I’m hoping for something good!! Helps that the three leads have charisma out the wazoo. Monica and Carol alone, but also adding Ms Marvel means the movie could be unfathomably bad before I’d stop feeling good about it. Knock on cosmic wood.
Like I’m imagining if Loki s1 had been a feature length film. Perfect? No, but charming and entertaining. S2 doesn’t work because every episode starts off as tho we skipped an episode. What’s happening? Why does everyone care about this new obstacle?
I say that having not seen the last few Loki episodes. Reviews have been kinder as the season progressed. But I think the driving connection for me in s1 was actually Sylvie. What a great character that for some reason was robbed of her charm. Just think of all the cool stuff they could have done if they’d maintained the tone with which the series last left her and Loki
I really like Ms Marvel as a character concept and her inclusion probably has me the most interested in the movie, but I don’t think the movie will be the best vehicle for exploring the family and community stuff that makes her interesting.
I’m with you on Vincent. I am not familiar with Echo. What made them one of your favorites?
If the trailer is true to form, I am always down for a show that composes a sound design to emulate the experience of being deaf. For me, a couple of standout examples were in Switched At Birth, then in Master of None.
I can’t find a good clip for the MoN episode, but it’s season 2 “New York, I Love You.”
What makes this particular moment in TV history so memorable and engaging is the immersion aspect. The entire segment of Maya’s story is made silent — no speech, no background music, no sound whatsoever — in an attempt to mimic the experience of being deaf for those who are hearing. Viewers are forced to pay attention to the subtitles when actors communicate in sign language so they can understand the dialogue. And when hearing people try to communicate with our protagonist, there are no words on the screen to help you out (so, essentially, exactly what Deaf viewers have to go through when there are no captions available to read).
The end of the deaf segment is hilarious.
Spoilers
At the end of Maya’s segment, she and her husband are shopping in what appears to be a Home Goods, or some other kind of decor/interior design store. After some time, Maya initiates a conversation with her husband about some of their intimacy problems and things escalate into an intense argument with a lot of colorful language used. [Reminder, this is all happening in ASL with subtitles.]
The couple assumes they are having this argument “in private.” But all of a sudden, the pair is interrupted by a very angry mother who begins accosting them both (in ASL) for sharing their vulgar conversation with “the entire world,” and adding, “my kids are with me and they know ASL.” The kids are then shown running around the store signing the naughty words they saw the couple making earlier.
That’s a great point. By the same token, I’d argue Secret Invasion would have been a much better experience as a 110 minute movie. But not by much. This movie looks like it will have actual consequences for the overall story add mythology. I mean how much of SI felt like it mattered? For me, it sucked in part because of how insignificant it felt.
Secret Invasion felt like it was mainly meant to be a Nick Fury character piece with a secondary goal of establishing more about the Skrulls. I won’t say it accomplished those goals well, but there’s been speculation that the MCU is setting up some cosmic storylines.
It’s difficult having multiple properties in the MCU. People complain if a show seems unrelated to the main narrative, but other people complain if it becomes so integrated that they feel they wouldn’t be able to follow the plot in a movie without watching a TV series that leads into it. I think the show put some pieces on the board that could be used in future shows/movies.
G’iah felt like a character who could be incorporated into the fanboy dream of a Young Avengers project. Olivia Colman’s character seems like someone who can be used to bring characters together. The anti-alien ending to SI means something if there are future projects involving aliens. I think it also establishes why Nick Fury is in space as a lead-in to The Marvels, which is obviously going to have some Kree-Skrull stuff.
I’m hoping they can establish more properties like Guardians that can be weaved into the larger project as needed, but mostly exist as their own self-contained story. Pretty sure that was the key to Guardians 3 getting very little of the negativity that rains down on MCU stuff these days. This includes not only the reaction, but the run-up that helps inform it. With most movies now, including The Marvels, people are just running a doomsday clock to count down to the next failure. The Guardians 3 had a lot of, “okay, things aren’t going great, but this will be a break from the badness.”
It made sense for a good while to message to people that they need to watch everything because everything will inform the MCU story, but it has hit a point now of needing course correction back to “just make a good movie” basics.
The discussion in the last few posts seems to be the goal of the new Marvel Spotlight designation. Basically, Marvel will tag certain projects as not tying into the larger mythology. If executed well, it eems like it could be good for both cutting down on the feeling that there is too much homework, and also let them take swings with cool stories that might not fit well with the tone and/or the storylines of the larger main MCU
I am okay regardless of whether the story is a standalone vs essentially connected to other stories.
But I think they also need to be aware of the meta they are playing into. Secret Invasion is a story that begs for blockbuster consequences to the overall narrative. Who was a Skrull? Rhodey is not enough. Even with him, that’s not played up in the pop culture consciousness.
They were competing not just against the comic storyline, which they did not honor even on the scale of Civil War’s minimized scope. Secret Invasion is basically Marvels version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I just don’t see how they could match what that story needed to be without it also having widespread consequences on everything else in the MCU, but I feel like I missed nothing by bailing. I’d love to be wrong.
Her story was interesting. A semi villain turned antihero mirror image of Daredevil. If you read her story at a high level it seems interesting but nothing special but in the comics the combination of her history, Daredevil’s situation, etc made it very dramatic.
What actually first drew me to her was the artwork though. Of course every artist has their own style but once she became her own character artists really took her situation and incorporated it into the artwork. David Mack for instance, did whole comics in watercolor with very little speech bubbles, really highlighting what it must be to have heightened senses but without being able to hear. Water color artwork is a kind of semi motif of her character.
That’s awesome. My library has a bunch of issues by David Mack. I’ll check them out.
I read a recap of her origin story. That sounds awesome. I hope the TV show does it justice. Hard to imagine them getting it very wrong with the cast. Using Vincent is almost cheating.
There’s no RT reaction to The Marvels yet, but the social media buzz out of initial screenings seems to be mildly positive overall. Good enough. I just didn’t want to see it getting a Quantumania reaction.
The MCU does seem to be at a crossroads at the moment in trying to stray a bit from from the formula that’s worked really well for the last 15 years that might be getting stale, but risks churning out messy duds of a movie like Quantumania. I don’t know how much appetite I have for too much multiverse/alternate timeline stuff that’s going on in shows like Loki. The show is executed really well but I think successful stories still need to have a regular beginning/middle/end with a cohesive storyline and good character development.
