Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

You're allowed an opinion, it's just that people tend to respond better to opinions that have some factual basis to them.

 Ghool wrote:
While I might be the minority of opinion on this forum, but if you folks say the movies are well-received and doing well?

Let’s just take a look at the diminishing returns on every single Marvel film and series since Endgame.

Deadpool/Wolverine was an outlier. But the rest?
Not even breaking even.

Proof is in the numbers.

The only MCU movies so far that have lost money are the Marvels and the Eternals, both of which had marketing issues and received largely positive reviews from those people who did actually go and see them.


The fact that the recent crop of movies isn't doing the same numbers as Infinity War doesn't mean they're bad. While there are occasional exceptions, movies in general are not doing as well at the box office, for various reasons that have little or nothing to do with the quality of the movie. With more and more people staying home and streaming instead, sooner or later studios are going to have to come up with another metric for judging a movie's success, because box office sales are simply not the whole picture these days.

Yeah and unless we have a huge change I can't see cinemas getting back to what they were. It's gone from a casual afternoon's entertainment cost to quite a serious expense if you also want to drink/eat anything.

Why do I have a terrible feeling that Sue is going to be the leader, and she'll talk down Silver Surfette by bonding with her over child-bearing...

And if they wanted a female Herald for Galactus, why not use Nova, a perfectly good female Herald? Why change Norin Radd into a woman?

(And let's not discuss how bad the CGI is, PLEASE let that be a rough cut and the final movie release will look better...)

 Vulcan wrote:
Why do I have a terrible feeling that Sue is going to be the leader, ...

Not seeing anything at all in the trailer that would lead to that conclusion.

But also not really seeing why it would be a problem, honestly.

Why change Norin Radd into a woman?

They didn't.

Usually I’m bothered by these gender swap type gimics, but I’m more bothered by Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards.

1. What was wrong with John Krasinski from the Raimi flick? Never bothered with it, but he looked passable in the clips that I saw of him. Did Krasinski not want to get franchise locked for years?
2. Tired of seeing him in everything. Not a hater, and aside from Wonder Woman 2(not his fault, he didn’t get much help) he generally doesn’t phone it in, in my experience.
3. Just doesn’t look the part.

Krasinski was signed on for that one appearance, as a fan-service Easter egg. He was never intended to stick around.

 Vulcan wrote:
Why do I have a terrible feeling that Sue is going to be the leader, and she'll talk down Silver Surfette by bonding with her over child-bearing...

I doubt Sue will be the leader but she has always been the anchor for the Fantastic Four. If you are looking for a story that doesn't include a strong female character, I suggest you avoid any comic accurate portrayal of Sue Storm. That idea dates back decades.

And if they wanted a female Herald for Galactus, why not use Nova, a perfectly good female Herald? Why change Norin Radd into a woman?

Do you mean Binary? Binary was already seeded in the post credit scene from the Marvels. They haven't gender swapped Norin Radd, they have used an already established female version of the Silver Surfer. Considering we already know that at least the beginning of this movie doesn't take place in the main MCU setting, a Norin Radd Silver Surfer is still possible along with the Shalla Ball Silver Surfer featured here.

William

 Ghool wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Ghool wrote:
Yay yet another gender swap for no reason.
It’s clear they don’t care about the fans, and only satisfying an agenda.
What a way to ruin one of my favourite characters from Marvel.

You haven't read Earth X, have you?

You must have missed the comment where I’ve been reading Marvel comics for over 40 years.
What I have missed is the dreck they’ve been pushing out for the past 7 years.

1) Ok, so you've been reading the comics for 40 years. Did you read Earth X or not? (It came out back in '98? '99?)
2) You complain about the recent movies being dreck - while still reading the current books??




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ghool wrote:
While I might be the minority of opinion on this forum, but if you folks say the movies are well-received and doing well?

Let’s just take a look at the diminishing returns on every single Marvel film and series since Endgame.

Deadpool/Wolverine was an outlier. But the rest?
Not even breaking even.

Proof is in the numbers.

In the end? It really doesn't matter to me what their #s are. All I care about is did they entertain me?
To date, Marvel wise, the only Disney ones to fail in that were: Eternals & Secret Invasion.
If Disney fails to make x amount of $$? Not my problem. And wether or not something entertains me has nothing to do with the opinions of professional critics nor how many other people have watched it.

On box office and streaming?

It’s really not taking long at all for MCU movies to turn up on D+. And it’s even swifter on Amazon Prime, though as paid-for content.

I did that with Captain America Brave New World just this week. £19.99, so around the cost of a new Blu-ray.

I had intended to see it in the cinema, but timing just didn’t allow.

And now it’s rare to wait more than a few weeks to stream, be it paid for or Disney+, I do wonder how many other film nerds are happy to wait? Because I doubt it takes a particularly high percentage to do in a box office.

As for the recent crop?

Black Panther 2 gets a pass from me. I mean, talk about challenges. Not only had they sadly lost their superbly charismatic leading man? But it was made during the Pandemic. The story itself is fine, but you can see where probably necessary compromises were made.

The Marvels I adore. The montage of them learning to use their powers and new ability effectively was superb. And again, the story was solid. Must watch that again.

Eternals? It was a disappointment, and until Brave New World just sort of occupied its own odd space. Also, I’m sorry to say Barry Keoghan is another actor that just creeps me out. I dunno why, and this isn’t to suggest he’s a wrong’un. Maybe he looks too much like that utter pratt out of office of The Flash?

Secret Invasion was just plain old odd. But at least Martin Freeman suffered*, so not a dead loss

The rest have been perfectly fine.

*Look, I’m not saying he’s a one trick pony, but there are only so many “Martin Freeman again, but this time he’s looking exasperated about something slightly different”. He’s overrated and over used. Like Jim Carrey at the start of his career, where every role was “Jim Carrey being wacky and annoying”.

Have you seen ‘The Responder’?

Who, me?

I don’t think so.

Freeman lexes his acting muscles in a pretty grim portrayal of a night duty cop. It's pretty good, but as I say, grim viewing. It'll make you think Liverpool should be flattened and turned into a park and ride for Manchester.

Does he do his exasperated face?

You know the one.

Though I will concede he was pretty decent in Ghost Stort.

If you want to go with the idea that the proof is in the numbers well....

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nVWej75IjzZMYv5pXA_awec0m7lcfW9X/view?usp=sharing

Phase 4 did better than phase one on average per movie despite not having any Avengers movie to drastically boost the number AND having to deal with the pandemic. Blackwidow was almost just released on streaming which severally negatively impacted it's box office performance.

Phase 5 has the only not profitable movie with the Marvels. Which suffered from Pandemic stuff and troubled production and poor advertising AND strikes. Otherwise DP and Wolverine was performing like an Avengers movie and Cap being the first movie for Sam as the title character outperformed other first title character movies in Hulk, First Aveneger, Eternals, and Shang Chi.

Phase 4 being the beginning of a new story arc (again with no avengers movie boosting the numbers) made more money per movie than phase 1 and WOULD outperform per movie phase 2 if it wasn't for Age of Ultron.

Phase 5 is undecided until Thunderbolts finishes it's run. I suspect the numbers will be good.

Noooooo!

Not independently verifiable facts!

Arrrrgh!

*shrivels up*

I've enjoyed everything since phase far from home (the original run epilogue) except for Echo, Secret Invasion, and Eternals. To be fair I haven't seen Black Panther 2 but it took me forever to see Black Panther and I enjoyed that so I'm pretty sure BP2 will be fine.

This one, is I think, just a pass for me. I see nothing that excites me and honestly I'm suffering from Pascal burnout. He's not THAT good of an actor or that charismatic and he just feels like every other character he's currently doing. And then it's hard to beat Evans for human torch and so I'm decidedly meh on it. I'll probably watch it free on streaming at some point at home.

 Hulksmash wrote:

This one, is I think, just a pass for me. I see nothing that excites me and honestly I'm suffering from Pascal burnout. He's not THAT good of an actor or that charismatic and he just feels like every other character he's currently doing. And then it's hard to beat Evans for human torch and so I'm decidedly meh on it. I'll probably watch it free on streaming at some point at home.

For me, the best characters of the bunch are Thing and Sue so I'm not particularly concerned about either of those


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In terms of Phase 4 rankings.

No Way Home, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Guardians 3 are legitimate greats in the franchise and completely live up to their hype.

Multiverse of Madness and Wakanda Forever are nearly up there, but have some obvious production problems that hold them back a bit.

The Marvels, Eternals, Black Widow and Shang-Chi are all really solid films with enjoyable stories and characters that mostly just suffer from timing and surrounding bloat. I don't think people were all that ready to move on after Endgame. I feel like Cap 4 is going to wind up here when I get around to it.

Love & Thunder and Quantumania are actual duds. The latter I can almost forgive, but its basically the epitome of the post-Endgame problems all rolled into one. Love & Thunder is probably my least favorite MCU film of all time and just kind of terrible, IMO.

 Ghool wrote:


You must have missed the comment where I’ve been reading Marvel comics for over 40 years.
What I have missed is the dreck they’ve been pushing out for the past 7 years.

I’m done here. It feels like I’m not allowed to have an opinion.

People seem to forget that you can have an opinion. However, no one is required to agree with it. Secondly, no one is required to not tell you why they think your opinion is stupid. No one is entitled to share an opinion that is free from potential rebuke from others with opinions.


I personally have 0 interest in this movie.

This seems to be the place to admit that I don't like Mr. Fantastic. I've never liked "stretchy" as a a power set and the only time he was interesting was the version in The Venture Bros. And no, The Maker isn't any better as it is just Le Edgy Mr. Fantastic.

There, I got that off my chest. Now we can all go about our day.

Still I didn't really care about Black Panther either but Chadwick Boseman won me over so maybe Pedro will as well.

Have to agree, Mr Fantastic was always the least interesting of the four.

From what I recall I think its also that he mostly just had that "dad energy just get on with life/been there done that". He never really suffered like the others with his gift in the same way; nor had to learn and mature and temper his behaviour.

Which in a way made him stable, steady and constant but also meant that he didn't have the same character advances as the others.

I saw a Pedro Pascal coloring book prominently displayed at the book store the other day. Not Star Wars or Last of Us themed, just drawings of him. I like Krasinski but if Pedro is that much more marketable you can understand their choice!

Given the story they are adapting, the female Surfer probably matters about as much as the alternate universe throwaway characters in the last Dr Strange. The Thing wearing a shirt is irritating, though.

I agree that the past few years of Marvel stuff has been mostly a disappointment, but this one looks like it will be pretty good, and I'll probably watch it.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:

This one, is I think, just a pass for me. I see nothing that excites me and honestly I'm suffering from Pascal burnout. He's not THAT good of an actor or that charismatic and he just feels like every other character he's currently doing. And then it's hard to beat Evans for human torch and so I'm decidedly meh on it. I'll probably watch it free on streaming at some point at home.

For me, the best characters of the bunch are Thing and Sue so I'm not particularly concerned about either of those


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In terms of Phase 4 rankings.

No Way Home, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Guardians 3 are legitimate greats in the franchise and completely live up to their hype.

Multiverse of Madness and Wakanda Forever are nearly up there, but have some obvious production problems that hold them back a bit.

The Marvels, Eternals, Black Widow and Shang-Chi are all really solid films with enjoyable stories and characters that mostly just suffer from timing and surrounding bloat. I don't think people were all that ready to move on after Endgame. I feel like Cap 4 is going to wind up here when I get around to it.

Love & Thunder and Quantumania are actual duds. The latter I can almost forgive, but its basically the epitome of the post-Endgame problems all rolled into one. Love & Thunder is probably my least favorite MCU film of all time and just kind of terrible, IMO.

I agree with most of this; I’d elevate Shang-Chi, as I really enjoyed that film, it felt tighter and fresher than most of the rest of phase 4, I found the humour great, and the visualisation of Chinese mythological creatures was at times breathtaking.

I’d also bump Quantamania above a dud, but just a bit. I found it entertaining, but forgettable, and I think it missed an opportunity to have some truly awe inspiring visuals (think the first Dr Strange, or Avatar); it was too often generic CGI fest.

Love and Thunder is one I’d actually push further down. I’m a big fan of the Thor films (even Dark World), and Taika Waititi, but that film is just bad.

 Lance845 wrote:
If you want to go with the idea that the proof is in the numbers well....

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nVWej75IjzZMYv5pXA_awec0m7lcfW9X/view?usp=sharing

The problem with the chart is you can't subtract the cost from the gross. Disney (or Sony) only gets at most half the gross, so if you half the gross then subtract the cost you get closer to accurate numbers (which, really, we have no way of knowing exactly since you'd need to know all the costs of making AND marketing the films as well as all the revenue streams such as digital purchases, merchandise [given the PILES of unsold merch at discount stores, they've probably seen a decline revenue there], etc.). When halfing the gross you get more films that don't look like they broke even in cinemas.

For upcoming MCU films:

Thunderbolts* - no expectations, but hoping they are exceeded and there's something enjoyable there.

FF - I LOVE the FF, so I hope it's good, but I have low expectations. I'm not happy about Pedro Pascal. He doesn't seem to fit the part of Reed Richards to me, but need to see the movie to make final judgement. I don't have a problem with Sue being the main character since she's arguably the most powerful one of the 4. I'd like it if Ben had a more gravelly voice. Johnny seems fine in the trailer. I'm mildly irritated about the Silver Surfer. Norrin Radd has been a Marvel fixture for 60 years and thousands of comic issues and has thousands upon thousands of fans. The Shalla-Bal Surfer is a mere blip in comparison. If the movie is good and it makes sense within the context of the film, then fine, but if they did it just to do it and the movie is bad, then I will remain irritated, but progress beyond mild.


I look forward to the end of the multiverse saga and hope the new MCU can plot a course forward that will be better quality than we've had recently.


As far as opinions on MCU Phases 4 and 5

Black Widow - didn't see (irritated about the Taskmaster situation, but more irritated that Black Widow's final entry in the MCU was a bad movie [which I acknowledge I cannot confirm with firsthand knowledge])

Shang Chi - it was fine

Eternals - didn't see (it didn't look good and I was hoping it'd get memory-holed [Curse you, CA: BNW!])

SM: NWH - enjoyed it, but it felt like a whiplash in direction since the first two movies are building Peter to take over for Tony, and that is completely wiped away in this one. While that's probably truer to Spidy in the comics, I liked what they were building and am overall still confused by the choice. We'll see what they do from here, but I'm still scratching my head all these years later.

DS: MoM - I did not enjoy it. Some of it was okay, but overall Strange wasn't the main character in his own movie and turning Wanda into a villian is not a choice that I liked (again whiplash feeling). WandaVision was fun up until we find out she's subconciously tormenting thousands of people, then they keep going down that path and ultimately kill her. So the choice here, to me at least, taints the character retroactively into the previous phases.

T: LaT - I did not enjoy it. Learned all the wrong lessons from Ragnarok. Thor seems to be stuck in an endless cycle of needing to find himself.

PB: WF - I did not enjoy it. All over the place. Not familiar with Ironheart from the comics, but I hated her implimentation. Nothing in the movie sets her up to be a superhero. She's smart and made a device for the government. Atlantians wanted to kill her. She made a suit of armor adapted from Stark plans, but we never see her plan to "fight crime" with it, just flies around. Then gets captured, then gets free, then makes suits of armor for Wakandans (why!?) and herself and goes into battle, even though she has zero combat training. I did not like that, it did not feel like a well defined character arc.

AMatW: Q - Hated it. Complete waste of time and characters.

GotG V3 - I did not enjoy it. It didn't feel like an end to a trilogy. Yes it seems we get an end to Drax's story and answers about Rocket, but again, it feels like a whiplash in tone and direction from 1 and 2. Granted, events outside the series dramatically impacted it.

The Marvels - I had no expectations and they were met.

Deadpool 3 - I did not enjoy it. The whole Deadpool vulgarity thing isn't my jam and I've been growing to dislike Ryan Reynolds shtick more and more.

CA: BNW - I did not enjoy it. A bunch of stuff happens. At no point did I particularly care about any of it or the people involved. Irritated Sam didn't take the serium. Sam's just a guy in a Wakanda suit. I like Sam, but I don't like the direction they went post Endgame.

As far as D+ shows:

Liked the start of WandaVision, Liked some of: Loki, Hawkeye, What If?

Hated: Falcon and Winter Soldier, She-Hulk, Secret Invasion

Indifferent towards: Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, Agatha

Didn't see: Echo, Daredevil: Born Again

LOVED: Werewolf By Night

 Jadenim wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:

This one, is I think, just a pass for me. I see nothing that excites me and honestly I'm suffering from Pascal burnout. He's not THAT good of an actor or that charismatic and he just feels like every other character he's currently doing. And then it's hard to beat Evans for human torch and so I'm decidedly meh on it. I'll probably watch it free on streaming at some point at home.

For me, the best characters of the bunch are Thing and Sue so I'm not particularly concerned about either of those


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In terms of Phase 4 rankings.

No Way Home, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Guardians 3 are legitimate greats in the franchise and completely live up to their hype.

Multiverse of Madness and Wakanda Forever are nearly up there, but have some obvious production problems that hold them back a bit.

The Marvels, Eternals, Black Widow and Shang-Chi are all really solid films with enjoyable stories and characters that mostly just suffer from timing and surrounding bloat. I don't think people were all that ready to move on after Endgame. I feel like Cap 4 is going to wind up here when I get around to it.

Love & Thunder and Quantumania are actual duds. The latter I can almost forgive, but its basically the epitome of the post-Endgame problems all rolled into one. Love & Thunder is probably my least favorite MCU film of all time and just kind of terrible, IMO.

I agree with most of this; I’d elevate Shang-Chi, as I really enjoyed that film, it felt tighter and fresher than most of the rest of phase 4, I found the humour great, and the visualisation of Chinese mythological creatures was at times breathtaking.

I’d also bump Quantamania above a dud, but just a bit. I found it entertaining, but forgettable, and I think it missed an opportunity to have some truly awe inspiring visuals (think the first Dr Strange, or Avatar); it was too often generic CGI fest.

Love and Thunder is one I’d actually push further down. I’m a big fan of the Thor films (even Dark World), and Taika Waititi, but that film is just bad.

Yeah, I was trying to stick to 3 groups and ended up with 4. Taking it more granular I definitely agree. Shang-Chi is the best of that tier and the gap in quality between Quantumania and Love & Thunder is pretty easy to draw a live through.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 bbb wrote:

SM: NWH - enjoyed it, but it felt like a whiplash in direction since the first two movies are building Peter to take over for Tony, and that is completely wiped away in this one. While that's probably truer to Spidy in the comics, I liked what they were building and am overall still confused by the choice. We'll see what they do from here, but I'm still scratching my head all these years later.

This seems to heavily come down to Sony deciding they didn't want to play ball anymore and started to start threatening to withhold Spidey. The movie almost didn't happen in the first place and when it did it was written in a way that left Peter in place where either studio could do the follow up.

 Ahtman wrote:
This seems to be the place to admit that I don't like Mr. Fantastic. I've never liked "stretchy" as a a power set and the only time he was interesting was the version in The Venture Bros.

That's not fair, obviously the Venture Bros version of anything is better than the original.

And Plastic Man kinda cool.

I mean, Reed is no Stretch Armstrong.

Rewatching the old FF movies myself.

The OG 2 were all bad imo. Even Rise of Silver Surfer Bro. It was never a good movie to me. I don't know what possesses anyone to say otherwise.

The 2015 film is also bad but idk. I expected it to be badder? I'd never seen it before but remembered its disastrous release and what I got was a profoundly bad movie, but not an epically bad move. Kind of the same as the other two though.

All 3 of these movies are all just plain bad. Not fun bad. Not atrociously memorable bad. No fun to hate bad. They're just bad.

Guess we'll see if Marvel can do it any better when I get around to watching this movie in however many years it takes me to get to it XD

I've only seen the 2015 movie once and I wasn't impressed with how it felt like half a movie.

My issue with the first Fantastic Four origin movie, and the first X-Men for that matter, was that it spent a lot of time on establishing the team and then rushing through a single fight in the end that felt disappointing because of the ease with which it was won. There wasn't enough to the story in either movie.

The 2015 Fantastic Four felt like it did the same but with even less substance. On top of that it didn't even give Kate Mara much screen time to keep me distracted while I wait for anything interesting to happen in the story.