TV/Movies Megathread

[katmai]

F&F isn't some sort of cultural touchstone that everyone and their mother is watching and talking about. They're popcorn films.

The Marvel movies are cultural touchstones? Really?

Could someone list them all? I am not sure I saw any of them. 22?

Iron Man
Hulk (f. Edward Norton as Banner)
Iron Man 2
Thor
Captain America:The First Avenger
Avengers
Iron Man 3
Thor: The Dark World
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Guardians of the Galaxy
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Ant-Man
Captain America: Civil War
Spiderman:Homecoming
Doctor Strange
Black Panther
Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2
Thor: Ragnarok
Ant-Man and the Wasp
Avengers:Infinity War
Captain Marvel
Avengers:Endgame

[Josephus]

F&F isn't some sort of cultural touchstone that everyone and their mother is watching and talking about. They're popcorn films.

The Marvel movies are cultural touchstones? Really?

Could someone list them all? I am not sure I saw any of them. 22?

shhh...we're not allowed to say that here.

[Josephus]

So how come Spiderman Homecoming is part of this cult thing, but the other Spiderman movies aren't?

I did see Wonder Woman (but hated it)... does that count?

[katmai]

So how come Spiderman Homecoming is part of this cult thing, but the other Spiderman movies aren't?

I did see Wonder Woman (but hated it)... does that count?

Wonder Woman; no it doesn't you ignorant Maltese fool!

Homecoming is only one that is in the Marvel Cinematic Universe which are the films that Marvel studios started back with Iron Man.

The previous Spidey films were all produced by Sony films and are independent of the MCU, as are the X men films of Fox and the forgettable Fantastic Four movies as well.

Part of the excitement of Disney and Fox merger is  that all of the characters now brought back under the IP rights of MCU.

Spiderman is still owned by Sony but they have deal letting Disney use him, but at same time Sony still owns rights to many of the Spidey characters hence the animated Spiderverse film this past fall, and Tom Hardy Venom film and a few others that are planned using those Spidey characters.

[Habbaku]

F&F isn't some sort of cultural touchstone that everyone and their mother is watching and talking about. They're popcorn films.

The Marvel movies are cultural touchstones? Really?

Could someone list them all? I am not sure I saw any of them. 22?

Really.

[Zanza]

I watched Iron Man and Iron Man 2 and tried Thor and Captain America on flights, but never really got into it, so I guess I missed the hype about the MCU. Definitely not interested now in watching 22 movies to get the whole story. I never read these comics either as American comics were rare and expensive here in my childhood.

[The Brain]

I may be a unique snowflake but I always thought superheroes to be the least interesting type of fictional character.

[grumbler]

I may be a unique snowflake but I always thought superheroes to be the least interesting type of fictional character.

Not unique.  Some superhero stuff I've seen was mildly interesting, but the interesting elements could have been done absent the superhero elements.  Superhero fiction is hard to make interesting, I think.  Moore did an excellent job of that in Watchman, but got away with it because he created and ruined his own characters.

[Berkut]

I may be a unique snowflake but I always thought superheroes to be the least interesting type of fictional character.

Not unique.  Some superhero stuff I've seen was mildly interesting, but the interesting elements could have been done absent the superhero elements.  Superhero fiction is hard to make interesting, I think.  Moore did an excellent job of that in Watchman, but got away with it because he created and ruined his own characters.

That is pretty much how I feel as well.

[viper37]

I may be a unique snowflake but I always thought superheroes to be the least interesting type of fictional character.

Not unique.  Some superhero stuff I've seen was mildly interesting, but the interesting elements could have been done absent the superhero elements.

of course.  just like science fiction themes could be done without the science fiction.  But it makes it easier to swallow.

[Grey Fox]

Sony's Into the Spiderverse is a pretty awesome movie.

The MCU is a cultural cornerstone, it's individual movies not so much but it's just like Star Wars in that regard.

[viper37]

The narrative experiment that is the Marvel cinematic universe

Earlier this month, Marvel Studios announced that the prèmiere of "Avengers: Endgame" would be preceded by marathon screenings of all the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or M.C.U. Since the M.C.U. consists, to date, of twenty-two movies, the screenings were fifty-nine hours and seven minutes long. They topped the thirty-one-hour screenings held last year, before the prèmiere of "Avengers: Infinity War," and the twenty-nine-hour screenings held in 2015, before the release of "Avengers: Age of Ultron." An M.C.U. marathon is "equal parts dare, endurance test, and assertion of fan dominance," the reporter Alex Abad-Santos wrote, at Vox, after a pre-"Ultron" screening. Alex McLevy, a writer and editor at the A.V. Club, described the event he attended as "beyond anything I have ever experienced in a movie theater. . . . It's beautiful, and terrifying."
[...]

[dps]

The MCU is a cultural cornerstone, it's individual movies not so much

That's a reasonable position.  I'm not entirely sure that I agree, but it's reasonable.

[Tonitrus]

The Tick - Season 2

I thought it was really good.  The scene that parodied from old-school Superman was priceless. 

[Barrister]

So I went and saw a 9am showing of Endgame on Sunday with my oldest son.

It was... good. Pretty good even.  But you really had to have some half-decent awareness of the prior 21 movies.  Of course as essentially a two-parter this movie would be nonsensical if you hadn't seen Infinity War, but even then, if you had only seen Infinity War you'd still have very little idea whats going on.  The movie was just stuffed full of references, call-backs and easter eggs to the prior 21 movies.  Now I never considered myself as a huge comic booms fan, or comic book movie fan, but the MCU flicks are pretty reliable good popcorn movies, so I think I've only missed a handful - but even then I was googling afterwards to try and figure out who some of the figures were.

So the enjoyment of it (and I did enjoy it) wasn't really from the sense of just watching a well-made movie - let's be honest it's way too long, has far too many characters in it - but just as the payoff of seeing how all these movies and characters all tie in together.

Now some spoilery discussion if anyone wants to join me:

[spoiler]Okay, so lets start with time travel.  It's usually a mess in movies, and no exception here.  I get that they wanted to avoid the whole "grandfather paradox"by establishing that any change just means the creation of an alternative reality.  But didn't the Ancient One say that creating alternate realities is bad?  And doesn't Cap'n America's going back to live with Peggy Carter, yet still being there on the bench to talk with Sam Wilson/Falcon, mean that he was still in the same reality?

Favourite scene - Captain America in the elevator with all those SHEILD/Hydra agents, where they mimic they are going to re-create the epic elevator battle from Winter Soldier, but Cap just whispers "Hail Hyrda" and they give him the case (I forget which particular mcGuffin/stone they were after).

So Robert Downey Jr and Chris Evans want out, but Chris Hemsworth is apparently still down to be in more movies, and he's joining the GUardians of the Galaxy?
I wonder how that's going to work, because it seems to me that Thor and Peter Quill have pretty similar personalities - kind of dumb but lovable hero types, so not sure how they'll play off each other.

Kind of strange that instead of just re-setting the world, they bring back everyone who went missing.  Am I wrong in thinking that after 5 years away, having the world population double is going to cause a lot of problems?  Like you no longer have a job to go back to, your spouse may have remarried, that kind of thing?  How much do you want to bet this never really gets discussed in any further Marvel movies.

For as much as the end scene from Endgame made you think Captain Marvel was going to be such a huge part of Endgame, she was barely in it.  And with as powerful as they've shown her character to be, she's going to have a hard time fitting into any earth-based movies.

And now we have no idea where they're going with the MCU - no movies announced, no post-credits teasers.  It's going to be hard to go back to a, I dunno, a solo Black Panther movie after seeing such a spectacle as Endgame.[/spoiler]