OncomingStorm93

I do to, and I hope so, but I’ve got two months to reasonably crank up the prediction

Me checking this place out right now for the first time:

For me it's hard to fathom a world where The Super Mario. Bros Movie does anything less than Sonic 2 OW/DOM/WW, which was 72m/192m/402m It is looking incredibly well done. The art design, animation quality, and 90% of the voice acting is on point. I think the deep cast roster and not a focus on a single star ala Ryan Reynolds/Jim Carrey makes a difference. How much of Pikachu and Sonic success was because of the films being sold on those two personalities? Mario appears to be hitting every possible button needed to draw out anyone who fell in love with Nintendo at any point over the past four decades. Chris Pratt remains miscast unfortunately, but at this point everyone's ready to overlook it. And like much of Illumination, I expect it to have high rewatchability. I'm thinking $85m/$220m/$550m

Dan Harmon predates R&M. His work on Community is akin to the Russo Brothers and their television directing accomplishments. Also, apparently Harmon did uncredited rewrites on Dr Strange 1, so he has an existing relationship with Marvel...

You know who Feige should bring in to righten the scripts? To fix up whatever the Rick and Morty writers have been cooking for the next two Avengers films? Go get Dan Harmon. I'm serious. Go all the way, get the man who it really seems has been the driving creative force behind the show, the one with the biggest and best track record, who knows Loveless and Waldron and has surely doctored their scripts before on Rick and Morty in the writers room. He knows how to play with genre. Master at character dynamics. Can deconstruct and reconstruct a plot any number of ways.

Quantumania is better than Thor 4 on balance, but it’s also far less interesting. Pick your poison; orgy jokes and cancer drama in back-to-back scenes, or two hours of soulless cliches and vomit CGI Thor 4 is the washed up baseball pro who’s .200 at the plate but swings his ass off every attempt, Quantumania is the kid who hits the tee-ball every time but just knocks it to the ground barely, to mild clapping from the kid’s parents.

Let's play a game I like to call "Are you a better screenwriter than ChatGPT?" The prompt: "Create a three act story for "Ant-Man & The Qasp: Quantumania", where Scott, Hope, Hank, Janet, and Cassie are sucked into the Quantum Realm where they meet Kang the Conqueror, the next Marvel big bad who wants to rule the multiverse. Include MODOK is a supporting villain. Add a post-credits scene that sets up the next Avengers movie." So who wrote it better, Jeff Loveness or ChatGPT?

Edit: Moving this to the spoiler thread to be safe

Gonna say something I never thought I'd have to... Black Adam was $200m better spent. Two terrible movies, but at least Black Adam *attempted* to tell a self-contained story with a semblance of a character arc for it's lead character. I need to take a shower after saying that.

Civil War and Toy Story 4 come to mind

There's no greater sign that the MCU has had a rough year critically and commercially than the fact FeIger (has anyone thought of that name combo before?) shouting from the rooftops (aka talking to the trades) that they're recalibrating.

If I had $150m to toss around, I'd produce a Fullmetal Alchemist movie. First movie (for those aware of the story), a 20-ish minute prologue setting up the world and the Elric's backstory, and 100 minutes of the brothers & military vs Scar in Central City arc. Relatively self-contained with hints of the larger story, which could be feasibly executed in 4ish more films if the first one is a hit. I do think the Fullmetal Alchemist IP screams for a Hollywood adaptation more than most other popular anime

I thought it was supposed to be his superior intellect, ruthlessness, and master of strategy. With the "army of me" element being secondary, more akin to henchmen.

It's time Ant-Man & The Wasp got some anti-slander. Is it perfect? No, none of these films are. There's three or four ongoing plot threads that are forced to overlap unnaturally. The plot elements surrounding "Ghost" and Laurence Fishburne are contrived to create artificial tension (this film didn't need a villain honestly, the quest to find Janet could have stood on it's own. Maybe make Goggins the central obstacle, tone down his theatricality, make him more menacing) Luis' business subplot is entirely redundant. Michelle Pfeiffer completely wasted (though thankfully Quantumania, with all it's flaws, gave her something to do) That said... The core plot is character driven, feels like the natural continuation of the first film, is very well setup with the prologue scene. The film's heart is strong throughout (Quantumania felt soulless). It's very funny. Paul Rudd doing a Pfeiffer impression for 3 minutes was hilarious. Him shrunk down to grade-school size was great. Randall Park always gets me. The continued use of objects changing sizes (which was pretty much gone from Quantumania). Walton Goggins was a hoot, even if he did step out of a completely different movie. So much was shot in-camera. If I recall, Hank's lab where much of the film takes place was Marvel's largest practical set at the time. It exists essentially standalone, except for the credits scene. Very minimal MCU investment needed to fully enjoy this. Don't recall any of the visual effects being terrible, although Hank's journey into the Quantum Realm at the end looked too green-screeny at times. All in all, it straddled a fine line between weird, accessible, funny, heartfelt, self-contained, and with some truly unique setups that would be hard to imagine in any other MCU film, or most other blockbusters. And it's my favorite of the trilogy.

This movie is Marvel Studios getting high on it's own farts. MODOK-face needs to be one of the reaction icons here. I walked out of the theater three hours ago, and I can't recall a single thing I would call a character arc. Pretty obvious based on the last-last-last minute pickup shots being done literally a month ago that the film's ending was changed at the buzzer. Both credits scenes were terrible for different reasons. The first one because it's just more Marvel sniffing farts, the second one because it lacks any sense of context. It confused some people in my audience.

Just saw it. 6/10 Ant-Man: 8 & The Wasp: 8.2 (not sure why it’s so hated by some) Also compared to: Multiverse of Madness: 7.5 Love and Thunder: 4 Wakanda Forever: 6.5 Poorly written, lacking all the charm of the first two films, a glutton of CGI, including some truly terrible moments as has become the MCU standard. Though I thought Peyton Reed did a reasonable job, but nothing truly special. There’s only one reason to see this movie, Jonathan Majors as Kang. Even if it wasn’t 100% setup for the future, and this was a one-off villain role, it still would count as a top-tier MCU villain. Majors as Kang is everything I was hoping it would be. Cassie’s actress did a good job with the material she was given, which was abysmal. I didn’t like the first post credits scene.

This is objectively hilarious: https://deadline.com/2023/02/wbds-david-zaslav-tim-cook-andy-jassy-top-list-of-overpaid-ceos-with-disney-netflix-new-sec-rules-1235261333/ That's two-and-a-half Batgirls of salary for the man slashing everyone's budget but his own.

I feel the exact same about The Irishman

FWIW, he gave Fallout a 3.5/5, and Rogue Nation a 3/5

I don't think Kosinski would be a good fit for the MCU given his background is in effects and not storytelling, and I haven't seen Spiderhead so I can't speak to it, but I thought both Tron Legacy and Oblivion were very well directed. They both had flawed scripts, but as far as a director executing his visuals and not screwing up the technical fundamentals of filmmaking, I think Kosinski is more than capable. If I were Kevin Feige, I would reconcile with Jon Favreau, who is still deeply ingrained in the Disney family. Let him direct Secret Wars... He's MCU royalty, knows the process, knows so many of the players involved, is very adept with the technical side of things. I trust him to juggle all the moving pieces. Who says no?

Shouldn't be that hard for Cretton to find a narrative crux to allow Leung to feature, and Feige can find however much $ he needs to make it happen (shouldn't be much) in his couch cushion. I second in the Shang-Chi praise. And while the 3rd act fell into some old Marvel cliches (too much CGI, too much dull grey tones, contrived setup), it never lost sight of the core family dynamics. My biggest issue with the 3rd act (and the entire film really) is how abruptly the film dispatched of Wenwu. He didn't get a conclusion nearly worthy of the character writing and performance.

Terrible "trailer". I wouldn't even call it a trailer. It's a 60-second TV spot that's 30 seconds longer than it needs to be. Not that it impacts my anticipation or BO expectations. The first trailer was one of the best trailers of 2022, and was the only one needed. I hope this one isn't getting screened in theaters instead of that first trailer.

Actually I greatly enjoyed Eternals. Thought it was a well-paced, character driven breath of fresh air with interesting cosmic concepts. 3rd act was disappointing though when it reverted to a standard MCU cgi mess. Wish it explored the "through the ages" element more. Patton Oswalt doesn't count as "an actor in a movie". He voiced a dwarft in a post credits scene, which would have taken two hours at most in the recording booth, months and months after principal photography wrapped. Now if any of the actual top billed actors mentioned a sequel being in active development, that would be another story. Even Kumail Nanjiani, one of said top billed actors, had this to say: There's no sequel currently being developed. Take the loss and move on. I am, as this is the last I'm engaging with you on this subject. Maybe any subject.

I really wish She-Hulk was a more straightforward Ally Mcbeal style legal comedy set in the MCU, like several of the episodic subplots tried to be, without the albatross of the larger narrative.

She-Hulk may be in both, but Tatiana Maslany ain't getting top billing. My list was TOP BILLING. I forgot to put Florence Pugh on that list though. I don't dispute that characters from Eternals will pop-up in other projects, but wake me up when a formal sequel is announced. And Patton Oswalt is a pretty week anchor for your argument about a sequel being confirmed. EDIT: Apparently Maslany was surprised by Ruffalo's comments (https://www.cinemablend.com/superheroes/marvel-cinematic-universe/looks-like-mark-ruffalo-may-have-spoiled-where-well-see-tatiana-maslanys-she-hulk-after-the-disney-series) so again, pretty weak sauce you're serving up.