GambitPool

Bucky is def in Thunderbolts because they don't have faith the concept will sell the film alone. Shame they're not growing their friendship further when it's the thing people like most about Mackie's Cap.

There's a couple of action scenes they can add. Denis has been good at showing scenes only mentioned in the book.

I love, love, love Villeneuve's foray into sci-fi. But I'd love to see him tackle another realistic drama after Rendezvous with Rama and Dune Messiah. Prisoners and Sicario gave me a sense of dread and anxiety I haven't experienced since and that's because they feel like reality.

Poor Things stole Barbie's lunch. No two ways about it. Poor Things is R-Rated (nearly NC-17) Barbie. It goes further in its exploration of the same messages Barbie had to restrict itself because of its rating. Barbie is baby's first Feminist lesson while Poor Things is a Freshman majoring in Feminist Studies at university. It even overtakes Barbie's cinematography with its own experimental camerawork. If Poor Things didn't release last year, Greta and Margot would be nominated.

Google the name of his cat...

Somewhere along the way Marvel forgot the massive team up films (Avengers, Civil War) weren't just culminating the most recent story, they just huge chances for a character to steal the show and break out. Avengers allowed Hulk to be a scene stealer while Thor and Loki got a boost in popularity. While Cap wasn't the best character, he still got a boost by association. This paid off as Thor 2 and Cap 2 had decent increases. But it also helped the OG team feel closer as Cap and Widow teamed up in Cap 2. Age of Ultron didn't have a break out character, but allowed Wanda and Vision to become well known to general audiences and they eventually found their fan bases. Civil War was absolutely essential in Black Panther and Spider-Man becoming as huge as they were. But having that built in trust with Cap and Tony starring made sure those two were exposed to audiences who didn't really know who T'Challa was yet and putting faith in another Spider-Man so soon after Garfield's. Them waiting for Kang Dynasty is killing the anticipation of a new Avengers team. Kamala should've made her big screen debut in an Avengers film in a scene stealing role. Shang Chi needs major exposure as his debut film was in the middle of COVID. General audiences know nothing about Sam Wilson's Cap. These character absolutely needed an Avengers film with already beloved characters like Spidey, Strange, Hulk, maybe Thor or Bucky on the team to bring exposure to them. Even Cap Marvel would've benefitted from having a significant role instead of a 5 minute cameo. Now we're left waiting on an Avengers film that may or may not happen before the phase ending extravaganza with a team that barely knows each other and may lose to set up Secret Wars and every nostalgia cameo they can find. Edit: Forgot how Infinity War, Endgame, and No Way Home made Strange as well.

Ryan Reynolds wishing he wasn't joining the MCU so he could make this joke next year.

WF and Eternals def should have been sent there.

If Cap 4 is a team up film, then Marvel/Disney might seriously consider calling it Captain America: New Avengers.

I have an anecdote regarding Captain Marvel. I taught children overseas in Asia a couple years ago. I showed Endgame's opening and final battle for the last day of the semester. When Carol carried the Guardians' ship to Earth, one of my girl students went "Wow." Then when Cap Marvel beat up Thanos, she couldn't hold back her excitement and yelped in joy. After class, she asked me who Cap Marvel was, then she said she would watch her movie at home. This shit matters, worldwide, and Disney/Marvel deserves all this failure for not capitalizing on Cap Marvel's brief popularity following her film and Endgame.

In a way, I think the negative press about presales is creating a game with audiences. How low can we get this opening weekend?

Holland would declare retirement if that happened lol.

Still don't understand that decision. We already had the loss of Chadwick in real life and T'Challa in universe. Why did they need to add Queen Ramonda to that? It made the film unnecessarily bleaker.

Preach. This is what I said a few pages back. Audiences have limited time and money now. They don't want to see projects that have nothing to do with the grand picture. Edit: To add, what are projects like Echo, Armor Wars, IronHeart, Agatha, Wonder Man, even Thunderbolts adding to this saga? Kang Dynasty/Secret Wars is the end goal. What are those stories doing to lead to that? They need to brainstorm again. We should not have 5 different plots leading to 5 different endpoints. Audiences are trained and comfortable with Avengers films as bookmarks. Don't tell them Avengers films aren't even finales anymore. They don't want multiple finale type films because that's overwhelming. When they announced Agatha, based off her popularity, I knew they were losing focus.

Nothing they do going forward will be clean if they course correct, but they seriously have to think about finishing the Multiverse saga ASAP. I'm talking canceling/postponing any projects that aren't leading to Kang Dynasty/Secret Wars. No Armor Wars, no Thunderbolts, no un-important Disney+ shows. I'd even go as far to Zaslav some stuff already filmed just to not dilute the brand further. Cut the fat. Keep it lean from here on out. Don't focus on stuffing Kang Dynasty with as many characters as possible. Leave the cameos for Secret Wars. Push Loki as a main character for Kang Dynasty as he and his show is still popular. And it's the only project pushing the story forward lol. Get KD out sooner rather than later. Any sequels should be dealing with incursions or a post KD universe if the comic version of Secret Wars is anything to go by. Cut their losses on this saga and move into the X-Men saga ahead of schedule.

I kinda hope they release the first trailer for Aquabro 2 after the movie releases lol.

COVID happening the next year did not help. Momentum was halted. And when they did come back to cinemas, their big return was Black Widow. In a perfect world post-Endgame, they could've went full steam with the X-Men and the Mutant Saga while slowly building up the new Avengers team for the eventual Multiverse saga. But there's too many hypotheticals in that situation.

Hope we don't regress back to only Batman and Spiderman CBMs. Those were dark times.

Can't wait to see a bunch of "I just watched Dead Reckoning Part One on streaming. Why didn't it do better at the box office?" articles and Reddit threads. 😐

It cannot be stressed enough how important it was to cast Margot and Ryan as Barbie and Ken. They not only look perfect, they embody the characters. If they had gone with ironic casting like Amy Schumer as Barbie and maybe someone like Michael Cera (he's already in the film) as Ken, then you're looking at a drastically smaller opening weekend. It's still important to cast for accuracy and embodiment for pre-established iconic characters because multiple generations aren't interested in irony or changes.

I'm just so happy we're having a pure celebration of cinema after the past few years of the industry/theaters taking major hits. Movies have been a major part of my life for so long and everything turning up streaming has been alarming to say the least. Things probably won't get better going forward, but at least we have this weekend of positivity.

Barbieheimer Mania running wild!!!

I predict 19.99m previews for Barbie for the lols.

I truly do wonder how audiences are going to react to 2 separate Batman film series running concurrently. Not multiverse Batmen. Not Batfleck cameos. Actual two different actors portraying two different Batmen in two different film series.

The Barbieheimer memes were great. But to see both film get stellar reviews is even better. This is what the industry should be about.