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March 28, 2024, 04:17:12 PM

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What If...?

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

Previous topic - Next topic

AsparagusTrevor

Quote from: TwinPeaks on August 15, 2021, 01:04:09 AMThe guy who played Steve Rogers sounded more like Chris Evans than the other actual actors sounded like themselves.

Dominic Cooper especially, he was terrible. Apart from forgetting how to do an American accent his delivery was bordering on parody.

It's all well and good having the proper people doing the voices where they can, but there's a huge difference between voice-acting and regular acting, proper voice-actors will usually do a much better job.

Povidone

Second episode is fun enough, makes better use of the premise than the previous one with some interesting changes to the characters.

It's all still pretty slight though, just breezes through its minimal plot with no time for much exposition or character depth. As mentioned upthread totally inessential for anyone not reasonably invested in the MCU already. Seems like a lot of money to spend on what feels like a quick tie-in comic.

Watching all of Invincible between these two episodes probably hasnt helped my enjoyment of this series.

Mr_Simnock

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?


you could run with this

What if Hawkeye was bogeyed
What if Thor had persistent genital arousal disorder
What if Tony Stark couldn't count
What if Vision was blind
What if Black Widow was married


Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Making Karen Gillan blonde? Sod this show!

The Culture Bunker

I agree that they tried to pack a lot into half a hour, but I did enjoy
Spoiler alert
Thanos being defeated by the power of a good counter-argument
[close]
and the alternate storyline
Spoiler alert
basically meaning the universe was set to be destroyed anyways
[close]
.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Povidone on August 18, 2021, 04:16:17 PM
Second episode is fun enough, makes better use of the premise than the previous one with some interesting changes to the characters.

... As mentioned upthread totally inessential for anyone not reasonably invested in the MCU already.
I am reasonably invested in the MCU (not financially, sadly) and it feels pretty inessential to me as well.
In fact, I reckon it's probably better if you don't think too much about the films. At the risk of sounding like a big nerd, this one didn't really feel like it was extrapolating from a single change to the canon. You could have replaced T'challa with pretty much any other character and still done the same story. It was less "What If?" and more "Why Not?"

Povidone

Thats a pretty good assessment of it. The point of divergence was really arbitrary and dumb...which was also true of last episode but they did put a little bit of effort into showing how that would play out in the moment. Seems like they had the idea that T'Challa is inherently a better person than Quill and went from there.

mothman

The Toby Jones Award For Excellence In The Field Of A Lucrative Five Minutes' Work goes to... Carrie Coon! Yay!

The Sebastian Stan Award For Sounding Like It Could Be Literally Anyone goes to... Benecio Del Toro! Boo!

I enjoyed this one, it was a fun if still-inconsequential little romp. I do wonder if they dialled up the hagiographising a bit after CB's death, it did feel a bit much at times, like they were Mary-Sueing the character somewhat. But I'd not hold that against them, it was a nice tribute.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: mothman on August 19, 2021, 12:24:38 AM
The Toby Jones Award For Excellence In The Field Of A Lucrative Five Minutes' Work goes to... Carrie Coon! Yay!
I think she already won that for Infinity War.

Povidone

Quote from: mothman on August 19, 2021, 12:24:38 AMThe Sebastian Stan Award For Sounding Like It Could Be Literally Anyone goes to... Benecio Del Toro!

Haha! Having seen his name in the opening credits every time he opened his mouth I wondered why they bothered. There was maye one line that felt like it came from the Del Toro 'Collector' we'd already been introduced to.

Lord Mandrake

Voice work of Chadwick Boseman, Josh Brolin and Michael Rooker really elevated this one. Maybe they recorded together as the tone was so much more consistent than last week.

Bad Ambassador

Djimon Hounsou was superb, never heard/seen him do comedy before. I like that halfway through,
Spoiler alert
he starts calling T'Challa his best friend in conversations with others
[close]
.

AsparagusTrevor

This week's was miles better, lots of fun. Like others have said the voice work from the MCU actors seemed much improved.

madhair60


mothman

Quote from: Bad Ambassador on August 19, 2021, 10:42:59 AM
Djimon Hounsou was superb, never heard/seen him do comedy before. I like that halfway through,
Spoiler alert
he starts calling T'Challa his best friend in conversations with others
[close]
.

It's a shame that Prime Korath is no more - or rather, no great loss, because this alternate is a lot more fun, and I really hope this boosts his standing with the producers and they're inspired to bring him back for live action multiversal LOLZ.

Glebe

Second episode was also decent fun. Rather bittersweet that it's Boseman's last thing.

Quote from: Glebe on August 22, 2021, 05:18:53 PM
Second episode was also decent fun. Rather bittersweet that it's Boseman's last thing.

Apparently, he's in three more episodes.

bakabaka

The animation for these is done by creating it in 3D CGI and then giving everything a flat render, which explains the lifelessness of it all. It also implies that we will almost exclusively be seeing things that they have already got the assets of, be it characters, locations, etc. Because it's so much cheaper and quicker using products you've already paid for.

letsgobrian

Episode 3 really captures the tone of a lot of the old What If...? comics in that it is pointlessly bleak and sadistic.

Dr Rock

I enjoyed it, but isn't it a bit of a retcon that
Spoiler alert
Fury would be considering Thor for The Avengers at that point? He's just a big tough bloke after a strange hammer at the point of his death. And his existence has only been registered a few minutes earlier, too soon for either Fury and thus Pym to have their sights on him.
[close]

C_Larence

Quote from: Dr Rock on August 26, 2021, 09:11:41 PM
I enjoyed it, but isn't it a bit of a retcon that
Spoiler alert
Fury would be considering Thor for The Avengers at that point? He's just a big tough bloke after a strange hammer at the point of his death. And his existence has only been registered a few minutes earlier, too soon for either Fury and thus Pym to have their sights on him.
[close]

Spoiler alert
IIRC it's covered in the final confrontation, with Fury denying having any plans to recruit Thor and Pym countering that he was bound to eventually
[close]

mothman

The Toby Jones Award For Excellence In The Field Of A Lucrative Five Minutes' Work is shared by... Jaimie Alexander and Frank Grillo!

The Sebastian Stan Award For Sounding Like It Could Be Literally Anyone goes to... Jeremy Renner!

Honorary mention for Michael Douglas for sounding like someone doing a bad impression of himself.

And the inaugural Robert Downey Jr. Award For Re-recording Verbatim Lines That Could Have Been Recycled Wholesale From The Movie goes to... Nick Wingert!

Mister Six

I bet they couldn't afford whatever Downey would ask for reusing those lines, though. Blame Crispin Glover.

Small Man Big Horse

I just can't be arsed with this, and I'm not sure why as I've hoovered up every other MCU thing bar Winter Soldier. Hopefully it'll run for such a long time that it'll start getting silly, I remember after a while some of the What If? comics were ridiculously daft and enjoyed that element a lot. This article* has some of the ones I was fond of, not all the issues they write about were all that but I remember "What if Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive sheep?" being amusing, and "What if Nick Fury had fought WWII in outer space?" was entertaining too.


*https://www.looper.com/450380/the-weirdest-what-if-stories-from-marvel-comics/

Povidone

Quote from: letsgobrian on August 26, 2021, 02:00:48 PM
Episode 3 really captures the tone of a lot of the old What If...? comics in that it is pointlessly bleak and sadistic.

That would be this latest episode

Went from finding it unbearable to being strangely* compelling. The entire hook of the episode was "is this going to commit to the bleakness being set up" and it pretty much did, so fair play. I think this might be the best one of these so far, was nice to see it having some fun animation after last week's looking like a tossed off episide of Archer.

*no relation

Lord Mandrake

Yeah that was leagues ahead of the rest, Props to Benedict Cumberbatch, always at full tilt. Beauty and the Beast meets Fantasia in a time machine on a brutally bad trip.

The Culture Bunker

It was two 'What If...?'s in one, wasn't it?

Spoiler alert
What if Christine Palmer had gone to the event with Strange and then what if Strange decides to try and change the past or not.
[close]

mothman

As before, the focal point of the change didn't seem relevant to the original sequence of events. How does her being in the car lead to his circumstances after the crash being different? And, original Strange was such an arsehole, would the death have caused him to follow the same path that led him to sorcery? In the original timeline he was looking for a cure for his hands; in the altered one, he's looking for... what?

However, it was a fantastically bleak tale, with - a first - all the original actors voicing their parts. I could give The Sebastian Stan Award For Sounding Like It Could Be Literally Anyone to Rachel MacAdams, but the main thing is it WAS her doing it and that should be commended. The Toby Jones Award For Excellence In The Field Of A Lucrative Five Minutes' Work could probably go to Leslie Bibb though!

Funnily enough the one person I wondered if it really was them doing it was Tilda Swinton..!

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

It was a bit of a downer, wasn't it? Even more than last week's. I was going to say that the episodes should be released on Saturday mornings, but I can't imagine the kiddiwinks enjoying those ones while they munch their breakfast cereal.

Quote from: mothman on September 04, 2021, 01:13:55 AM
As before, the focal point of the change didn't seem relevant to the original sequence of events. How does her being in the car lead to his circumstances after the crash being different? And, original Strange was such an arsehole, would the death have caused him to follow the same path that led him to sorcery? In the original timeline he was looking for a cure for his hands; in the altered one, he's looking for... what?
Yeah. It seemed a bit dumb (and more than a bit fridgey) that her death was meant to be some essential point in time, when it seemed like things played out just as they did in the film anyway.

mothman

And, it's just occurred to me, they pinched the idea of the 2002 version of The Time Machine - the Guy Pearce and Samantha Mumba (whatever happened to her?) one. In that the time machine is invented so he can go back to save the love of his life. But it always fails and she still dies. Because - as a chief Morlock played by Jeremy Irons later explains - it was her death that caused him to invent time travel. I'm not sure that explanation makes any more sense than this one here...