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That could be being saved for the Ironheart movie - which either is becoming a series now, or was a series that’s now going to be a movie. One of the two.

Pretty sure we did see Stark Industries on the blueprints, however snatched that scene was.

Up on D+ tomorrow, so dust off your pause buttons.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That could be being saved for the Ironheart movie - which either is becoming a series now, or was a series that’s now going to be a movie. One of the two.

Ironheart was always planned as and still is a series. It's Armor Wars, starring James Rhodes/War Machine, which was planned as a series and got bumped up to a full film last September.

Ahhhh! Fair.

Is an eight episode series changing to a two hour movie “bumping up”?

Proof will be in the pudding I guess.

One of the MCU TV series strengths is they’ve used the episodic, streaming nature well. Rather than fixed episode count and episode length, it seems more determined by the needs of the story. If a given episode and it’s part of the story is 25 minutes? 25 minutes it is. If the next needs 40? It gets 40.

Armour Wars may have been switched to a movie as they felt spinning it out to episodic would involve extraneous padding, or elements they want to use elsewhere.

But as I said, proof will be in the pudding for this one.

 AduroT wrote:
Is an eight episode series changing to a two hour movie “bumping up”?

From The Hollywood Reporter:

Sources say the studio was committed to telling the story the right way and realized that a feature was better suited for the project. Like all Marvel movies, Armor Wars is intended for a theatrical release.

Since it's the Marvel Cinematic Universe and not the Marvel Television Universe, it is a bit of a bump up. Added to that, if its box office is even just average for an MCU film then it's worth it for the studio.

Just at the scene in Riri’s workshop. Can confirm the blueprints she has have the Stark Industries logo.

I tried watching this, because watching bad s-f movies is my guilty pleasure. But this was beyond bad, I just turned it off after ~30minutes and still cringe at the memories.

No idea how a franchise with access to incredible budgets for sets, actors and sfx employs 10yos as scriptwriters.

Cyel wrote:
I tried watching this, because watching bad s-f movies is my guilty pleasure. But this was beyond bad, I just turned it off after ~30minutes and still cringe at the memories.

No idea how a franchise with access to incredible budgets for sets, actors and sfx employs 10yos as scriptwriters.

Well that is a pretty intense hot take.

Like what you like. Like it to whatever extent you like it. But that opinion is crazy.

I watched this last night, and it was alright, nothing particularly special, but decent enough MCU fun.

I don't think it was as good as the first one and the villain wasn't nearly as compelling, but the way they handled Chadwick Boseman's passing was tasteful.

Was this filmed for 3D? because a lot of shots seemed to be framed that way, with a very shallow depth of field with a lot of the shot fuzzy and out of focus that became pretty obnoxious quite quickly.

There were a few instances where I struggled to suspend my disbelief,

Overall, it was... fine I suppose. Damned with faint praise really.

Aash wrote:
Also making them blue was a poor choice, they just look like knock-off Avatar Navi.

Atlanteans in the Marvel Universe were blue long before the Navi were even a twinkle in James Cameron's eye, first appearing in the comics in 1939, 15 years before James Cameron was born.

 Ghaz wrote:

Aash wrote:
Also making them blue was a poor choice, they just look like knock-off Avatar Navi.

Spoiler:

Atlanteans in the Marvel Universe were blue long before the Navi were even a twinkle in James Cameron's eye, first appearing in the comics in 1939, 15 years before James Cameron was born.

I didn't know that, but characters have been re-designed before and I think it would have been better here if they weren't blue. Partly because they weren't blue all the time with no reason given and also for the Avatar resemblance. To the casual viewer who isn't familiar with the source material, which I imagine is most of the audience, they look like Avatar-lite and I think it detracts from the film.

And Do you know what kind of grief the ‘true believers’ (as Stan Lee calls them) would give Disney if they changed the color of the Atlanteans just because someone might think they’re Navi, despite all of the other differences? They would have never heard the end of it. It’s best that they leave them in their comics-accurate skin color, just like they have done with the Kree.

It was rather impressive how little defense Wakanda has vs infiltration by water. The Talokanil aren’t really shown to employ the tech Wakanda does, they just ride a whale up the river and Wakanda apparently has no means of detecting or preventing that. Plus being super strong ninjas able to move large machinery around with absolute silence.

 Lance845 wrote:

Cyel wrote:
I tried watching this, because watching bad s-f movies is my guilty pleasure. But this was beyond bad, I just turned it off after ~30minutes and still cringe at the memories.

No idea how a franchise with access to incredible budgets for sets, actors and sfx employs 10yos as scriptwriters.

Well that is a pretty intense hot take.

Like what you like. Like it to whatever extent you like it. But that opinion is crazy.

I don't know, I like sf and I don't dislike superhero movies, even though most are dumb blockbusters. I don't expect every film in the sub-genre to be Dark Knight or the Watchmen, but the last few films I have watched are so subpar. Like Flash Gordon but not tongue in cheek level of embarassment.

Generic plots and one-dimensional characters with the quality of an old Captain Planet cartoon episode (not the ecology line but quality of story and characters), bad dialogue (some scenes in this one were so stilted and wooden it felt as if the actors were just rehearsing the dialogue for the first time - it was some dialogue between two lead female characters in the laboratory ~30min. mark and another one in a dorm room a few minutes later ...after which I decided enough is enough and turned it off).

It's just the equivalent of old Troma productions but with much more budget on special effects - and even then they are 1/10th as awesome as, say, Fury Road from~10 years ago.

On a positive note, costumes were cool. Can't come up with another one, sadly.

I enjoyed it well enough I guess (except that the CIA sideshow didn't mesh and had no relevance to the actual movie, could have saved on runtime there). It's pretty much as I expected from the trailer, way too serious for my taste just like the first one.

Storywise I don't know. Invulnerable ninja blue people against whom there is no defense even for super high tech people who did a reasonable job fighting off an alien invasion, sending their warriors on a boat cruise while leaving the country undefended because the enemy army is totally going to take the bait, tying the discovery of underwater city solely to the engineer who built the vibranium detector because the CIA is super chill about stuff like that and wouldn't keep backups of the plans. It's straining my suspension of disbelief. Maybe other Marvel movies aren't much better in that regard, but at least they're fun and distracting enough that these things don't stand out.

 Ghaz wrote:
And Do you know what kind of grief the ‘true believers’ (as Stan Lee calls them) would give Disney if they changed the color of the Atlanteans just because someone might think they’re Navi, despite all of the other differences? They would have never heard the end of it. It’s best that they leave them in their comics-accurate skin color, just like they have done with the Kree.

They did go for the happy compromise where the blue people are blue only half the time.

 AduroT wrote:
Is an eight episode series changing to a two hour movie “bumping up”?

Almost certainly.

Watched this last night with my wife. It was pretty good, but could have done with being a bit shorter. The final fight was a bit lame though.

However, more importantly I would like to acknowledge MDG’s reference to Tolkien white guys for Messrs Freeman and Serkis in the first one Glorious!

 Flinty wrote:
Watched this last night with my wife. It was pretty good, but could have done with being a bit shorter. The final fight was a bit lame though.

However, more importantly I would like to acknowledge MDG’s reference to Tolkien white guys for Messrs Freeman and Serkis in the first one Glorious!

To be fair, I entirely stole that from off the Interwebs!

I don’t care. First time I saw it and it is wondrous

Tolkien White Guys was indeed a good meme for the first one.

Cyel wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

Cyel wrote:
I tried watching this, because watching bad s-f movies is my guilty pleasure. But this was beyond bad, I just turned it off after ~30minutes and still cringe at the memories.

No idea how a franchise with access to incredible budgets for sets, actors and sfx employs 10yos as scriptwriters.

Well that is a pretty intense hot take.

Like what you like. Like it to whatever extent you like it. But that opinion is crazy.

I don't know, I like sf and I don't dislike superhero movies, even though most are dumb blockbusters. I don't expect every film in the sub-genre to be Dark Knight or the Watchmen, but the last few films I have watched are so subpar. Like Flash Gordon but not tongue in cheek level of embarassment.

If your frame of reference for good superhero movies is Watchmen and Dark Knight, both of which are deconstructions of super heroes, then I would argue that you probably don't actually like super heroes. Watchmen is specifically a take on the genre that deconstructs everything they are about and turns every person who is supposed to be the heroes into insane broken lunatics whose personal issues cause in fighting, murder, and violence to no particular end. To the extent that the ending of the story is the "villain" is the "hero" and saves the world through mass murder on a global scale.

Dark Knight trilogy, similarly, is made by a guy who thought super heroes were dumb and wanted to do a "realistic" take on Batman and cast an actor whose opinion of Batman was "He is ridiculous".

Generic plots and one-dimensional characters with the quality of an old Captain Planet cartoon episode (not the ecology line but quality of story and characters), bad dialogue (some scenes in this one were so stilted and wooden it felt as if the actors were just rehearsing the dialogue for the first time - it was some dialogue between two lead female characters in the laboratory ~30min. mark and another one in a dorm room a few minutes later ...after which I decided enough is enough and turned it off).

I disagree with every single thing said here on every level. Characters are far from one dimension and the dialogue is anything but bad. Actors in this are up for awards for their acting. Nobody is "wooden". If a couple women having dialog in a room is an issue... I mean... what do you want anyone to say about that?

It's just the equivalent of old Troma productions but with much more budget on special effects - and even then they are 1/10th as awesome as, say, Fury Road from~10 years ago.

On a positive note, costumes were cool. Can't come up with another one, sadly.

See above.

Angela Bassett was fantastic as Queen Ramonda. She owned every single scene she had, with a convincing performance. She’s a cracking actor to begin with, but this was something different. Her bearing, tone and dignity in the UN Chamber is just absolutely superb. In this one film she shows a greater range of acting than some manage in their entire career.

Indeed the only stinker for me is Martin “oh look. He’s looking exasperated. Just for a change” Freeman - but as you might be able to tell I’ve never really seen what all the fuss is about with him. His accent isn’t great, and to be honest he just felt largely superfluous as a role.

In terms of scenes I do agree the big fight on the sub just…doesn’t really work for me. But, it was all filmed during the pandemic, which would’ve put different limitations on cast and crew. Also Okoye in her guise as Midnight Angel constantly flipping her helmet on and off was a bit distracting.

But as ever with the helmet on/off thing? I still strongly suspect there’s some kind of Acting Union Rule behind that.

I agree the sub fight is the low point and okoye is the most aggregeous use of the flip on/off mask that they really need to stop.

But those criticisms included the movie is far from bad.

The low point is that they made a Black Panther movie without Black Panther in it.

Well, I mean they didn’t…

The movie was ultimately let down by a not great third act climactic fight that was rather..... boring, and lacked anything innovative or interesting.

It was also let down by the forced tie-ins with Armor Wars. Like DCEU levels of bad, and that is something I really noticed in the other Marvel Phase Whatever We Are On films. When they have to lay the ground work or crossover for other properties in this Phase, it has let down the rest of the film.

Edit: Everything else was pretty strong.

Ironheart, not Armour Wars.

 AduroT wrote:
Well, I mean they didn’t…

They made a Black Panther movie without T'Challa. It'd be like making Iron Man without Tony Stark. Or the Hulk without Bruce Banner. Or Thor without Thor.

And the movie suffered because of it.

They should'a recast.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Ironheart, not Armour Wars.

 AduroT wrote:
Well, I mean they didn’t…

They made a Black Panther movie without T'Challa. It'd be like making Iron Man without Tony Stark. Or the Hulk without Bruce Banner. Or Thor without Thor.

And the movie suffered because of it.

They should'a recast.

They made a Captain America series without Steve Rogers.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Ironheart, not Armour Wars.

 AduroT wrote:
Well, I mean they didn’t…

They made a Black Panther movie without T'Challa. It'd be like making Iron Man without Tony Stark. Or the Hulk without Bruce Banner. Or Thor without Thor.

And the movie suffered because of it.

They should'a recast.

They couldn’t recast. The domestic backlash would have damaged the brand far worse than a weak lead and third act.