Marvel announcements, December 2020

[purlieu]

TBH, all this talk of years worth of old stuff being "required viewing" before watching the new stuff just makes me question whether it's worth bothering with at all.

Pretty sure none of them are required viewing, they'll just add some depth and a lot of "ooh I get that reference!" moments. As someone who's, shamefully, a sucker for interlinked stories and "ooh I get that reference!" moments, I'm doing it for that.
Similarly, any developments that come about from the Disney+ series will undoubtedly be explained in the films, but if you want a full back story rather than a bit of dialogue, then they're there to fill that out.
Marvel aren't going to fuck up the most successful film franchise ever by making it that impenetrable.

[13 schoolyards]

I actually really hope Deadpool doesn't become part of MCU. The Deadpool films on their own are fine enough,  but up till now I've liked the fact that the MCU is a reasonably kid-friendly series of films, bopping along with nothing too violent or upsetting in them. They've been like a reliable comfort-watch over the years: I can go in knowing what I'm going to get, and that it's not going to stray too far out of the boundaries of a PG-12A movie. But adding Deadpool will likely mean they will need to keep the R-Rated aspects of those films and take them into the MCU, and whilst it's hardly Irreversible levels of grimness, to me it still just feels a bit too violent and dark to mix with tone of the existing universe.

It's like if Frasier had a cop spin-off prequel show about Martin Crane's policeman days, and it was a comedy-drama with moments that included gory crime scene investigations and added effing and blinding to make it more realistic. Yeah, as it's own thing it could be good, but it just wouldn't fit (again, for me) with the tone of it's source material, Frasier.

I know it's not all about me though, and I can imagine real Marvel fans would probably argue that the comics and general source material has previously had years and years of darker, more violent stuff in them, so I guess I might be in the minority of wanting it to stay the way it is.

I suspect if Deadpool does formally become a part of the Marvel Universe all the R-rated shit will be kept in his own movie(s) - it'll be a corner where Marvel takes the piss out of itself without the gore and swears spreading out into the main franchise. If you feel that you have to watch every MCU movie no matter what then yeah, maybe it'll affect how you see the other films, but keeping this kind of violent satire as a separate thing has worked just fine in the comics (DC had the same thing with Lobo) for the last 30 years or so.

[Bad Ambassador]

It's like if Frasier had a cop spin-off prequel show about Martin Crane's policeman days, and it was a comedy-drama with moments that included gory crime scene investigations and added effing and blinding to make it more realistic. Yeah, as it's own thing it could be good, but it just wouldn't fit (again, for me) with the tone of it's source material, Frasier.

Rock and Chips.

[bgmnts]

TBH, all this talk of years worth of old stuff being "required viewing" before watching the new stuff just makes me question whether it's worth bothering with at all.

It's not really.

[olliebean]

Pretty sure none of them are required viewing, they'll just add some depth and a lot of "ooh I get that reference!" moments. As someone who's, shamefully, a sucker for interlinked stories and "ooh I get that reference!" moments, I'm doing it for that.

I don't mind interlinked stories where it's - for example - a weekly anthology show where the stories all link together by the end - but I don't have the long-term recall to know what's going on when, for example, a film picks up on a previously minor plot strand from another film that I saw a year or more ago. TBH I have trouble sometimes remembering all the story arcs that have carried over from one season to the next of a TV show. I often find, when sitting down to watch season 2 of something I've really enjoyed season 1 of, I have trouble re-engaging with it because I'm hazy about where it left off.

[purlieu]

Yeah, I have a list of TV shows I want to get into, and it's split into two. The second half consists of shows that are currently on air, which I don't intend to watch until they've finished, for that exact reason. Nine months is a long time to forget what's going on, especially if you've got other shows on the go all the time.

Other than WandaVision, The Falcon and Winter Soldier and most of the X Men films, I've seen all of my main list at least once before, so I'm hoping a second viewing makes more sense of it all and cements stuff more in my memory. As I say, I'm a sucker for Easter Eggs and such, and from what I've read, there'll be a few in WandaVision, so stuff like that is enough to make me think yeah, I'll just binge the whole lot. I wouldn't recommend it for a normal or remotely sane person.

[olliebean]

While I wouldn't dare try to pass as normal, I am very remotely sane.

[purlieu]

To be fair, I've already given up on the X-Men films. I can definitely tell how they helped define modern superhero films, but God there's absolutely no sense of fun in them at all. Wolverine and Cyclops trade a few mildly amusing barbed insults and that's about it. Thankfully, that means Spidey is on the way now.

[Glebe]

Call it lockdown madness, but I watched all three (officially-released) Fantastic Four movies over the weekend, for my sins. Absolute guff, though for all their faults at least the first two campy ones are a bit of fun, the 2015 reboot is incredibly dour and feels like half a movie, what with things only getting going in the last twenty minutes. Must give the Roger Corman one a look, it's on YouTube or owt.

[The Culture Bunker]

They've never got Dr Doom right and I think that's a big part of why those films fell short. He's got to be an arch-enemy to the F4 (and anybody else) who is capable of all manner of evil shit, but also a much loved ruler of Latveria, which he has built up from a nothing Eastern European state to a world power through his scientific genius.

[SteveDave]

I discovered yesterday that Disney+ has all the DVD extras (including commentaries in some cases) for all the Marvel films. Which is nice. It's a pity that the platform is shit and has to be refreshed after 45 minutes to get everything back in sync.

[Glebe]

I discovered yesterday that Disney+ has all the DVD extras (including commentaries in some cases) for all the Marvel films. Which is nice. It's a pity that the platform is shit and has to be refreshed after 45 minutes to get everything back in sync.

Maybe just for the MCU movies though?

[phantom_power]

And Star Wars, and a few others as well

[Magnum Valentino]

Wow, commentaries on streaming. That's quite exciting. Would love to see it catch on everywhere.

[purlieu]

Would definitely like to see a rise in that kind of thing. The death of DVD Extras in the past ten years has been a shit development.

In other news, Venom is definitely not MCU-linked (for the moment). Which comes as a relief, as that'll be striking a couple more films I don't especially want to watch out of my marathon.

[dissolute ocelot]

To be fair, I've already given up on the X-Men films. I can definitely tell how they helped define modern superhero films, but God there's absolutely no sense of fun in them at all. Wolverine and Cyclops trade a few mildly amusing barbed insults and that's about it. Thankfully, that means Spidey is on the way now.

Days of Future Past is good fun, with Peter Dinklage and the time travel. There's more humanity in X-Men than the Disney MCU, and the reboots generally manage to be colourful and spectacular even if nobody can really justify Dark Phoenix. I don't even think X-Men is particularly po-faced/unfunny compared to a lot of blockbuster cinema: Zack Snyder obviously, a lot of MCU films aren't exactly hilarious (particularly the main Avengers ones which are dependent on worse quips than X-Men), The Lord of the Rings is hardly overburdened with comedy (unless you count hobbits falling over), Hunger/-Ent/Twilight/HP/every other shitty teen franchise, etc.

[Mister Six]

I think Winter Soldier is substantially grimmer than anything in the Deadpool films.

And the Falcon show on Disney+ has a bit of swearing and some bloody bits, too. Seal's already off, I'm afraid.

[Lord Mandrake]

The audio commentaries for Infinity War and Endgame have both writers and directors and give a lot of insight as to how they structure such behemoth, logistical nightmares. It's a great bunch of nerds.

[samadriel]

I get the feeling Disney Plus has the commentaries and trailers and stuff because Disney has the rights to it all, and Netflix et al would have to pay extra for the rights to all the ephemera . Just a guess.

[phantom_power]

It would be good if BFI, Arrow etc had the extra features from their Blu-rays on their streaming sites and Amazon Prime

[frajer]

It would be good if BFI, Arrow etc had the extra features from their Blu-rays on their streaming sites and Amazon Prime

You're in for a treat, the upgraded Arrow channel app that launched a few months ago is chock full of extras. Feast on this: https://www.arrow-player.com
I use it through the Firestick on my LG telly and it's great. High quality stream and very responsive.

[phantom_power]

Is it the same for their Amazon Prime channel?

[frajer]

Nah just on their own player.