MCU stuff. TV and Movies

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**Easy E**

I just finished watching Echo

It was better than it had any right to be. It was way better than the Hawkeye series that it was spun off of. This series seemed to actually have a story to tell and an arc for both the antagonist and protagonist. The finale was also interesting in that it focused more on closing those character arcs than on the action. There is also a lot of Native American themes and story beats going on, which was fun!

There are some action scenes, with the DD cameo being really fun, and the Dragula action scene being pretty brutal. However, action is not the main focus of the series.

At 5 episodes, the first is mostly recap; the series does not wear out its welcome.

**insaniak**

Yeah, I really enjoyed Echo. Some really nice character building, a likeable cast, and an interesting 'resolution' to the whole mess that ties in nicely to Daredevil and presumably sets things up for future shenanigans.

**nels1031**

I have a dimmer view on Echo than you guys, but I do respect the lead actress for having the courage to audition for and accept the lead role, having come right "off the street" so to speak.

**AduroT**

Still only gotten the first two episodes watched.

**creeping-deth87**

Echo? Better than Hawkeye? That's a hot take. I thought Echo was pretty bad. The mysticism was very unnecessary, I definitely would have preferred if the show stayed grounded and just told a story about Maya untangling herself from Kingpin. If you've only got 5 episodes to work with, you have to keep the storytelling pretty tight.

**Lance845**

I think echo was... Fine. Not as good as the better disney plus shows. Much better than the worst. At times it felt kind of flat. Her power change from he comics is good/fine. Good to set her apart from taskmaster.

I think it suffers from her being a bad guy who is the protagnist so they don't let her be a bad guy. Don't sell her trying to take down/over kingpins operation if you won't let her be truely bad.

**Grimskul**

Sounds like the same issue that Book of Boba Fett ran into, Disney can't really sell or write bonafide villain protagonists. The best they can do is an "anti-hero" like Loki, who hasn't really been a villain since the first Avengers.

**Lance845**

Grimskul wrote:
Sounds like the same issue that Book of Boba Fett ran into, Disney can't really sell or write bonafide villain protagonists. The best they can do is an "anti-hero" like Loki, who hasn't really been a villain since the first Avengers.

Mmm... similar issue. But I would say Bobba Fett is WAY worse.

With Echo she isn't in charge. She's just on a revenge quest kind of thing with the people around her asking her to step back from the edge or questioning the collateral damage to the community. She DOES have ties to that community so it makes sense for her to care. But she spends some part of each episode deciding the risk is worth it because the other option is letting her mission go.

With Bobba Fett, he IS the kingpin. But then doesn't do any of the crime and stops others from doing the crime and just sort of does nothing while being a total fething idiot.

I don't think Maya in Echo suffers from constant mass stupidity. She just struggles with her drive to tear it all down and watching others get hurt for it.

**Geifer**

creeping-deth87 wrote:
Echo? Better than Hawkeye? That's a hot take.

That echos my thoughts (see what I did there?

), but to each their own.

I don't think there's much point in comparing both shows. Hawkeye is a comedy. Half of Echo is ethnic exposition and consequently has to be all serious a lot of the time. The shows don't have a lot in common other than Maya and Kingpin featuring in both of them.

**BobtheInquisitor**

For the love of God, it’s Boba Fett.

BOBA.

BOBA Fett.

Not “Bobba”. Not “Bubba”.

Bo-ba. BOBA fething Fett.

It’s Boba Fett.

Star Wars needs to be ended, guys.

It’s important we have some perspective when discussing the Marvel streaming shows: The MCU will never be as bad as fans saying “Bobba Fett”.

**Lance845**

Bobu Furt

**Easy E**

Bubba who?

**BobtheInquisitor**

Hotep.

**Easy E**

BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Hotep.

*slow clap*

**MarkNorfolk**

The Marvels

I wanted to see this at the piccies but life got in the way, but it hit free streaming in the UK the other day so we were able to give it a watch.

And it was fun. Kamala was cute, the constant switching added an extra layer to the fight scenes (although Ms Marvel seems to have had plenty of experience and/or training) and the big bad had a reason for her trail of destruction. And of course, cats! (And Cats*).

*Although, I would have preferred the Elaine Paige version.

**Just Tony**

My only complaint was the actress playing the big bad. Something about her delivery reminded me of some of the really awful non-acting in the Disney movies. Like I was having flashbacks to Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior.

**nels1031**

Just Tony wrote:
My only complaint was the actress playing the big bad. Something about her delivery reminded me of some of the really awful non-acting in the Disney movies. Like I was having flashbacks to Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior.

Definitely a massive step down from the delivery of Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser.

Which is consistent at least, a massive step down is the best description for Marvel post-Infinity War.

**MarkNorfolk**

Just Tony wrote:
My only complaint was the actress playing the big bad. Something about her delivery reminded me of some of the really awful non-acting in the Disney movies. Like I was having flashbacks to Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior.

You do raise the issue that she actually didn't have that much screen time. If the movie was longer or her 'threat build up' was over a couple of films (which you could argue her backstory would warrant) then we might have had a bigger name. But then the main role of the film was probably to bring Kamala and Monica to the big screen, bring Carol back and

Spoiler:

. And they did that in a entertaining way.

**ccs**

MarkNorfolk wrote:
The Marvels

and the big bad had a reason for her trail of destruction.

I liked that it was flawed in that comic book villain way - execution.

On its own she HAD a decent plan.
She has a specific problem (needs new atmospher, needs new water, & needs new solar power). And she has a perfectly functional way of solving her problem.
Had she just siphoned what she needed from uninhabited planets/systems? She'd have succeeded!

But no.... She decides to siphon these resources from places dear to Cpt. Marvel for some vengence..
That is a terrible terrible flaw in the plan.
Because she's got to know that Cpt Marvel is going to react poorly, come over, and beat her

/maybe even kill her (she does refer to Carol as the destroyer) - and possibly put a stop to the plan. If that happens her people are screwed.

And had Carol not had friends handy to suggest her trying to re-energize the star? That's exactly what would've happened.

**Souleater**

I was quite disappointed by The Marvels.

Dar-Benn’s plan is dumb - but I guess understandable if we see her as more concerned with revenge than helping her people.

(I’m deliberately ignoring the idea of refugees and resources in a galaxy with FTL.)

But her plan isn’t just going to antagonise The Annihilator, but also folks like the New Asfardians, the GotG.

And it leads me to wonder why Carol feels guilty about what these dipsticks did to their own planet. Unless she had set herself up as a benevolent dictator, they were just going to carry on being galactic imperialist wallies.

It also had some oddities as a film. The beginning moon sequence seemed so low budget that I was expecting an Eagle from Space 1999 to come over the horizon to see what the noise was about.

It also looks as if certain bits had been reshot quite a time apart.

The musical bit was poor - I Can Do This All Day! was way better and that was a mickey take of musicals.

I did like the training montage - it was kinda fun.

I wish I’d braved the rain and gone to see Argyle. (Although I suspect that by breaking my rule of not watching trailers, I’ve blown the two biggest reveals of that film.)

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

The Kree are an odd one.

From Danvers’ perspective, the problem was the Supreme Intelligence giving awful orders, rather than the people. Take out the Supreme Intelligence, let the Kree find their own way.

Massive pros and cons even in that though. The closest crap, hopefully inoffensive analogy I can think of is when the child of a Helicopter Parent has to stand on their own two feet.

On one hand, it is good for them to establish their independence and learn how to Hooman.

On the other? If you’ve lived your life with someone else micromanaging everything? You start off with near negative life skills. You may not know how to do your laundry, cook, wash your pots, potentially even wash yourself.

Extend that to an entire populace, and yikes.

**Lance845**

Well thats just it. Carol at this point has more memories of living on Hala then she does living on Earth.

It isn't the billions of kree citizens going about their lives that she got on trains and traveled around with and witnessed who are at fault. It's the supreme intelligence and their military.

Carol's issue isn't with the Kree people. It's with their governmental structure. What she didn't realize was that the supreme intelligence had taken over so much of their infrastructure and planning that by removing it and throwing their society into chaos it would cause rapid destabilization.

She didn't WANT to cause a civil war. She also didn't think far enough ahead to realize one would be inevitable.

Kind of like the US killing Saddam and then wishing -Iraq- the best of luck. Except it wasn't one country. It was a galactic empire with a home world that relied on that galactic empire for stability.

**Kale**

Saddam -> Iraq not Afganistan but you hit the nail on the head with the results.

It also fits with her personality - shes a hard headed, goal oriented, direct action focused individual, who is not great with people. Not unfriendly just expects everyone to be as self reliant and self contained as she is. It just doesnt occur to her that people might not cope with her results like she wants.
Also - who would think taking out the Supream Intelligence would lead to messing up a star? Its a big jump, unless the SI was micromanaging the star for some reason...

**Lance845**

Kale wrote:
Saddam -> Iraq not Afganistan but you hit the nail on the head with the results.

It also fits with her personality - shes a hard headed, goal oriented, direct action focused individual, who is not great with people. Not unfriendly just expects everyone to be as self reliant and self contained as she is. It just doesnt occur to her that people might not cope with her results like she wants.
Also - who would think taking out the Supream Intelligence would lead to messing up a star? Its a big jump, unless the SI was micromanaging the star for some reason...

Thanks, corrected.

But yes, I think it WAS micromanaging the star in some capacity. The Kree are a large enough and advanced enough society that I wouldn't doubt that Hala was using their star in some capacity as a power source. Kree society was entirely dictated by the commands of the Supreme Intelligence. These jobs were getting done by these people for the good of the Kree. That includes waste management. It includes regulating x resources to y ends.

With the Intelligence gone some upstart military leader in the civil war dictates that these resources are reallocated for their ends without considering broader implications because broader implications haven't been something any Kree has had to consider for thousands of years. And suddenly they are not drawing a sustainable amount of energy from their star. Suddenly they are killing it. Suddenly an attack on x infrastructure destroys waste management. And what was a carefully regulated and balanced system of industries is poisoning the water and filling the air with toxic byproducts.

The reliance on the Supreme Intelligence left the Kree people as ignorant children playing with things they didn't really understand.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

It’s likely a similar situation as the Age of Strife.

Untold generations entirely reliant on STCs to do the technical thinking for them, even to the point of the production.

Take that away? And you’re left with a populace unable to maintain its infrastructure.

And the villain does what the Kree did best. Seize resources from other planets. Not necessarily out of laziness, but because they saw no other option. Taking them specifically from Danvers’ friends was the malicious bit of that decision.

**LunarSol**

The important thing to remember about the civil war is that it wasn't just Hala. The Kree had an empire that took up a third(?) of the galaxy. Hundreds of worlds minimum all under the rule of the Supreme Intelligence.

**nels1031**

Madame Web review embargo is lifted.

USA Today coming in spicy and succinct.

Snippets:

The Hollywood Reporter: "It is an airless and stilted endeavor driven by a mechanical screenplay … Its lack of imagination would be astounding if it wasn't so expected … The film operates on a need-to-know basis, forcing people to explain themselves through inelegantly breathless exposition."

Related video: Madame Web's Surprising Origin Story! (Dailymotion)

The Daily Beast: "…. a torturous saga that haplessly spins about in circles trying to fashion a competent tone or coherent action sequence. No matter its heroine's clairvoyant super-powers, it's a debacle incapable of seeing-and thus avoiding-its every subsequent misstep … director S.J. Clarkson stages it with all the grace of a runaway train, her snap zooms, whiplash cinematography, canted angles, and overly theatrical lighting turning this prologue embarrassingly comical … full of bad dialogue delivered badly by talented men and women stuck with crummy material and equally lousy stewardship…Sony's Spider-Man Universe is now completely lifeless-and in no need of resuscitation."
Rolling Stone: "Madame Web isn't as bad as its somewhat botched promotional campaign might suggest. It is, in fact, way worse. A genuine Chernobyl-level disaster that seems to get exponentially more radioactive as it goes along, this detour to one of the dustier corners of Marvel's content farm is a dead-end from start to finish. It is the Cats: The Movie of superhero movies. Not a single decision seems of sound mind. Not a single performance feels in sync with the material. Not a single line reading feels as if it hasn't somehow been magically auto-tuned to subtract emotion and/or inflection. The sole amazing factor of this Spider-spinoff is that someone, somewhere signed off on actually releasing it…a Showgirls of comic-book cinema."

UPI: "A new low for superhero debacles… At least Catwoman and Batman & Robin believed in what they were doing. They were wrong, but Madame Web just feels like a cynical copy of the bare minimum to qualify as a comic book movie."

Collider: "Madame Web's writing strains to emulate teenage girls cracking wise with each other or any other kind of positive human emotion. This is a screenplay that speaks in backstory and surface-level comic book references (like Sims always being barefoot). It doesn't understand how people actually interact with one another…. Beyond even those staggeringly amateurish filmmaking flourishes, Madame Web has none of the laughs or thrills that general audiences come to superhero movies for. Much like Morbius from two years ago, it's a pale imitation of comic book motion pictures from the past."

IndieWire: "From its lack of stakes to its absence of style, and from its laughable CGI to its palpable discomfort with the rhythms and tropes of its genre, Madame Web is a superhero movie that feels like it was made by and for people who have never seen a modern superhero movie … Johnson has a rare gift for weaponizing social discomfort into sandpaper-dry comedy, and Madame Web threatens to become a real movie whenever it allows its star to revel in the fact that she doesn't really want to be in it… The characters just stand around and trade perfunctory dialogue in bland locations - sometimes while watching much better movies than the one they're trapped in."

IGN: "Madame Web tries to connect many plots and people together to a confusing, yet ultimately bland result. It tries to balance the comedic tone of a modern superhero movie with what could be a more interesting psychological thriller if it invested more time on developing its hero and villain, rather than spreading itself thin trying to connect all these new versions of characters together. It fails as a one-off and a franchise starter, not telling a fulfilling origin story for Cassie nor giving a compelling argument for the future Spider-Women. The weak dialogue unfortunately stands out, but the few action set pieces harken to the older Spider-Man movies of the early 2000s."

USA Today: "Worst superhero movie since Morbius."

3C Films: "an embarrassing mess. Talented stars wasted on probably the worst comic book movie I have ever seen. Filled with atrocious dialogue, awkward editing, & all around laughable structure. I sat there baffled scene by scene someone approved this. The memes will redeem it."

Slashfilm: "I hesitate to describe it as a superhero film. It's more like a pre-origin story, a tale of who various Spider-Women were before they got their powers. Audiences are treated to several flashes-forward to the time when they'll be in costume, but Madame Web isn't about how they got their powers or stitched together their outfits. It's merely about the assurance that they will indeed be heroes someday…This may be one of the final films of the superhero renaissance. Enjoy it before it topples over entirely."

**LunarSol**

Yeah, I'm not even seeing attempts to look on the bright side or even real defenders. It just kind of sounds like a mess.

**nels1031**

LunarSol wrote:
Yeah, I'm not even seeing attempts to look on the bright side or even real defenders.

Sidney Sweeney and her dress at the red carpet premiere for this movie is the only bright side.

**Grimskul**

I completely forgot that this movie existed after seeing the initial trailer. That's how forgettable this film is.