#the cgi better than all the mcu

[sincericida]

Amazing scene from "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" that had peak CGI. This scene was simply awesome. And better than all the MCU, sorry.

(Zack Snyder - like me - loves this sequence)

[leresq]

Finally watched Deadpool and Wolverine. First of all I was not coming into this with high hopes because even though everyone was talking about how good this movie is I've never found the Deadpool movies funny. To me they're just different variations of "You haven't seen this in an Iron Man movie" stretched into two now three feature length films. But honestly I liked it at the end.

- Why are Logan's ears and one of his eyes not decayed when no other part of his body is intact? Why does he have a beard on his jawbone?

- I'll bite, the Bye Bye Bye is a fun idea. The wintery forest setting is cool.

- I can't enjoy that opening fight scene because it's not how anything works. You don't get bludgeoned with a dull object, have your body armour completely give way, and have a pint of blood splash out. I understand the whole point of Deadpool is that it's over the top, but this is just so overly gratuitous it's insane. I feel like Marvel Studios felt like they had to make it so unrealistically violent to try and separate it from the mainline MCU to get the people who have Deadpool funko pops to guffaw in the theatre. It's "You haven't seen this in an Iron Man movie" with zero words spoken. Honestly incredible.

- The CGI is better than it's been recently but it's still noticeably bad

- Peter Parker's Iron Man mask is on the desk in the background! How did that even get there.

- Why is Tony's ARC reactor on the table, I thought that was pushed into the river at the funeral

- The timeline is just so incredibly fucked. I still don't understand how the X Men timeline reboot works, or how Logan fits into it; if Logan dying means Deadpool's universe collapses, that implies the Logan movie is in the X Men reboot franchise, but Patrick Stewart is in that and James McAvoy plays him in the reboot making me think it's a one off... Augh my head...

- Something looks up with John Favraeu. I don't know if his wearing a wig is supposed to be obvious, I don't know if he's just under a lot of makeup or it's CGI, it's just weird.

- Deadpool is never going to be an Avenger because Marvel Studios would rather execute everyone working for them than give up the licencing deals from making PG13 movies, and Deadpool wouldn't feel the same in a PG13 movie.

- I think any brand would let Ryan Reynolds walk all over them in muddy boots, for some reason he gets the pass to slander anyone he wants to and he gets paid by the companies to do it.

- 'I don't have a lot of v*ginal sex' 🤨 that has numerous connotations. Also can we not do sex jokes in front of 12 year olds

- I was not expecting a Deadpool movie to contain any hints of character development because the previous two instalments seemed to be hellbent on making sure I understood nothing of emotional value would ever be allowed to appear without being undercut by a sex joke.

- "I've never been a natural bottom" 🤨🤨 I thought Poolverine was just the average two male leads naturally gets shipped together thing but no they're sowing the fields

- If that Thor crying over Deadpool never comes back I will say something about it

- If they didn't want me to know Paradox was going to be a villain why would they make him British

- The 'Suck it Fox' cut to nothing being there is the only time I will accept something raising more questions than answering them at this level as funny

- "Your tailor is a predator" caught me so off guard I started coughing

- Wow I wasn't expecting them to pull the Paradox is actually evil card not even a third into the movie. Honestly a good subversion of expectations.

- How is Deadpool's universe going to evaporate in 74 hours, I thought time doesn't exist at the TVA?

- Are they going to explain why Deadpool's suit can just fix itself now. It used to keep its holes.

- Finally, I think the first time we ever hear Deadpool is from Canada in the movies! I wonder if Ryan Reynolds only wanted to play him in the first place because they're both Canadian...

- "You two gonna fuck or fight?" 🤨🤨🤨

- I actually understood the Honey Badger reference

- the FF floating platform thingy is another reference I'm surprised I got

- The Human Torch CGI is actually really cool

- "Not all of you was asleep" after waking up on his shoulder 🤨🤨🤨🤨

- Too many cameos in Cassandra's little alcove so I'm not even going to bother looking for them all

- I'm not sure if Johnny Storm's death was supposed to be played for laughs or just shock value, either way I'm not laughing I loved those movies ;(

- How does Cassandra know she's Xavier's sister if she was sent to the Void before she could walk?

- Wolvie being nice to Johnny post mortem is cool

- Nicepool having a stronger Canadian accent is a good joke, and Deadpool looking on in disgust as Nicepool talks about his dog's 'G-spot' is good. At least that's not played off as just a normal thing to say even if it is a joke

- "I identify as a feminist" could easily be misconstrued as an 'anti-woke' joke but all of the jokes of a similar calibre in this movie seem to be made ironically. Example: Nicepool is a creep

- "Where's your mask" and Nicepool points to his face actually implying his nice guy attitude is a facade for being a shitty person is actually really good

- Why is Nicepool's car surrounded by untrampled corn, how did it get there? Who grew the corn?

- Deadpool includes Colossus in his world 🥺

- Wolverine is nothing if not an excellent shit talker, and it's actually very out of character for Deadpool to actually get affected by insults

- I wish The Greatest Showman soundtrack was incorporated for more than just a third of a second

- 'Close up magic' ant man reference?

- 'There's only ever gonna be one Blade' about that...

- I think that's Apocalypse's throne in Cassandra's room? Or Thanos's

- I never thought about how both Cassandra and Xavier's powers radiate from their heads until the Juggernaut helmet scene

- Finally some real actual genuine character development that's not thrown away for a joke!!! The best part of the movie to me was Cassandra's redemptio-. Oh. Nevermind. Anyway I like it better than if it were just shoved away for a joke then she died

- Deadpool waiting for the 'extras' to clear was, to me, a good indication that he's a hero now. Caring about civilians is #1 on my makes you a good guy requirements

- "You smell something?" "Yeah you" 🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨

- And there it is. Nicepool's death is probably the most predictable death I've ever seen on film.

- Eastside Pharmacy?! Agatha All Along reference???

- Wolverine's helmet looks like a rubber playground ball

- Will Marvel Jesus come back in three days however?

- Staring at Hugh's abs? Same, but 🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨

- That hand holding ending was actually impressive, I wasn't sure what was going to happen and it actually kicked ass

- Is the guy with the mug who stared at Deadpool in the beginning Marvel's first gay character

- The introducing Logan to Blind Al is so unbelievably 'the parents meeting the boyfriend' I could die there's no fucking way that wasn't on purpose

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

i know you said a while back that youthink an animated series would be the best medium for a twilight adaptation. well, they're now making an animated series. how do you think it's going to go?

I did say something about that.

The thing is, I'm a deeply cynical person, and I don't want to rain unduly on people's parade. Hey, it might be great, and I'm always hyped for some serious 2D animation because we get it so rarely and it's never taken as seriously as it should be.

We're also getting Midnight Sun, which if there's any sticking to the source material, will be fucking weird.

I would be very happy with a 2D animated American Psycho starring teenage vampires who all sit around the table discussing "okay, but seriously, are we voting to kill a teenage girl for no reason? Please discuss"

That said, personally, @therealvinelle put my thoughts pretty well in this.

At the end of the day, any production's goal is to make money. Especially when huge IP are involved, Netflix has to make good on the investment they made to purchase the rights (no cheap feat there) as well as to make the profit they expect with a well-known IP like this, and the best way to do that is to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.

To appeal to as wide an audience as possible, and this is true of any media, you have to go MCU. You have to have just enough quippy lines that people walk away thinking they liked it without remembering a single line (or if one is remembered it's a bit of a "huh, I guess that was... memorable"), good characters who are appealingly good, bad characters who are just bad enough we don't think about them too hard, and flashy CGI fight scenes that go on forever because that's the only substance to the movie.

And people love MCU because of it. They're rarely ever bad movies (some exceptions) but they're not good movies either. They broadly appeal to a very large audience, no one hates them, some people even love them and think they're the greatest films ever made, and so they will always have a pretty wide audience base.

So, I expect something similar to Twilight.

I expect the art style will be chosen explicitly to be not jarring, the vampires are not going to look weird or even too beautiful either. Every single character, but especially Edward and Bella, will be toned down to be made more palatable while still performing enough of their canon actions to not stray from the book, thus making their actions inexplicable, weird, and jarring but better that than "No, Edward really did mean her blood is his heroin" and "No, I really did fantasize about crushing Mike Newton's head like a melon".

Which is more or less what happened in the movies, actually, so look to them for an example of what I think would likely happen.

Now, I could be wrong, in which case I imagine the poor producers will be breathing in a paper bag wondering what the fuck happened.

But, you asked me what I expect.

[ladyluscinia]

Saw Venom 3 today and left feeling entertained but also perplexingly less satisfied than the previous two and kind of like they had carefully set up a tackboard and methodically pinned all the necessary parts for actual stakes I give a shit about but then handed me the thread to actually connect them while giving me an apologetic 🥺

...and then I remembered this one was produced entirely under the MCU formula (including giant CGI fight that can't be bothered to involve the narrative) and it all made sense.

Still the actors were having a blast and the shots were fun and they did go heavy handed on the Symbrock even as they left it hanging so still better than most recent MCU

[dandelionjack]

alright. time for me to ask the question. is agatha all along worth watching? i’ve seen some surprisingly rave reviews by people who aren’t mcu fans. heard some say that this is the best marvel show so far. heard a snippet of the witches’ road song too and really enjoyed it? articles are talking that it’s the lowest budget mcu show in a while, which means practical effects and actors’ performances are being prioritised over cgi. i know there has been some controversy with the casting of a white boy to play a romani comic character… but what are YOUR thoughts, mutuals? is it good? is it queer? is it better than wandavision? is it worth overlooking the inevitably cringy portrayal of witchcraft? tell me

[rickrakontoys]

"Deadpool & Wolverine" (2024): 7/10

*no spoilers*

Generally amusing, with plenty of excessive bloody violence, potty mouth dialogue, and fun fan service-y references and cameos. Your entertainment value is proportional to your knowledge of the wider Fox-New Line Marvel movies, their behind-the-scenes drama, the current state of the MCU. I can see a lot of the gags going over the heads of the general audience.

Jackman and Reynolds have great chemistry together, giving us an unhinged odd couple, bad cop-badder cop vibe filled with stabbing and profanity. Jackman in particular delivers as a washed out mess of a Logan variant, and his redemption character arc is at the center of the movie. A lot of the film's biggest laughs come from this Wolverine's exasperation with Deadpool's verbal diarrhea.

The action scenes unfortunately lack the visceral edge of the previous two movies, and seems to try to make up for this lesser pizzazz with buckets of CGI blood, gore and needle-drops. Still, there are a few standout sequences that, despite their technical shortcomings, tickles the comic book nerd part of my brain just right. Wolverine and Deadpool fight each other on more than one occassion, with each bout reaching such absurdly violent heights as to evoke slapstick comedy.  A oner towards the end seems to gleefully homage Oldboy.

The plot feels underwritten, tonally inconsistent, and mostly serves as an excuse for fights and multiversal cameos. Attempts to add emotional depth in between Wade Wilson's zany antics don't always land. Scenes between the action tend to drag heavily. Characters too often just stand around in a room spouting exposition or jokes in the plainest manner. Shawn Levy's blocking of scenes is too flat and uninteresting, and a step down from Tim Miller and David Leitch's previous two 'pools. Even with occassional splashes of vibrant color (chiefly from Wolverine's yellow suit), scenes look washed out, lacking depth or contrast.  Thankfully the juvenile humor and gratuitous violence keeps it from being too dull, though even that eventually gets a little grating.

But clearly, no one is watching a movie called "Deadpool and Wolverine" for the plot or emotional depth. They're here to see Hugh Jackman finally don a comic accurate Wolverine suit and team up with Deadpool on a multiverse adventure. On that, it mostly delivers.

The movie often feels like a bittersweet farewell to the Fox-Marvel franchise. Something could be said of how the movie reckons with the ethics of having a powerful entity deciding which universes can live or die, how some things deemed purposeful are elevated while other things thrown out to "the trash heap" to be forgotten. It doesn't explore these themes so much as it uses the idea as an excuse for gags and jabs at both Disney and Fox (Reynolds gets away with a lot). This is definitely the most "meta" Deadpool movie, for better or worse.

But it's a silly good time nonetheless. And the cameos in the movie are actually fun and not gratuitous, with a tinge of melancholy... a farewell to a tumultuous franchise.

Will it hold up to scrutiny after the excitement of all the surprise cameos dies down? Not too sure... It doesn't feel like a natural progression of the Deadpool franchise. Like "No Way Home" was for Tom Holland's Spider-Man, it stops the series' general plotline for a cynical ploy to appeal to nostalgia, rather than be a real sequel to Deadpool 2 (heck most of the characters from DP2 are absent, and his usual supporting cast is sidelined immediately... except Peter). That doesn't mean it's not fun. Reynolds gets his Hugh Jackman team-up movie. But you could feel the corporate franchise milking behind it all. Just because Reynolds keeps making self-aware quips about Disney's greed and exploitiveness of IP doesnt make it okay.

[pastryjay]

(Mild spoilers for Deadpool and Wolverine ahead) I thought Deadpool and Wolverine was fun, but i'm lowkey pissed off that it's getting praised for the same things that got Taika Waititi death threats for having in Thor: Love and Thunder. I'm not saying T:L&T was a brilliant movie, but Marvel dudebros act like the whole thing was an unforgivable sin! Even now, people are still unreasonably mad about it.

To give a few examples:

T:L&T has a scene where the CGI of a floating head hologram is not great, and it gets so much criticism for that. D&W has a scene where Deadpool's katana clearly clips straight through his body, which a lot of people noticed but weren't anywhere near as mad about it. Critiscising these kinds of flaws in both movies is good, but only focusing on the flaws of T:L&T is unfair.

T:L&T has been criticised for having too many jokes/ not being serious enough. Yet D&W has so many more jokes/ less seriousness than T:L&T, and people love it. The Thor movies have always had jokes and ridiculous moments, so it's not like T:L&T was a complete genre flip.

The jokes in T:L&T and D&W have a very similar style, D&W just has more r-rated ones. T:L&T briefly showing giant screaming goats is too silly, but multiple scenes of Dogpool in D&W is great (both are fine). T:L&T is bad/ disrespecting the MCU for having tongue-in-cheek, mockery of the genre jokes. Meanwhile, D&W is praised for having 4th wall jokes about the MCU, purposely silly cameos, jabs at DC, and jokes about how multiverses are bad. People love it! Personally, I thought the serious moments in T:L&T were more impactful than those in D&W, which balanced out its light and dark moments better. But that's just my preference.

I'm not saying D&W is getting no backlash. It is, but the overwhelming response is positive, and a lot of the same people who passionately hated T:L&T love D&W. I really did have fun watching it! I'm also not saying D&W is a bad movie or claiming that T:L&T is better than it. I'm just pointing out that there is a hell of a lot of bias there.

Some of this bias must be because people have more nostalgia over Wolverine and some of the cameos in D&W than characters in T:L&T. Mostly, I think the bias is just plain hatred for the fact that T:L&T is a Taika Waititi movie. Certain Marvel dudebros can't stand to see this indigenous, jewish creator being successful! They don't like that Taika is consistently respectful about including minorities too. Sure, I like that D&W at least includes some cool minority characters briefly, but was the use of the r slur and all the offending the woke mob jokes necessary? Nah. People who don't like Taika went into watching T:L&T expecting it to be bad, and everything confirmed it, whereas they had the opposite expectations for D&W, so they loved it (confirmation bias). I'm sorry, but the reaction to D&W compared to T:L&T just proves to me that Taika and anyone else involved with T:L&T deserved better than the vitriol they got.

[catluniscia]

Clea Strange

Doctor Strange has a wife in the comics or had I don't know relationships are at the moment, all I know is the outfit she is currently in inspiring and I wanna have fun drawing swishy clothing with rips and stuff...also I really hate that window, which I had to make by hand like 10 times because the things wouldn't line up right, I hope to make it noticeable with all my hard work. (context this was written in late September when only 2 episodes of Agatha All Along had posted)  I really hope she is in Agatha All Along, like I would like there to be more cool bad ass magic users in the universe, which is why I am excited for Agatha, but like I am also one of those who wishes the Marvel Project workers actually talked to each other and or had notes to pass along so things can line up better, Again Multiverse of Madness folks didn't know anything happening in Wandavision, and I really wish they did. I just wish Disney/marvel would stop doing quantity and did quality but you know too much to ask I guess -sips drink- I know Clea is in Multiverse of Madness, and um. I saw her outfit...it's very Marvel Movie. And yes that is a semi insult. Like her concept art for the movie is fine, I like it, but something about it going from Concept to movie something happened and it went from fine, to eh, like it's better than the whole CGI made costumes cause CGI folks aren't unionized yet and there for over worked, but like I don't know maybe the photos I saw aren't that good quality, Mind you online its only like one photo and it isn't even a full body one. Or its badly photoshopped, or AI, which god don't get me started on that rant. Also when looking up I found out there is this fan trailer for Doctor Strange 3 and Google it keeps acting like its legit and like its so obviously fan made it looks...y'all remember when you would photoshop yourself to your fave character, or do ship art? And the quality was clearly photoshopped? That's what the trailer thumbnail looks like to me, like No shit onto the person making this fan trailer, like find your joy would love some more bad ass ladies in the MCU but GOOGLE its clear and bloody obvious its a fan trailer please stop acting like it's legit.  Sorry I think I just zoned out and started ranting about google trying to show fake things as legit as well as complaining about costuming directions in modern movies. UUUUHHHHHH Anyway this is the full art, and I am rambling like crazy and should take a nap, please enjoy this artwork I did and all the texture and detailing. I want a nap and a cookie.

[pb-dot]

Film Friday: No, Thanos is not Right, and did in fact, do Quite A lot Of Wrong

(Warning: This one is loooooooooong)

Another Essay this week, and I've chosen to go back in time a couple of years. The target year this time is the halcyon days of 2019, back when I still gave a shit about the MCU, when the ongoing energy of the Marvel movies still pushed engagement forward. You didn't have to watch all of the movies, but they were for the most part fairly well made and there were enough references and jokes that relied on them that you kinda wanted to anyway. Granted, they worked their CGI guys pretty hard, there was a certain cynical glibness to the humor, and their politics weren't great, but these problems had not metastasized into the massive fucksy-doos they are today yet. These were good days to like zoom punch action stories, and it was all leading up to something. The confrontation between Earth's Mightiest Heroes and the Objectively Scariest And Evilest Guy. The Mad Titan, Thanos who wants to kill half of the universe for... reasons.

Backstory and Adaptation, Or; You Can't Have a Big Titted Skeleton Nowadays

For the uninitiated, Thanos was a relatively big deal in Marvel Comic history. The Mad Titan, to put it plainly, LOVES Death. Now to be clear, when I say Thanos loves death, I don't mean that in the abstract "oh, motherfucker just loves killing" way. He is romantically attracted to the anthropomorphic representation of Death, who at the time was most often represented as a big-titted skeleton, although more conventionally attractive Goth Girl variants are available depending on who's illustrating.

Now how would a big purple demigod man from Saturn's moon Titan go about wooing a fundamental aspect of the universe like that? There's always dying an reincarnating a lot, but that seems risky even in a universe where the afterlife seemingly has revolving doors. No, Thanos decides that a way better way to get Death-Sempai to notice him is to kill a LOT of people. Now obviously you can't kill the entire universe because 1: that would include yourself which isn't ideal, and 2: if everyone's dead nobody will get born and thus nobody will ever die again, which one has to imagine Death would not be too chuffed about.

So, what grand gesture does the ube-colored kronian lad settle on? Why of course, gathering five artifacts of immense cosmic power, the Infinity Stones, and using their combined magic juice to kill half of the universe's population with a literal snap of his fingers, which he does. Now, thanks to some internal family politics and the appearance of one Adam Warlock this whole thing got undone, but it was a pretty big deal for the duration.

So, Thanos is one of those larger-than-life fuckers that's just hard to structure a modern story around because of the sheer byzantine bombast that surrounds him. To have a true-to-comics version, you have to introduce Mistress Death, as the big-titted skeleton is often called, and the worldbuilding implications of that, the thing that makes Thanos purple also makes him one of the Eternals so you have to introduce all of that business, the sheer cosmic vastness of the Infinity Gems (née Soul Gems) requires a bunch of explaining, and when it all comes down to it his plan is kind of shit.

Like, this isn't a joke. Thanos has one goal and one goal only and that's to clap some skeleton cheeks, and he doesn't even succeed. Notorious self-aware joke-man Deadpool starts developing a relationship to Mistress Death, which is a thing that can happen if characters meet up a lot, and few are as experienced with exploring dying and getting better than ol' Mr. Pool. Of course, Thanos curses Deadpool to never be able to truly die since he can't have this Undying Chucklefuck upstage him, but it only further underlines how entirely Thanos doesn't succeed. He's a bit of an incel, really, cooking up these grand romantic gestures for a person he isn't really in a relationship with.

Now, I don't know for a fact that there is some sort of editorial fiat in the MCU stating that villains have to be critical of one aspect of society but be Too Extreme About it as opposed to our Good Liberal Heroes Who are Just Right About Every Social Issue, but it certainly fits as an explanation for why that keeps happening. My point is, there isn't really a greater point about society being made with Thanos here, my heroic stretch to try to make it fit in the schemas of gender and sexuality politics in society as interpreted by the Profoundly Deranged notwithstanding. So, what do you do? Why, you make this lumpy space potato man an ecofascist, of course.

Ecofascism, Or; When All You Have Is A Hammer Everything is a Nail

Ecofascism is a relatively recent term, but the trend that it is built upon is as old as fascism itself. In essence, I would describe it as using enviromentalist rhetoric and buzzwords to further an agenda of authoritarian discriminatory and genocidal politics. You see this idea pop up a lot. There's too many people on earth, and just everyone can reproduce which is bad. We eat and we eat until everything is ruined. Humanity is the virus. We need a new plague, etc etc.

What's so insidious about these lines of thinking is that it exploits the hopelessness of attempting to fight for the climate and further habitability of this particular biosphere and boils it down to a very, very simple thought. There are people who are undesirable and if we could just remove them (somehow) then we would save our people the planet.

You see this most clearly here in the west when we discuss the weight of the various climate sins of various countries. China keeps popping up a lot, as the Chinese economy grows towards the point where it can supply its middle class with similar levels of excess that the middle class in the west can enjoy. Now, yes, that leads to growing un-sustainability as the excesses of conspicuous consumption are... well documented to say the least. Where the ecofascist plies his insidious trade is in framing this data in the terms of "there needs to stop being so many Chinese people because they are as bad for the environment as Western People and there's More Of Them," and not, say "the way the middle class in the west consumes is hella unsustainable and we should fucking stop it before this standard kills us all." I.E "The current System is fine as long as it only benefits the Right People" and not "The Current System is Bad And Unfair and balanced on a razor's edge over the abyss and Maybe We Should Change That Somewhat."

For further reading on the topic, I think Philosophy Tube's "Climate Grief" video covers things rather well (I should also warn that this video is from PT pre-coming out/ public transition, just in case you're unfamiliar with her earlier work.)

For a good and very relevant example of how ecofascism might be expressed in practice, look no further than the Malthusian Problem and it's originator Thomas Robert Malthus. Malthus had the idea that while humanity's ability to produce food scales linearly with population, population growth is exponential. This implies that at some point it is inevitable that population growth outstrips humanity's ability to feed its teeming masses, which, if prolonged by, you know, giving a shit whether poor people die of starvation, could lead to even greater disasters up to and including total collapse of society. Intense stuff, but also not really backed by data. Part of that, of course, is that we've learned some REALLY neat tricks in agriculture in the years since Malthus famous wrongness ended with his death in 1834, but even without that, the self-interested callousness of this analysis should be self-evident.

To bring this back to Marvel Land, Thanos in the MCU is motivated by the same kind of merciless quote-unqoute altruism that lay behind Malthus ideas. There's just too dang many people, according to Thanos, there's only so many Resources (nonspecific resources) available in a finite universe. It is an act of mercy, according to this grape Koolaid motherfucker, to kill half of all people, and things will be fixed (somehow, more on that later.) All it takes, no, all it requires is a big enough, bad enough, sad enough dad.

The Rad Bad Sad Dad, or; The New Masculinity in pop culture

There's been a shift in what being a man means in pop culture this last decade. You can most easily detect it in video games, in part, I would argue, because demographic trends have lined up in such a way to shift perspectives that inform the writing, and in part because video game writing being younger and less refined, thus the most open leaving its tropes in the open. Keep in mind, this is not a diss, just an observation, the genre of text for video games is younger than its closest comparisons by quite a lot, it stands to reason there's less generational knowledge and nuance to it as a result.

You can tell this shift, I would argue, because the standard male protagonist has stopped being a white brown haired man in his late 20s who navigates worlds of wild and untamed violence with smug detachment and every-man-like charm, the kind of character one might expect a 20-or 30-something who is single and ready to mingle to write, if I may be uncharacteristically judgy for a bit.

When we now imagine a stock-standard video game protagonist, though, things have changed. Not so much demographically, no, these characters are still written by the same 20- and 30-somethings, they're just pushing 40/50 and have a family now. So, instead, we get what I call the Rad Bad Sad Dad. You know this guy. He's good at violence, REALLY good at it, the Rad and the Bad, but he's disillusioned by a cold and uncaring world, that's the Sad part, and he is the father, or father-figure of some variant of Innocent, and he is willing to burn the world to the ground for their sake if it comes to that, that's the Dad part.

Now this isn't me criticizing this trend either for the record, just pointing out that the change reflects a perspective change in the average creator. It has led to some very good stories. The Last Of Us, for whatever other flaws that game had, squeezes a LOT of pathos out of a cynical, dangerous man growing to love a young girl like she was his daughter. Unfortunately, I would argue, it has also led to Earth's Mightiest Heroes staring slack-jawed at a genocidal madman rather than rebuking him with any of the MANY readily apparent counterarguments to his bullshit.

A truncated list of the ways in which Thanos 1: Is Wrong and 2: Does Wrong

Here, I would argue, we come to what is wrong with Thanos in the MCU. It isn't bad to have a villain with genocidal goals per se, punching nazis is as important today as it was in the 40s after all, but having a villain you're supposed to empathize with in his quest to preform a genocide is generally considered a bad move. A move so bad, in fact, that one of the funniest comedies in the world, is about exactly this.

And yet, the MCU can seemingly not help itself but make an unironic Springtime for Thanos. "Isn't he sad," says Infinity War, "this lumbering purple space dad, willing to do what nobody else can do, what needs to be done?" "Look! He cries because he had to kill his own daughter on Planet Fridge to get the requisite number of Magical Space Tic-Tacs with which he plans to kill half of all life in the universe." Oh, except she's his adopted daughter because he killed half her planet's population and enjoyed her 'tude. Also, she's the last survivor of her people now (feel free to fact check me on this, Guardians Of The Galaxy 1 refers to Gamora as the last survivor of her species in the lineup), turns out killing 50% of the population had the side effect of... killing the other half also over time. Great, huh?

Now this here is what kills me about these fucking movies. There are several Doylist reasons why Thanos and his so sad and serious genocide quest is unconscionable, but even from a Watsonian perspective his shit does not make sense. But OK, maybe the Gamora thing is a plot hole. James Gunn didn't read the Lore Notes all the way through and ended up introducing a near-ironclad counterargument to Thanos' bullshit by accident. These things happen, and the most readily available fix is to pretend they never happened and/or the character who said it was Just Wrong. It doesn't end there, though, not by a long shot.

Let's talk numbers for a second. If you, today, were to halve the population of the earth. Do you know how many years that would set back the population growth, provided, of course, that the trauma of such an event didn't kill off or cripple humanity outright of course? It'd bring us back to the population level of the mid-70's! After a genocide that'd outshine even the most horrid acts of violence against humanity in sheer scope, you'd have pushed earth's theoretical kill screen back about a man's age. Good job, you Malthusian fuck. Round of applause for the Difficult Man that makes the Hard Choices, everybody clap for the edgy clown.

There is, of course, also the ethical arguments against killing functionally incalculable masses for an ill-defined goal of a thankful (and somehow sustainable?????) universe, but I'm not going to say much on that, in part because this is one the Infinity War duology mostly covers on it's own. Say what you want about Captain America, he at least knows to on occasion say Good Guy shit.

Now to be clear, my issue here isn't that the primary movers and shakers in Infinity Wars doesn't read Thanos to filth on how shit his plan is. That's fine, the main protagonists of the MCU are Moral People first and Smart People second, but what kills me is that NOBODY, and I mean ABSOLUTELY nobody comes with a single question about the practical or mathematical realities involved here. Like Spider-Man wouldn't be web-slinging around the city bus Thanos threw at him going "You are aware that earth's population has more than doubled since the early 70's right?" and making some sort of crack on the math curriculum on Titan, or War Machine or one of the more practically-minded heroes wouldn't at least ask earnestly "wait, why can't you use your functionally infinite power to create ways for life to live sustainably?"

Mais non. Nobody questions a single of the extremely rickety axioms in Thanos' plan. Not once. Not a single time. There's more time dedicated to why the Avengers, now equipped with a time machine, don't just go back to murder baby Thanos in the crib than whether the big bad space man's plan makes any fucking sense.

Breaks in formula, Or; Why Endgame kind of cocks it up

So, what's the big issue. The villain is REALLY bad and his plan doesn't make sense, big woop, right? Well, I would argue that the Thanos problem doesn't arise from how bad and wrong Thanos is, but rather how the heroes of the Marvelverse react to him, or rather should I say, how they don't.

Superhero conflict in the MCU can, I would argue, be understood as dialectic. The hero has a Thesis about the world at the outset, T'chala considers himself a righteous king in a line of righteous kings tasked with upholding the world his forefathers created for him and is then confronted with an antithesis in the form of the play's villain, Killmonger views the previous rulers of Wakanda craven isolationists content with stacking up their utopia while the world burns and people suffer. While the hero and the base kindness that informs their actions win out in the end, their perspective on the conflict is a meld of their own and the villain's, a synthesis if you will, T'chala will reign as king, but he will do what he thinks is right for Wakanda, to take her out of isolation and seek to better the world through their superior technology.

In Infinity War this doesn't really happen, neither for the overarching story with the protagonists, nor for the Thanos-headed sub-story. There's no real meaningful compromise that can be made between "Killing half of the universe is good, actually :)" and "Killing people is wrong :(" after all. This isn't a problem on its own, I'd claim, but the fact that the movie low-key presents itself as an attempt of finding such a middle ground is... disappointingly evocative of modern political discourse, let's just say.

It is jarring, is the thing, to see Steve "Captain America" Rogers be unable to say anything of moral weight against a genocidal space ube. To see Tony "The only expert on Unlimited Free Energy" Stark not even question the axiom that there's no such thing as a sustainable universe without this barbarous culling. They oppose Thanos on account of all the killing, but when it comes to the ideals side of thing they let the man win on walk-over. Part of this probably arises from how Infinity War does the whole "penultimate part is dark as FUCK bit, as Thanos' quest to attain all the Infinity Stones succeed, and not even a Hail Mary attempted murder from Thor manages to save the day. What exacerbates the problem, though, is how much of a mess the follow-up finale Endgame is. Now don't get me wrong, it's a fanservice all you can eat buffet, and in terms of honoring the legacy of the MCU and all of that it does what it's supposed to. As an answer to Infinity War, though, it is a mess. Our heroes never get their footing back in the moral department, as timeline shenanigans see "our" Thanos dead within the first 15 minutes, and a separate, but functionally identical mad titan brought over from a parallel timeline.

Now time travel bullshit in superhero media is about as old as the genre itself, but let's just look at this choice for a moment. The "new" Thanos is from a diverging timeline before he gathered all of the infinity stones. "New Thanos'" big plot is essentially, upon seeing that the universe is indeed not thankful but gearing up to kick his periwinkle ass post-snap, decides that if that's how they want to play he'll just destroy the entire universe this time around and see how they like that. Now, this works as a response to Infinity Wars Thanos only in that it confirms the very "no duh" notion that nobody will be particularly grateful to someone who killed half of their friends pretty much regardless of the quote unqoute facts they cite to justify it. The fact that this new reality isn't a lick more sustainable than the old one? Not commented on. Any meaningful consequences of Thanos' action outside of the particular ways it has touched the lives of our heroes? I guess there are signs here and there, but largely not commented on.

See this is what kills me with the New Thanos and that time travel nonsense. It's a get out of plot consequence free card. The MCU wanted to have its cake and have a larger-than-life villain with conviction, and eat it too, have a villain audiences can in part sympathize with, and even think is cool. This process leads us to such farce as Endgame having Thanos musing "You couldn't live with your failure and where did it bring you? Back to me," like he isn't throwing a fucking omnicidal tantrum at not being worshiped for being willing to kill a truly staggering amount of people make the Hard Choices. And again, absolutely nobody calls him on this. For all the quips in the wold, not even iron man notes that this is the pot calling the kettle black, because Thanos is Beyond Quipping. He is a Serious Man with a Serious Plan (a Serious Plan, incidentally, plotted by a cabal of murderous clowns, but I digress.)

Love Me, I'm a Liberal, Or; The Limits of Superhero Storytelling

I think I have been a mite charitable when it comes to describing the typical MCU plot to be dialectic in nature. The better movies, like Black Panther, Iron Man 3, and Thor Ragnarok fits this description rather well, but a lot of the time the plot follows a more mealy-mouthed liberalism of sorts. The hero represents the status quo, and the villain comes in as a radical who Might Have Some Good Ideas but Goes Too Far, requiring the hero to come in to Save The Day! It is hard to not notice that a lot of MCU antagonists are motivated by real-life problems, but just decides, usually somewhere in act 2, to just become Dumb And So Goddamn Crazy about it to justify the hero fighting them. This way, the hero can fight to uphold the Status Quo without calling their opponent a radical freak, or put any focus on how they are, indeed, upholding the status quo, warts and all.

The thing about the Infinity War duology that's so frustrating to me is that the movie clearly wants to be perceived as a dialectic kind of thing, but so transparently is one of the latter. Just look at how Cap, when discussing the topic of whether it's morally justifiable to destroy the infinity gem that powers their friend Vision states "We don't trade lives," and then goes about starting a massive bloody ground war to attempt to stop Thanos' forces from seizing Vision and the infinity gem, only to fail and they have to kill Vision anyway, except Thanos can time travel now, so he just Ctrl-Zs the entire moral choice and takes what he needs. L for the good guys, there, but more importantly, I think, this is supposed to be support for Thanos' antithesis of "some time killing is Good Actually."

The problem here is that this is a ludicrously uneven playing field. Yes, killing your friend to stop someone else from killing him AND ending the world is one of those trolley problem moments, but they're also functionally useless in this case. Thanos can control time now, so who gives a shit? If he doesn't like the outcome he'll just "Oop" a skootch back in time and never mind that. Even if the amethyst asshole didn't have time travel, what were we supposed to take away from this thing? All violence is the same? A kill is a kill? How is this a moral failure for Team Cap exactly? Like yeah it is wacky that superhero violence somehow is only lethal when someone is Dangerous And On The Edge and possibly even Dumb And So Goddamn Crazy, but you're not going to make that point in the big ol' crossover event are you because that'd make the audience feel weird about enjoying the punchman action. Never mind, I suppose, that Disney and Co here are giving the thinly-veiled fascist the "agree with him or no you have to admire his gumption" treatment like you're a fucking human interest story about the Young Hip White Supermacist in a self-declared news publication ca 2016.

In Closing, or; It's Not Real To Me Any More

So what do I want to achieve with this little essay? Do I want to hashtag cancel hashtag disney? Not so much no. Hell, my own stopping paying attention to the MCU was more recent, and chiefly motivated by the absolute hash that they made out of that Falcon And Winter Soldier show on the villain side if I'm honest. Do I want to change the way we talk about Disney or the MCU? I don't think that's within my power nor something I'm all that fussed about, either.

No, what I wanted most of all is to vent. To let off some steam that's been brewing for literal years, only further added to every time I see one of those stupid fucking "Thanos Did Nothing Wrong" memes that redditors used to love, only turned sourer every time I wondered how many actual, unironic ecofascists use these memes to make their ideas palpable, how I'd even tell the difference, and whether it made any difference who was ironic and who was not.

As anyone who's done a bit of writing might be able to tell you, there's no concept so good it can't be read into something terrible with a bad faith reading. This, I hope you agree with me, is not what happened here. The actual text has these flaws, and if it didn't end up boosting a rather insidious con from the worst political philosophy currently extant, I'd probably let it slide. When you create a story, I do not think there are all that many moral obligations on you in the act itself, but if you can not at the very least be honest and (inasmuch as you can) tell no overt lies.

Lack of resources is not what causes suffering on this planet today, nor is it likely to do so in the foreseeable future. That they do is a lie that the story of MCU Thanos tells.

Capitalism, neo-colonialism, conspicious consumption, these things cause poverty, strife and suffering. These things causes ludicrous food waste in a world where people still starve. These things causes cheaply produced medicine sold at exorbitant prices. These things cause empty housing being passed from investor to investor in some hellish shell-game while people live on the streets. These things cause famines. These things cut rainforests at an unsustainable rate. These things bleach the coral. These things cause hilariously insufficient deep water subs. These things causes stupid fucking superhero movie sequels.

The truth? We are capable of feeding the world, more than capable. There is enough room on this earth to house its every inhabitant with room to spare. Ok, maybe not everyone can have a new iPad every year on account of rare earth minerals being, well, rare-ish, so that's one of those things we may have to be a bit cost-benefit about. My point is this: Thanos isn't out here saying everyone can't have an iPad or a new phone every year, the kind of restrictions resource scarcity could conceivably bring. He keeps harping on the shit ideas of a long-dead British upper class twit like they could be used to justify his mega-genocide, so in that regard I suppose he's fulfilling a proud fascist tradition. I just wish that the superheroes we're meant to admire didn't stand by and let him, is all.

[twilightkitkat]

Okay so the Laura snippet got out of hand *sigh* and since I have trunk or treat my church I'm not sure when it'll get done but I'm cooking.

Anyways another thought I had a while ago and something I've considered doing myself.

Ghost Rider was supposed to be the movie and I think it's a travesty that people have not put him in through fanfiction. Thoughts opinions anything?

(It's been so long since I've seen those movies and I'm genuinely considering going back and reading reviews and stuff because someone needs to make something with him in it.)

Oooo I'm excited to see where your story with Laura goes, she's so interesting as a character. Her interactions with the other X-men would be hostile as hell and I'm here for it.

I don't know much about Ghostrider, but I looked into him a bit and his plotline is very fascinating. I think it'd be interesting to see his dynamics with the current Marvel cast and to tap into how the older protagonists would cope with the current state of the MCU. The villains are a lot more impressive because of CGI and also the characters all are in completely different states than before.

Similar to this, I think it'd be funny to see Deadpool and Wolverine time travel to back when the Avengers were all still together and see how the X-men and Avengers would interact. Especially with Logan and Wade from the future. The Avengers are used to being The Big Heroes and then these two fuckers come in and do their job better than them without the squabbling. The X-men would also be confused as hell.

[sincericida]

Scene from "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" (2014, dir Mark Webb)

This movie still has the best CGI I have ever seen. They have nailed the VFX, especially the lighting on his suit when the ⚡ passes by. We don't get to see that level of detail nowadays (MCU). Fact, none of the CGI in the MCU films hold up even close to this well. Garfield is the best Peter and Spidey. That's it.

[silk-and-web]

Watched Deadpool and Wolverine. My reactions:

Not as good as the first two but enjoyable enough. Better than I expected since I admittedly thought it'd be disappointing. It does what Quantumania did but better.

I appreciate how they responded to the complaint that they're ruining the ending of Logan by doubling down in the most Deadpool way possible.

Watching Deadpool viciously murder TVA agents was cathartic. It's the edge that the MCU painfully lacked, and a fuck you to the originator of the tired and underwhelming multiverse saga.

I'm glad we saw Deadpool's supporting cast and did not kill them off. I'm sad they had no role in the story, which I unfortunately expected. Same deal as Quantumania.

I don't know how Shatterstar is alive but I'm not complaining.

There were so many inside jokes that only hardcore fans who know what happened behind the scenes of Marvel, Fox, and even DC would understand. So naturally I laughed at them.

All the alternate Wolverines were fun. The Cavilvolerine was 10/10. We technically got a Hulk cameo.

I legitimately wondered if RDJ was going to cameo or not, but they lampshaded it as expected.

Chris Evans fuckin' got me. I thought they went all out for a Captain America variant. As soon as he said Flame On I lost it. I had a feeling he wouldn't be sticking around so I'm glad they admitted it was for budget reasons.

Xavier's sister was annoying af but she's the villain so I guess she did her job well

Every Deadpool and Wolverine fight was perfect. They basically fucked.

This movie had all the cameos people thought Multiverse of Madness was going to have. I did not expect nearly this many or who they brought in.

Blade was great and he's probably right we won't get another. Electra was so unexpected it's funny. Channing Tatum finally playing an extreme comic accurate Gambit was great. X-23 made me smile though I wish she had more to do in the film. I'm glad she was included in the ending so there's potential for her to appear again.

The two final acts were pretty predictable but entertaining enough. Not much else to say there.

Wolverine's suit is great though the mask was clearly CGI in a few shots.

The Deadpool Corps fell flat and had unclear motivations. They shouldn't have been included at all tbh.

Yeah Hugh Jackman is never going to stop being Wolverine lmao

Ultimately, it was an enjoyable but completely unnecessary movie that sadly lacks the heart of the previous films. Like Quantumania, it gets wrapped up in world ending threats at the cost of the supporting cast that made the previous movies great and meaningful.

Post credits scene was a good gag, made me laugh.

The credits clips and music made me emotional. It's the send-off to Fox X-Men (and F4) we never truly got. Can't believe how young Hugh Jackman was back then. Seeing Quicksilver got me bad, I love Peters' portrayal so much.

And the Thor scene is such a funny tease because I highly doubt there are any actual plans set in stone so Ryan Reynolds is just daring Feige to find a way to retroactively make that spoiler a spoiler.

[burningfudge]

Heyyy, I finally saw the Marvels with my family! OH MY GOD, what a truly unhinged movie. I was fighting for my life for most of it, just basically being like:

What do you think of it as a movie, btw?? There’s so much I like, from the singing planet, to Kamala and her entire family, to the scene where all the Flerkens eat the entire ship(!!). It’s incredibly ballsy — but also, WOW there’s some stuff I don’t like. It’s so goddamn fast paced that nothing has time to breathe, the villain is not very interesting, and I think the way the fight scenes are shot makes the CGI really hard to look at… in terms of looks from the original to this, it’s like comparing Spy Kids to Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over. Oof.

But I still had a LOT of fun, and I don’t really regret it. It’s probably still better than the Flash on account of pure dignity — and I guess to someone who knows these characters better than I do, I suppose the logic of the film makes more sense? My dad was confused by Kamala’s ability to use her powers without the bangles, and I still haven’t seen Ms. Marvel yet… so I might need an explanation on that myself. 😅

I liked the movie! I thought it was fun. Carol, Kamala, and Monica's dynamic was so much fun to watch, and every scene with Fury and the Khans cracked me up! Goose was amazing, too.

But yes, the movie could've been a lot better. I do think they could've added 15 or so more minutes because, like you said, it was so fast and had no time to breathe. I was kind of annoyed that the movie sort of glossed over Carol restarting a sun because that's a HUGE thing to do. Thor (temporarily) did the same thing in Infinity War, and it was rightly treated as a feat of strength, but the movie barely focuses on Carol (permanently) doing the same thing. It's like, "Oh, by the way, Carol restarted the sun. Moving on."

Yeah, the villain is BORING. I really don't know why they went with Dar-Benn, but I guess the problem is that Carol doesn't have many notable villains, and the ones she does have are related to the X-Men, like Rogue, Mystique, and Deathbird, so the MCU couldn't use them. Or they already used what villains she does have in the first movie, like Ronan the Accuser, Yon-Rogg, and the Supreme Intelligence. But I still think they could've used the Brood, Nitro, or Moonstone rather than Dar-Benn. Or even adapted a version of the Kree-Skrull War since I don't think the MCU is going to do it. And if they wanted to use the Quantum Bands (which are basically the Nega-Bands from the comics), they could've made Genis-Vell the villain (who would've turned good) since he's Mar-Vell's son and wields the Nega-Bands in the comics. Basically, there are many more interesting villains they could've chosen than Dar-Benn, or they should've written her better.

The logic of the film does not make sense to me at all; I just took it at face value. I still don't understand Kamala's origin or her abilities, and I've watched Ms Marvel. I think they've overly complicated her origin, and I still don't know what her mutant power is.

[gothicprep]

so glad that AI video is here! sort of. kind of. you ever want to see a screensaver that looks like it was designed for windows 2000, where fish are flying through the air across village streets? sora can do that with one easy prompt! you ever wanna see a woman lying in bed, roll over, and watch her arm turn into the comforter? sora can do that too! it's amazing! do you ever want to see a POV of an ant's tunnel that looks like something worse than what you'd see on bbc's planet earth? sora can do that too!

i'm sure we've all seen these videos and many more at this point. the ai evangelists swear that this is a game-changing revolution in its ability to turn simple prompts into movie quality video. assuming that movie quality means a late-stage mcu movie, or madame web, or a direct to video dreamworks knockoff from the early 2000s. really? none of those things. it's not as good as any of those things. and yeah, yeah, i know, "it's going to improve", "this is the worst it's ever gonna look", "it's gonna get more realistic". but there are some who will tell you that this is the beginning of a brave new world. a whole new era! we've got a whole movement that's going to unlock creativity that's been untapped, trapped within people who have no actual talent but, um, some ideas i guess. there's a deep reservoir of those people who society has been wasting for all these years.

let's be real here. more likely, the AI is probably going to be used to much more boring ends than new great works of art when it's not being used for more nefarious ends. on the more boring side of things, you'll have people on the internet say "what if you had batman fight the straw hat pirates from one piece? that's something an ai could do!" fanfic kind of stuff. "what if goku fought superman? who would win? i'll bet ai can show us that!" another thing it can bring to life? sex tapes that you didn't make, but you're going to be starring in! get ready for the future where someone gets mad at you online, and five seconds later, you're in a bondage orgy! have fun at the bondage orgy! that's what ai promises :)

but that's not the worst of it, believe it or not. the real problem with ai is that it's going to give bad actors the ability to create international crises by ginning up phony videos. want to spark a riot in the urban center of a country you don't like? fake a video of a cop killing a kid. it'll go viral and the gas stations will be burning before the city can prove it didn't happen.

wife & i were watching the second season of tokyo vice last night while we were waiting for true detective: night country to come on, and in the premiere episode, there's a video of a sex worker being beaten to death while a gov't minister looks on. when presented with the video, he pulls the shaggy defense and just says "it wasn't me". the denial doesn't wash because the technology at the time couldn't have faked it, but in short order, we're going to be in a future where we won't be able to prove it was or wasn't him. "oh, it was ai". welp. no one will know.

the ability to circulate low-quality, unverified information has real downsides. and if anything, the decades during which i've grown up with the internet prompts me towards a lot more wariness of ai than unbridled enthusiasm. if the best case scenario for ai is what the internet did to the information environment already, we're all fucked. the speed with which things can spread and proliferate is frankly terrifying. the prompts people are using now are dumb, and the programming is not very good, but the ai evangelists are right when they say it's going to get better. and as it gets better, it's going to be more tempting to use it in ways which absolutely are negative for society. i'm sure there are cgi artists working at major studios who will be able to use these things in good ways, but i sit here and i hear people talk about "oh, the great wave of creativity is going to be unleashed by ai!" and i'm just like. what kind of future are you living in, where the technology always works out the way you want, and everyone is happy, and there are flying cars in the sky and rainbows?

[dicapiito]

The Marvels is a great movie. How I rate it? 4.5/5 stars.

A team of three. Teyonah Harris as Monica Rambeau is awesome and with no Wanda in sight; she definitely gets to shine here. And add that Nia DeCosta knows how to hire people to know how to highlight and lowlight all skintones; it’s nice that her powers and her look so awesome. I definitely hope she has her own movie in the future with the same film crew. No more of the Christopher Nolan/ standard boring MCU lighting.

Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan is fun because she oozes excitement of wanting to be Ms Marvel. Ms Marvel also has a great family cast and feels fresh and fun as well. I see why Ms Marvel has a TV series. Add that it seems like she’s in actual costumes that look like a fan made it is also pretty cool. Great job

Brie Larson being Captain Marvel is a great choice and glad to see her without all those other Avengers. Plus her costume looks even better than the first movie.

As for the villains, Zawe Ashton as Dar-Benn is top notch. Very fun and it wasn’t that complicated to be caught up with The Marvels without seeing the Ms Marvel show.

If anything, I think The Marvels is a movie that would make new fans of Monica and Kamala and want to learn more about them and check out the comics , which a Marvel movie hasn’t really done in a long time, since the first Black Panther movie.

I hate that this movie even worse treatment than Birds of Prey because how dare women lead movies, and how dare two of them be WoC! Plus this movie has great lighting; actual costumes, it feels like the crew members were fans and even the CGI looks like they were happy to be there. It feels like pre Disney Marvel and I like it

Highly recommend!

[gh0stsp1d3r]

the marvels is horribly written. Coming from a women who is very feminist, it’s not because there’s women as the main characters. It is truly a terrible written movie.

I hate the whole girl power energy it has, I feel like every studio is trying to profit off it and it’s not working. It is just for a diversity tick

The only good thing about this movie was probably iman. Spoilers below if you care

The villain’s problem

Dar Benn is not intimidating at all. A villain should be intimidating, that’s like the whole point of a villain. She is horribly introduced.

We know nothing about how the bangle got on the planet, or how it even got there. The cgi was horrible on the planet as well.

She was a boring character. How was she not able to handle the bangle but Ms marvel, who is a child and is still learning a lot of things, is able to? They never explain that.

Random scenes

Don’t get me started on the dance scene, or the signing. It was pointless, dumb, and annoying.

The end was really bad too.

Where did captain marvels power to regenerate the sun come from? It was random, they never explain that.

The characters

The characters have no consistency. Nick fury was very different than he was in every other thing, along with the other characters.

The characters powers seem unlimited, they seem overpowered, and i hate it. The characters look all bored. I don’t blame them tho, cuz I would be too after having to reshoot and reshoot again and again

Brie’s acting is not all that good. Her character is underdeveloped, and it’s low effort. Her character is boring. Once again I would be bored too having to reshoot again and again

Paris was a bit better. For such horrible writing, she did good.

Samuels acting was good, but once again, his character completely changes from when we saw him in secret invasion.

Iman is doing great, I loved her. She’s trying her best.

Basically, this movie is horrible because of the bad writing. Don’t watch it, or don’t waste your money on it at least. It was boring, poor quality, and the mcu loses my trust every new movie they make. The effects were not good,but that is more the studios fault for them having to reshoot 100 freaking times