#wandavision is kind of actually masterful in terms of its emotion!!!!

[francesderwent]

I do like Marvel, and it saddens me to say this, but Spiderman: Far From Home is just not a good film.

it’s seriously confused about whether it is a Spiderman film or an Iron Man film. I know, I know. that’s the point, that it’s Peter realizing he doesn’t have to “live up” to the mantle of Iron Man because even Tony struggled to do that (???). but my point is it doesn’t work. it tells you that Tony didn’t intend for Peter to “be” Iron Man and then it shows you Peter...being Iron Man. it plucks Peter out of NYC (and then switches locations so often you get whiplash). the villain is Tony’s villain, Peter merely caught in the crosshairs of an old feud. after they have a nice heart-to-heart about Tony’s expectations, Peter turns around and picks up Tony’s tech like he was born to it while "Back In Black” plays and Tony’s old assistant gazes on fondly. is this Spiderman coming into his own or is this the new Iron Man? the audience is getting VERY mixed messages.

Mysterio is a weird choice for a supervillain without any superpowers (especially because, again, this puts him in the realm of typical Iron Man supervillains and not Spiderman ones). the sequences where Peter is trapped in an illusion don’t work for me because I keep thinking “wait, how is this working with drones??” those sequences might have been okay if Mysterio had initially claimed to have illusion powers. but he doesn’t make that claim, and even after Peter finds out it’s all illusion, there’s no point at which he thinks it’s “real” magical illusion, so he knows it’s drones, too. drones and projections laid onto real people? so when a whole crew of spidermen jump on top of Peter, smothering him, that’s just regular people jumping on top of him for the Aesthetic? what???

Mysterio’s desire to “become the next Iron Man” makes very little sense. the movie candidly admits that if there were any other avengers around he would get his ass kicked five ways to wednesday, so Mysterio’s plan is only going to work for as long as they’re off-world. and even if the avengers stay off-world, what’s Mysterio’s plan for when something actually bad happens? and you can’t tell me he’s just unhinged, because he got dozens of people to sign onto this plan with him, so the plan ought to make sense.

as previously stated by others more insightful than I, the whole conceit of who “ought” to have EDITH is absolutely insane. nobody ought to have EDITH. all those weaponized drones should be launched into the effing sun. Captain America didn’t almost drown taking down the hellicarriers for Project Insight for this kind of bs to continue--and Tony didn’t repent of creating Ultron to just turn around and create something like this! it’s bad character writing! and it’s bad morality!!

the plotline with Peter’s spider sense not working (??) needed to be way more spelled out. this could have been at the center of the film, Peter’s exhaustion and uncertainty of whether he’s Spiderman or Iron Man leading to the loss of his spider sense. they could have showed it slowing him down in the fights, and letting him be tripped up in his regular life, making him look even more awkward than usual. but as is, it’s just a plot device which allows him to get stuck in those aforementioned illusion sequences, and magically disappears just in time for Peter to stop Mysterio from shooting him in the head.

the final post-credits scene with Nick Fury being not the real Nick Fury is an absolutely off-the-wall terrible decision. in a movie which is in some sense about Peter learning to see through illusions to what’s underneath, to what’s real and what matters, to then turn around at the end and say “but not this, haha, you were all fooled!” leads to just feeling cheated, and for no good reason. and the movie is already struggling to deal with the loss of Tony as Peter’s mentor figure, so to replace Tony with Happy and Not-Even-The-Real-Nick-Fury is a crazy move.

the Happy and May subplot drives me nuts. the writers dance around it--do they have a thing? don’t they?--but then they refuse to commit at the last second because it’s only interesting to them insofar as it’s funny, they don’t want to actually have to deal with the emotional implications of Peter’s aunt having a new relationship, which is LAZY and CHEAP. and it’s worsened by the fact that Ned and Betty break up at the end of the film, too. everything is played for laughs, not played for keeps.

[aion-rsa]

Marvel’s WandaVision Episode 8: MCU Easter Eggs and Reference Guide

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This article contains WandaVision episode 8 spoilers and potential spoilers for the wider MCU.

“You didn’t think you were the only magical girl in town, did you?” 

Agatha Harkness makes good on that line from last week’s episode in WandaVision episode 8, which functions as a trip through Wanda Maximoff’s entire MCU history. Not only does it reveal previously hidden (and crucially necessary) depths to her character and her relationship with Vision, but it successfully adds new elements to her established origin story. These new wrinkles pull from Wanda’s entire Marvel history, and have massive implications for magic users and even mutants in the MCU going forward.

Here’s what we found…

Sitcom Influences

Among the bootleg DVDs Wanda’s father is selling we can see Bewitched, Malcolm in the Middle, I Love Lucy, Who’s the Boss?, I Dream of Jeannie, and The Addams Family, all of which have been major touchstones for WandaVision throughout its run. But Wanda’s favorite? That would be The Dick Van Dyke Show.

The Dick Van Dyke Show episode that the Maximoffs watch is season 2 episode 21 “It May Look Like A Walnut”, or as Wanda’s dad calls it “the walnut episode!” This installment finds Rob Petrie (Van Dyke) staying up late to watch a spooky sci-fi movie on TV, while his wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) tries to ignore it because it freaks her out. In the movie, aliens from the planet Twilo come to Earth in disguise to slow down humanity’s development by feeding us walnuts that contain the chemical element “absorbitron.” The walnuts take away our creativity and our thumbs – the two things that get us into outer space to challenge their Twiloian supremacy. The next day, walnuts seem to be the only food that Rob can find. He comes to believe that Laura is either playing a trick on him, or that the Twiloites have really invaded.

Why would WandaVision go out of its way to mention this episode in particular? Well, Wanda can certainly empathize with a protagonist who comes to believe his world is fabricated. And Marvel Phase 4 does seem destined to spend quite a bit more time in space.

The scene of Malcolm in the Middle that Vision watches but doesn’t quite understand has Hal build a deck, only for it to collapse on him. In the third WandaVision episode intro, Vision builds a swingset, only for it to suddenly collapse in front of him.

Wanda’s father sold DVDs as a trade and even had a Malcolm in the Middle box set in there. That’s pretty damn impressive, since he was killed by that bomb in 1999 and the show didn’t start airing until early 2000. That’s some Spaceballs VHS technology right there!

While at the HYDRA facility, Wanda watches The Brady Bunch. The episode appears to be season 1’s “Kitty Karry-All Is Missing.” When Cindy Brady’s beloved Kitty Karry-All goes missing, she thinks her brother Bobby stole her. The Bradys have a trial and everything! But it turns out the Bradys’ dog Tiger actually took Kitty Karry-All. Perhaps that’s why Agatha needed Sparky out of the way – dogs are unpredictable.

Wanda’s assurance that “He’s not really injured. It’s not that kind of show” is as much a commentary on superhero storytelling in both comics and in movies as it is about sitcoms.

Agatha Harkness

Kicking things off with an Agatha Harkness origin story is an inspired move…

Placing Agatha’s origin in witch-trial era Salem in 1693 ends up being a little piece of misdirection. She’s not on trial for being a witch, but rather by her own coven for seeking too much power. 

We get a sense of Agatha’s family here, with Agatha’s mother leading the coven against her while Agatha is still just a young witch. This doesn’t match her comics origin, where she was already centuries old by the time the Salem Witch Trials rolled around – she is old enough to remember Atlantis being above water. In the comics, she was a leader of the Salem community when the trials began. 

Agatha’s mother’s name is Evanora Harkness. She doesn’t appear to have a counterpart in the comics.

The Latin chant that the witches are repeating appears to be “mors monstru naturale” which would translate to “natural death is a monster,” which…given Agatha’s seemingly immortal nature, tracks pretty well.

The magical “crown” of energy that appears on Agatha’s mother’s head very faintly resembles the headgear that Wanda wears in the comics as the Scarlet Witch. Granted, it’s blue here.

Agatha’s use of “purple energy” may be the most damning sign of her intentions yet. In comics, purple is often coded as the color of villains.

We also learn the origin of the brooch Agatha has been wearing all through this series, with Agatha having taken it off her mother’s corpse. 

In the final scene with Agatha and the twins, she floats above them and holds them at will like marionettes. This is probably a reference to Master Pandemonium, whose reveal made the children look like hand puppets…except they were his actual hands.

Because comics!

Let’s dig into some of the spells Agatha says…is one of them “crystallum possession”. I also definitely heard an Imperio something in there, which calls to mind the Imperius curse from TERF High Harry Potter. The Imperius curse allowed the witch or wizard to control the victim’s body like a puppet.

The Scarlet Witch

Hoo-boy, we get a LOT of Wanda’s comics lore introduced in this episode…

This episode makes it pretty clear that Wanda was born with her abilities and that Strucker’s experiments merely amplified them. Should we officially welcome mutants to the MCU? If her powers were latent, then perhaps so were Pietro’s. The fact that Strucker’s experiments killed all the subjects except for Wanda and Pietro could be seen as further evidence of their mutant heritage.

We get some very different explanations of Wanda’s magical powers than we’ve had in the past, all via Agatha, and all of them referencing various ways Wanda’s powers have been explained in the comics in the past.

Why didn’t that Stark Industries bomb explode and kill Wanda and Pietro? She may have unknowingly cast a “probability hex” on it. For many years Wanda’s “magical” powers were explained as a mutant ability to alter the probability of outcomes, no matter how unlikely.

Later, it was revealed that she was a master of “chaos magic,” another term introduced here. Furthermore, now it seems that being able to wield chaos magic gives Wanda a specific magical title, that of “Scarlet Witch.” We…do not have to tell you where that comes from.

The vision (sorry) that the Mind Stone gives Wanda would appear to be one of her future, fully Scarlet Witch-ified self. This particular costume, which evokes a long jacket and crown, is very similar to the one she’s worn in the most recent Marvel Comics.

When Agatha finally discovers that Wanda is the Scarlet Witch, she says that the Scarlet Witch was supposed to be “a myth.” Big Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibes in this exchange! Buffy often faced off against foes who once thought she was just a fairytale created to spook demons and nothing more.

Agatha’s “That accent really comes and goes, doesn’t it?” is a terrific joke at the MCU’s expense. As well as her “so many costumes and hairstyles” also feels like a nod to Wanda’s changing looks in the comics just as much as it is about the chameleon-like nature of the WandaVision universe.

Vision

The scene of Wanda coming across the disassembled remnants of Vision’s body in the SWORD lab is taken from West Coast Avengers #43 into #44. Instead of dying heroically, Vision was taken out of commission by the world’s governments for trying to take over all of the world’s computers. He was reduced to nothing but metal and circuitry in order for writer John Byrne to drive home Vision’s lack of human biology. 

That disturbing scene of Vision being “dissected” with his body stretched out across multiple tables is a direct nod to a panel from those comics.

It also reminds us a little of how Thanos had Nebula pulled apart in Avengers: Endgame. At least Vision is offline!

Vision was then resurrected in the white form that we see here in the mid-credits scene, and brought back without his emotions or any connection to his past life as Wanda’s husband or Billy and Tommy’s father. This was one of the catalysts for Byrne sending Wanda into her Dark Scarlet Witch phase that abruptly ended when Byrne stormed off of West Coast Avengers for the cardinal sin of “being edited.” For more on this, type “Why did John Byrne” into Google and let autocomplete take you on a fun ride.

We’ll have more on White Vision in just a moment.

The Stark Bomb

The toaster commercial from the first episode was always supposed to be a reference to the Stark Industries bomb that tore apart the Maximoff household. That commercial also had the blinking red light of the toaster show up despite everything else being in black and white. We now see that the bomb itself had a very similar blinking red light and sound.

The popular running theory was that the commercials tracked to the different stones, and while that may still be applicable, do they also/instead track to Wanda’s memories or key parts of her life? 

We saw the toaster match up with the blinking light on the bomb.

We know the watch had the Hydra face on it. Could this match if future Wanda floating in through the stone was actually a paradox and not just a vision?

The paper towel commercial mentioned Lagos too prominently to not pair with that moment of trauma.

Does the fruit snack commercial match up with her conversation with Vision in the Avengers compound?

The anti-depressant commercial does track fairly well with Wanda’s visit to SWORD.

It feels like the only one that doesn’t have an obvious pair is the tesseract bubble bath. Give us a shout in the comments if you can figure out what that matches to.

Westview

When Wanda drives through Westview for the first time, she passes by the normal versions of Herb (John Collins), Mrs. Hart (Sharon Davis), and Phil (Harold Proctor). Notably, Harold is putting up an ad for piano lessons when in the second episode, playing the piano was his talent. It’s also when Wanda magically turned his grandmother’s piano into an illusion.

As Wanda transforms Westview, we see a billboard for “Super” paper towels become “Lagos” brand paper towels (ala the commercial from earlier this season), which “makes cleanup a snap!”

When the Coronet theater marquee transforms, it’s showing two Walt Disney Productions films of the appropriate WandaVision episode 1 era, Kidnapped and Big Red. But before that it’s showing Tannhauser Gate. Roy Batty, call your agent, please.

Fake Pietro

It’s revealed that “Pietro Maximoff” was indeed a complete fake. A “Fietro” as Agatha calls him. He became her “eyes and ears” and she refers to his manifestation as “a crystalline possession.” We sense there will be more revealed about this in the finale, as Evan Peters has been M.I.A. since his appearance in last week’s post-credits scene.

The Post-Credits Scene and White Vision

In West Coast Avengers #45, Vision’s personality was wiped completely, so by the time he was reassembled, he appeared as “White Vision”. He completely lacked emotion and didn’t even understand why Wanda was hugging him upon entering the room. This became the status quo version of Vision for a while until his old personality, look, and feelings for Wanda were eventually brought back. But hey, this version got to be a playable character in the 1991 arcade hit Captain America and the Avengers!

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What are the chances that White Vision will have James Spader’s voice?

We wrote more about that post-credits scene here.

Spot anything we missed? Let us know in the comments!

The post Marvel’s WandaVision Episode 8: MCU Easter Eggs and Reference Guide appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[aion-rsa]

WandaVision Episode 9 Review: The Series Finale

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This WandaVision review contains spoilers.

WandaVision Episode 9

How do you end a series like WandaVision? Well, if the ninth and final episode of the Disney+ show is anything to go by, then the answer is… busily. Beginning with an intense and almost jarringly fast-paced action sequence that spanned most of the first two acts of the 42 minute run time, “The Series Finale” is fully aware of all it had to answer. And for the most part, Matt Shakman and Jac Schaeffer do a solid job of tying up the many loose ends. While the pacing might be a little frantic at times, by the time the credits roll–and the delightful post-credits scenes surprises–you’ll likely feel very satisfied by this experimental and emotional conclusion for a show that has been both of those things during its best moments. 

We start directly where we left off with Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) and Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) facing off in Westview. The former is desperate for the power which the latter wields, even if she doesn’t quite know what to do with it yet. But that’s all soon to change.

Wanda’s entire life has been about adapting. Whether to the death of her parents, the powers she was gifted by the Mind Stone, the death of her brother, or her role as an Avenger, she’s always evolved and changed in order to survive. And that’s exactly what happens here. Her battle with Agatha is one that’s constantly teaching her the rules of her own magic, and the boundaries–or lack of them–that she has to work within. While Agatha thinks she’s outsmarting her lesser, Wanda is taking on the role of student, imbibing anything she can from the age old witch. 

That duality and antagonistic student/teacher relationship is reflected in the equally dramatic scenes between the Vision (Paul Bettany) and his new white counterpart. While White Vision (also Paul Bettany) was sent to Westview to destroy Wanda and her family by SWORD, it’s not long before he’s outsmarted by the Vision that Wanda created to fix her grief. In one of the best moments of the series and of the MCU’s decade-plus long run, with Bettany giving an incredible performance acting against himself in a philosophical debate around existence itself.

It’s a truly powerful exploration of the character and of the idea of personhood itself. Despite all of the MCU‘s science fiction trappings, it rarely touches on the darker ethical struggles that make the genre sing, and here we finally scratch that surface. And, of course, the Vision who can love and feel convinces the new (or is it old?) Vision of his own agency, helping him to restore his memories before the pale synthezoid flies off into the sky to freedom. 

With all that action going on–and there’s a lot of it–you could be forgiven for thinking that WandaVision has forgotten about the thing that makes the show so special: its heart. Don’t worry, your giant-size box of tissues will still come in handy because as much as Agatha might be a force for chaos she does seem to want to help Wanda see the truth behind her actions. When she does, our hero can no longer live in the pretense she’s built around herself and her dream family. In both the comics and on screen, creators have struggled to give Wanda agency. But this series has done a lot of work to fix that.

Here Wanda isn’t a pawn in a greater scheme or an innocent used for malevolent means. She’s a grieving woman who did something terrible and is finally working her way to making it right. While her tragedy is still front and center, it’s she who eventually makes the decisions that she needs to begin to fix it. There’s no Charles Xavier or Stephen Strange swooping in to save her from herself. Instead, we see a Wanda who sacrifices her happiness to make amends. 

In case the allusion here isn’t clear, Wanda has to give up her dream life in order to save the denizens of Westview who’ve all been under her grief spell. She knows it’s the right thing to do. Once she beats Agatha and takes on the guise of the Scarlet Witch, she does it without question. It’s a transformative moment for Wanda, not only because she literally does a cool magic transformation into her new costume but because she finally knows the truth about herself and her powers, and is coming to terms with it alone. She rejects the easy option which would be to continue living in Westview under the spell of her own power with the imaginary family she’s created. Instead, she decides to truly deal with the loss she feels and begin anew as herself facing the trauma she’s both suffered and caused. 

Olsen has, of course, been the star of this series, and the meta-series within a series that the show began as. But she really sells every heartbreaking moment of the finale. Both she and Bettany make every second feel unbearably tender as they tuck their kids into bed for the last time. Vision’s empathy and compassion towards his wife is a master stroke of emotional storytelling, as it’s such a great foil to Wanda’s almost impossible to navigate grief. The pair share a season best exchange as they wait for the Hex to swallow them up and free Westview while erasing Vision and the boys from existence. It’s heartbreaking and speaks to the level of care and precision that the pair have taken with their character work. 

The Mid Credits Scene

The episode ends with Wanda leaving Westview, still viewed as a villain by those who were her victims but as more of an empathetic anti-hero by Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris). Monica doesn’t get much screen time this week which is a shame, but she gets a great hero moment and a mid-credits scene that sets up her cosmic path to Captain Marvel 2.

Elsewhere, Hayward has been arrested after being trapped by the boys and Monica, then incapacitated by Darcy (Kat Dennings) in that funnel cake truck from last week. Jimmy Woo looks like he’s in charge of… something involving the FBI investigation of what’s been happening. SWORD needs a new leader now anyway, so could he take on the role? We’d love to see more of him so we’re here for it. With Monica visited by a Skrull and the rest of the crew getting on with life, everything seems to be set up for a SWORD and space heavy MCU Phase four… at least until we get to the post-credits sequence. 

The Post Credits Scene

Usually I don’t talk about post-credits sequences in reviews but this one was so cool I had to. We find Wanda at a rural mountain range, that if you’re a fan of her comic book history you might recognize. She sips tea and seems to have found a kind of peace. But as we follow the camera into the bedroom we discover another version of Wanda. It’s the Scarlet Witch reading the Darkhold and taking in all its power. It’s a striking image and one that is only interrupted when we hear Billy and Tommy screaming for their mom to help them. It’s a bold cliffhanger that we sadly will likely not see resolved or touched upon again until Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in 2022. 

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But until then, we should all celebrate this show that swung for the fences and hit a home run. This was a rare series that tried to do something new and different and actually managed it. That, even in the world of franchise blockbusters and corporate owned IP, had a heart, soul, and message. And that always managed to feel real and emotionally honest in spite of the metatextual shell it was presented in. We’ll miss you, WandaVision. 

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