Marvel Cinematic Universe - Agatha All Along [Spoilers]

[Barrister]

Anyone been watching "What if?"

Did anyone watch What if - season 2?

It came out over the Christmas break, with an episode per day.  Boys and I only finished watching it last night.  First Marvel TV series we've watched in awhile.  Heck - given how this thread hasn't been active since 2022 it's kind of telling how interest in the MCU has died off.

Anyways - Season 2 was also pretty enjoyable.  Trying to avoid spoilers there was an enormous multi-universal bad guy battle at the end that I feel like you could spend hours going through frame by frame to pick out each and every character.

Once you get to this kind of multiversal power levels things no longer make any sense power-wise.  You'd think the characters could do all kinds of crazy things, which they sometimes do, but mostly they just shoot big beams of energy at each other.

Definitely some fun episodes, and the voice actors seem to be having a blast.  One where Iron Man crashes into Sakaar again features Jeff Gloodbloom chewing on scenery.  John Favreau as Happy Hogan returns in a Christmas/Die Hard homage/rip-off is great (and Favreau must be having a blast).  Cate Blanchett returns as Hela, is stripped of her powers and sent to earth is also great, where Blanchett plays Hela as some kind of entitled valley girl.

I did want to talk about one episode that I found very interesting: What if... Kahhori reshaped the world?  They introduce a brand new hero, Kahhori, a First Nations woman living in early era of contact.  She comes into contact with pieces of the Tesseract and gains tremendous powers.  Ultimately she beats back the Spanish Conquistadors, goes to Spain to force Queen Isabella to make peace with the new world.

IIRC this is the only brand new character they've really introduced in What If? and you can tell they're proud of her - she features very prominently in the final episode.  What is really cool I think is the entire episode is dubbed - Kahhori and her people are speaking in Mohawk, while the Conqustadors are speaking in Spanish.  Not that I know them but I love First Nations languages, so it was really cool to see one shown so prominently.

But two nits to pick:

1. Kahori's powers coming from exposure to the Tesseract.  OK, sure.  Makes sense.  But by the end she's going toe-to-toe with characters that seem to be wielding pretty ridiculous levels of power.  But then as I already said the power in this show don' make sense period.

2. As much as I said having so much of the dialogue in Mohawk is cool... the Mohawk never encountered the Spanish!  They're much to far north.  As well Mohawk territory is inland (or at least by the Great Lakes), whereas there are shots of the Spanish at the beach interacting with the First Nations people.  (as well I could argue that the Mohawk were not the most peaceful FN, but that's a very minor point).  I'm going to chalk it up to the fact that probably the indigenous languages of the American South-East are almost certainly dead languages, whereas Mohawk is still a living language.

3. That being said, Kahhori going to Spain to kick Queen Isabella's ass seemed like the kind of revisionism of Inglorious Basterds where Jewish-American soldiers very ahistorically brutally murder Hitler - kind of a feel-good revenge.

[Zoupa]

There are Mohawk nations on the shores of the Saint-Laurent, right next to Montreal, which makes it slightly more realistic.

[Oexmelin]

Leaving aside the fact that Mohawks (or at least, St. Lawrence Iroquoians) may very well have encountered Spanish people in the 16th century (certainly Basque fishermen), Mohawk is a good stand-in for Tuscarora, an Iroquoian indigenous language spoken in North Carolina, an area definitely visited by the Spanish.

[jimmy olsen]

Anyone been watching "What if?"

Did anyone watch What if - season 2?

It came out over the Christmas break, with an episode per day.  Boys and I only finished watching it last night.  First Marvel TV series we've watched in awhile.  Heck - given how this thread hasn't been active since 2022 it's kind of telling how interest in the MCU has died off.

Anyways - Season 2 was also pretty enjoyable.  Trying to avoid spoilers there was an enormous multi-universal bad guy battle at the end that I feel like you could spend hours going through frame by frame to pick out each and every character.

Once you get to this kind of multiversal power levels things no longer make any sense power-wise.  You'd think the characters could do all kinds of crazy things, which they sometimes do, but mostly they just shoot big beams of energy at each other.

Definitely some fun episodes, and the voice actors seem to be having a blast.  One where Iron Man crashes into Sakaar again features Jeff Gloodbloom chewing on scenery.  John Favreau as Happy Hogan returns in a Christmas/Die Hard homage/rip-off is great (and Favreau must be having a blast).  Cate Blanchett returns as Hela, is stripped of her powers and sent to earth is also great, where Blanchett plays Hela as some kind of entitled valley girl.

I did want to talk about one episode that I found very interesting: What if... Kahhori reshaped the world?  They introduce a brand new hero, Kahhori, a First Nations woman living in early era of contact.  She comes into contact with pieces of the Tesseract and gains tremendous powers.  Ultimately she beats back the Spanish Conquistadors, goes to Spain to force Queen Isabella to make peace with the new world.

IIRC this is the only brand new character they've really introduced in What If? and you can tell they're proud of her - she features very prominently in the final episode.  What is really cool I think is the entire episode is dubbed - Kahhori and her people are speaking in Mohawk, while the Conqustadors are speaking in Spanish.  Not that I know them but I love First Nations languages, so it was really cool to see one shown so prominently.

Haven't seen that episode yet, have watched the first 5 episodes and enjoyed them a lot.

If you like first nation languages on screen, watch Predator Prey. There's a comanche dub.

Secondly, Captain Marvel got her powers via the tesseract. Scarlet Witch got her powers from the mind stone. It's cannon that humans being exposed to an infinity stone can grant them incredible power.

[jimmy olsen]

I've since watched episodes 6, 7 and 8 and they're really good. Liking this season a lot.

[Josquius]

I've tried to get into what if series 2, I liked the first series.
But the first ep is a 45 minute long noir piece featuring characters and settings I don't know or care about. Which is challenging.

[Josquius]

Watching loki series 2 though. Can hardly remember what happened.
Episode 3 really drills home how I hate the marvel splash screen via its old timey take on it.

[Barrister]

I've tried to get into what if series 2, I liked the first series.
But the first ep is a 45 minute long noir piece featuring characters and settings I don't know or care about. Which is challenging.

I don't know what to tell you - S. 2 E. 1 was great.  It was Marvel mixed with Blade Runner.

[jimmy olsen]

"What if...?" Season 3 teaser already out

3 minute clip of the Winter Soldier on a road trip with Red Guardian.

Perhaps a sequel to the 80s Avengers episode?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AruNEvdYbpQ

[Sophie Scholl]

I'm pretty underwhelmed by that Deadpool trailer. 

[celedhring]

Don't care for Deadpool. First couple films were fun, but Reynolds has been playing Deadpool in nearly every film for the remainder of his career and I'm bored of the shtick at this point.

[HVC]

To be fair he played that character before deadpool too

[Josquius]

I like deadpool. It seems especially required now we've passed peak marvel and the output has gone into a huge decline.
A lot of jokes to be made there.

Deadpool misses a lot of clear avenues to make fun but it does hit enough to be amusing.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Looked like Doctor Doom was in it?  I'm down with that.

[garbon]

I just watched The Marvels. I think it was definitely unfairly treated. Sure it has some of the too much goofy humor that many of the recent Marvel productions have suffered from - like when the music from Cats was playing. But that hardly makes it unique. Only reason I didn't see it in theatres is Disney eventually puts everthing on D+ and I don't have fomo so no reason to spend unnecessarily.

Of course, I think it helped that I like Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan + her mother. Captain Marvel is alright and then the villain was just rather lame.