pointed out that the film's choppy editing and choreography have led to less exciting action scenes than in previous installments. The unimpressive visual effects have also been a cause for concern among some viewers, with the shrinking and growing effects appearing less impressive than before. Another issue with Ant-Man 3 is its subpar writing and forced, out-of-place humor. While humor has been a staple of the franchise, it is possible that the humor in the third film feels out of place or too forced, detracting from the movie's overall tone."
After a month it only made 2.2 times budget, so it might have lost money

Meme - "Marvel Fans in 2099 having to watch 317 Movies and 84 TV Shows just to be caught on the current plot of Captain Italy and the Multiverse of Mobsters:
Pokemon Pokeposting
Shielbert :"To suddenly start creating heroes left and right... It's complete rubbish!"

James Gunn for you ! (Marvel Official Poster) : KotakuInAction (Nebula pose on Guardians of the Galaxy 3 poster) - "And yet, they put a fucking ripped Thor NAKED in the movie...  Fuck you Marvel and your double standards 🤣"
"While having other characters openly mock him and gawk at him as he's paraded around naked or mostly naked for show. A thing which had that been a woman character chained up and paraded around like that no one in Hollywood would have stood for it. But ya know it was a dude so ahahaha look at the naked man on parade lets all make fun of him in his vulnerability. He's just a tool to be looked at, prodded and laughed at. Oh please if it was a woman like Jane's character in that spot feminists alike would have heads rolling for daring to have Jane be mocked and treated or abused like that. But whatever it's just Thor right?! Laugh at him with this modern woke "all men are awful and should be mocked" comedy.""
"I'm almost positive after the last Thor movie Chris Hemsworth said he doesn't want to do anymore shirtless scenes in the marvel movies. So good on him for standing up for himself. If women don't have to be half nude the men shouldn't have to be either"
"Agreed. Look at Henry Cavill and The Witcher as well. I believe he asked for slightly less romance or shirtless scenes. Not zero but just slightly less and people including some of the woke writer weirdos on set were trying to act like he was an diva celebrity for asking such a thing. The audacity of him to have body autonomy and not want to do shirtless/naked sex scenes all the time.  Please if that was an actress in Henry's case saying I want less sex scenes and topless scenes or nude scene's the production and writing team plus modern Hollywood would be all over propping that lady up. Cheering her on for standing up for her career and her body rights. But Henry makes a modest simple request and like with Chris in the Thor/Marvel films he is seen as running away or being a diva for not wanting to be naked or shirtless all the time like a piece of meat. It's ridiculous how we view men in modern times but then prop up women for doing the same choices or requests.

Meme - "2007's CGI *Optimus Prime in Transformers, Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean*
Modern CGL in MARVEL *MODOK/Darren Cross, She-Hulk*"

Meme - "They're coming through. I can't stop them"
"Nooooooo"
"Rent"

Meme - "Kid: I want to become Spider-Man!
Kid's uncle: No, please don't say that..."

Meme - "How does Ironheart's Suit in Black Panther is looking like a power ranger from the show, The OG Iron Man suit CGI is 14 years old and still is miles better"

Meme - "When you download the wrong subtitles but it still works
Stay down. Final warning - Shuri
I can do this all day - Namor"

Meme - "Wanda, you are wearing so nice clothes"
"What clothes?"

Meme - "Sarah Michelle Gellar says fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are less accepting when it comes to women-led projects."
"But am I wrong? Is it actually because the writing for the MCU has gotten really bad? No, it's the fans that are the problem."

Facebook - "I finally trudged through Wakanda Forever - took me a few days, and I watched it twice - because I wanted so much to like it, and I didn't. Part of that was that Letitia Wright was in it: I have five t-shirts that say “stop making stupid people famous”, and I hate that this film is going to contribute to her fame and success. Not because she's particularly good in it, but because it's a Disney/Marvel film and that means it'll do well no matter what. (Me watching it twice probably helped.) And it's quite a stupid film, too, with the unnecessarily Mayan Atlanteans, and the whole Magical Negro thing with every minority in the MCU - we’re all so exotic and different, with our magic powers and secret hidden cities. There’s a scene near the end where two groups of people in their own highly-exoticised tribal dress have a fight, all yelling their war cries in their native languages, and it was all so … offensive. (Ms Marvel did a much better job, btw: she's a minority, sure, and she grapples with family expectations, and cultural/religious/social pressures - she's not a superhero because of her ethnicity, but it's part of her personal history and her identity. That's how it is: we're all of us a product of our backgrounds, and our families, and our communities.) Even without those things that personally offend me, the film isn’t great. It doesn’t have the multi-layered complexity of the first film: Killmonger's vendetta against Wakanda and its royals, everyone wanting Vibranium, the family dynamic of the royal family, T'Challa growing into the Black Panther, internecine tribal politics within Wakanda. Instead, Wakanda Forever can't decide what story it wants to tell, and has the added work of having to introduce Ironheart and Namor to the MCU, and, to my mind, flubs the latter badly. I'm glad for the Hispanic community getting representation, but I don't like MCU Namor. And seriously, why do his people call him Kukulkan? (The Feathered Serpent God was actually worshipped by the Mayans, and is related to Quetzalcoatl, who was worshipped by the Aztecs. But not every deity from every pantheon needs to be a superhero.) I'm deliberately not recapping the story, for fear of spoilers, but because it's just dumb. Not even comic-book simplistic, which I would have enjoyed, but actually terribly full of loopholes, contrivances, and … look, this film is trying to do too much, doesn’t do it well, and I didn’t like it. Which is a shame, because there are some good performances in it. Angela Bassett kills it as the Queen, and I can't wait for the inevitable spin-off Dora Milaje tv series. I'm going to go rewatch Black Panther. I liked that so much that I actually own two sets of Kimoya beads, the ONLY movie replica jewellery that I've ever wanted to buy. Maybe I will put one set on before hitting play."

Meme - ""DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN has added 3 former lawyers to its writers' room!"
*She-Hulk writers: Who's this asshole?"
Weird. Liberals tell us that you need lived experience to tell stories. But the She-Hulk writers were proud that none of them were former lawyers or otherwise knew about law in a personal way

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