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March 28, 2024, 05:48:17 PM

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What If...?

Started by olliebean, August 11, 2021, 07:07:58 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

bakabaka

A show where things that didn't happen didn't happen differently? Can't wait.

Dr Rock

It was ok. The animation's nice.

mothman

Two things struck me. First, yes, the animation was great. And it allowed them to do things they probably could have done in live action with CGI, but would have looked crap if they had.
Spoiler alert
Like the aerial scene with Peggy attacking the bombers
[close]
. Second, it's odd how some of the voice cast somehow didn't sound like it was actually them doing it! Cooper and Stan in particular.

And then there's something that just doesn't make any sense to me: the point of divergence.
Spoiler alert
What difference does it make where Peggy Carter is in this scene? Here's the original transformation scene. And here's the aftermath. Why does Carter not being in the booth make THE difference? Especially since in the original the infiltrator and his Zippo-activated book-bomb [nb]Insert John Peel joke.[/nb] are both up there too, but appear to not be for the purposes of What If?
[close]

The Culture Bunker

It was a nice bit of fluff to occupy half a hour. I'm surprised (beyond Atwell) that they bothered to get anyone else to do the voices - though I did wonder if they just reused Tucci's dialogue from the original Cap America film.

Alberon

I've seen a bit of it and it looks decent enough animation and voice acting, but it does seem largely pointless. How do you avoid the Rick and Morty 'no consequences' problems?

The only way this could really become interesting is if some arc story emerges from the series as it goes along, but that seems unlikely. Otherwise it's hard to see this being of much interest.

What if Captain America was afraid of anchovies?
What if Doctor Strange couldn't pronounce the letter P?
What if the Hulk had IBS?

mothman

The Watcher or whatever his name was saying at the end he can observe but never interfere... yeah right, dead fucking giveaway straightaway. Let's just start calling him The Interferer right now, it'll save time later.

madhair60

mcu content conveyor belt crimps off another greasy log

bgmnts

Quote from: mothman on August 11, 2021, 11:38:44 PM
The Watcher or whatever his name was saying at the end he can observe but never interfere... yeah right, dead fucking giveaway straightaway. Let's just start calling him The Interferer right now, it'll save time later.

Yeah The Watcher sucks. With his big fat head. Honestly most extraterrestrial space opera shit in Marvel is crap to me, except the Dark Phoenix saga I think.

madhair60

just watched the first two minutes and the actual stupidest, most intelligence insulting thing i've ever seen happen in anything, ever, happened. so that's off.

anyone who likes this cannot discern good things from bad, i'm sorry.

mothman

You'll have to be more specific, this is Marvel we're talking about after all.

olliebean

2 minutes just about gets you past the intro.

Lord Mandrake

Quote from: Alberon on August 11, 2021, 10:55:29 PM

The only way this could really become interesting is if some arc story emerges from the series as it goes along, but that seems unlikely. Otherwise it's hard to see this being of much interest.


Spoiler alert
There is an overarching plot which ties into Loki and the incoming multiverse films. It is directly tied to the larger MCU.
[close]

The guy doing Steve was better than actual Sebastian Stan. Dominic Cooper seemed to get the tone right whereas Hayley Atwell was a bit OTT. I think they'll get better. Animation was really nice and more animated projects, including a Pixar/Marvel collaboration could be an interesting new avenue to explore whilst big Bix office films seem in jeopardy.

madhair60


bakabaka

Quote from: madhair60 on August 12, 2021, 01:17:06 PM
Really? I think it's hideous
When one of the three main influences is Norman Rockwell, you know that 'visually interesting' was never part of the remit. It was never going to be even Tron Uprising.

Lord Mandrake

Quote from: madhair60 on August 12, 2021, 01:17:06 PM
Really? I think it's hideous

Oh no! Should I try and change your mind or something?

Oh, Nobody

I enjoy hearing Hayley Atwell gasp and grunt for thirty minutes as much as the next guy but JESUS.

Whedon-level quips, bland design, bland animation, first-take style acting from celebs with not particularly distinctive voices (presumably half the budget), about four DO YOU GET IT THAT THING HAPPENED IN THE MOVIE SEE moments and the threat of it all tying together into some kind of 'Multiverse Avengers' bullshit meant I couldn't enjoy this through my furrowing brow. Five bags of dogshit.

Had to watch an episode of Goof Troop to cleanse the palate.

colacentral

Quote from: Alberon on August 11, 2021, 10:55:29 PM
I've seen a bit of it and it looks decent enough animation and voice acting, but it does seem largely pointless. How do you avoid the Rick and Morty 'no consequences' problems?

The only way this could really become interesting is if some arc story emerges from the series as it goes along, but that seems unlikely. Otherwise it's hard to see this being of much interest.

What if Captain America was afraid of anchovies?
What if Doctor Strange couldn't pronounce the letter P?
What if the Hulk had IBS?

Why does it need to have an arc to be interesting? It's standalone episodes, 30 minutes each, the way 99% of TV has been for the majority of time it's existed.

I was expecting this to be shat so it performed above my expectations. I agree partially with negative comments about the animation. It's not to my taste, very stiff, but it worked well in the action scenes.

Compared to grown up TV, not great. Compared to other Saturday morning kids action cartoons, decent.

Lord Mandrake

Quote from: colacentral on August 12, 2021, 11:24:19 PM
Why does it need to have an arc to be interesting? It's standalone episodes, 30 minutes each, the way 99% of TV has been for the majority of time it's existed.

the animation. It's not to my taste, very stiff, but it worked well in the action scenes.


I can understand the animation not being everyone's taste,  what is?

Calling it stiff though and praising the action scenes? They merely exentuated the fluidity that was on display throughout, really the movement was exceptional. The character designs are Disney and some of the voicing stilted but as you say compared to it's cohort, it's good.

My kids certainly enjoyed it but try explaining many worlds theory to an 8 year old. Chadwick Boseman is in three of these which will be emotional.

colacentral

Quote from: Lord Mandrake on August 13, 2021, 10:27:57 AM
I can understand the animation not being everyone's taste,  what is?

Calling it stiff though and praising the action scenes? They merely exentuated the fluidity that was on display throughout, really the movement was exceptional. The character designs are Disney and some of the voicing stilted but as you say compared to it's cohort, it's good.

My kids certainly enjoyed it but try explaining many worlds theory to an 8 year old. Chadwick Boseman is in three of these which will be emotional.

It's stiff in dialogue scenes, scenes with not much movement,  particularly early in the episode, and the lip syncing is atrocious. That's because they've tried to go towards the more realistic side design wise, and the more you go towards that, the more difficult it gets for the eye not to be distracted by all the ways that the animation isn't quite true to life. The more realistic character designs lend themselves well to action scenes though because there's less attention to fine details that we're used to looking for in real life, ie natural body movements, particularly in the face. The movements of the fight scenes are already too exaggerated to be mistaken for real, so the mind accepts them more readily.

The best moments for me animation wise were when it was most exaggerated and cartoony. There were times when some of the facial expressions almost reminded me of Aardman stuff, and I'd have liked them to tweak the designs more towards that personally.

Povidone

Fairly slight, perfunctory marvel entry but as usual enjoyable enough. Thought it could have done with diverging from the events of the first captain america film though, by the time it starts getting interesting the episode is nearly over.

Hopefully things will get a bit more outlandish in subsequent episodes.

My biggest problen is that in another of Marvel's poorly kept secrets this seems to be leading up to some kind of team up or larger story within its own continuity which im not really that up for. Im a sucker for connections in the movies, thats pretty much what keeps me coming back and im fine with that. But I was put off by the notion thats going to happen here, Id rather see them do self contained stories on this one.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: colacentral on August 13, 2021, 10:49:25 AM
There were times when some of the facial expressions almost reminded me of Aardman stuff, and I'd have liked them to tweak the designs more towards that personally.
Be careful what you wish for.

Bad Ambassador

The plotting was atrocious.
Spoiler alert
First the SSR have the Tesseract, then Hydra suddenly does with no explanation, then later Carter pushes the tentacles back into their home dimension or what ever the fuck, and the portal comes out in, I dunno, SHIELD headquarters?
[close]
Who wrote this shit?

mothman

Spoiler alert
The Nazis had the Tesseract, Carter took it off them, Stark used it to power the Iron Chap or whatever the suit was called, then Red Skull set a trap to capture Rogers and retrieve the Tesseract from the suit. Hence Rogers having to run the suit off a normal generator when the Posse rescued him.
[close]

Bad Ambassador

Quote from: mothman on August 13, 2021, 01:27:37 PM
Spoiler alert
The Nazis had the Tesseract, Carter took it off them, Stark used it to power the Iron Chap or whatever the suit was called, then Red Skull set a trap to capture Rogers and retrieve the Tesseract from the suit. Hence Rogers having to run the suit off a normal generator when the Posse rescued him.
[close]

Ah, fine.
Spoiler alert
I'm not sure it was clear the suit was powered by the Tesseract. I thought the big aqualung on his back was a jetpack or something, like if the Rocketeer wore a suit of armour.
[close]

mothman

It probably was exactly that - but just one powered by it.

VelourSpirit

Fights were fun but the Cap America 1 retreading was dull and the bits that were different were rubbish.
The guy who played Steve Rogers sounded more like Chris Evans than the other actual actors sounded like themselves.
I think they should have kicked it off with Boseman in Guardians of the Galaxy, though "what if x character was y character instead" isn't interesting to me at all. I'm not really fussed by any of the ideas I've read for this series really. Maybe whichever one the Dr Strange one is will be good! Aside from that errrr I guess I'll just be waiting for the Hawkeye show since I loved the Fraction/Aja run

olliebean

Having seen Den of Geek are reviewing these in a format that includes "Required Viewing" from the previous MCU oeuvre at the top, I realised that this series is aimed at people who are way more invested in the whole MCU timeline than I am. For me it's "So what?" because it's exploring what if something happened differently from how it happened in a film from several years back that I may have enjoyed at the time but wasn't bothered enough about to store the details of the plot in my long-term memory. It's a stupid spot-the-difference game that I'm not interested in playing.

Glebe

Watched the first episode, found it enjoyable for what it was.

Fair fucks to Toby Jones for picking up a day's pay to say two lines.