Sckathian

You’ll never get that perfect experience to because fatigue means less preferable reception over time.

Do we know how big imax is for Ant Man? Feels like two weekends in a row it’s done just slightly better than expected. All the ads I am getting just now are imax promoting the film.

I'll say it repeatedly it's not an Ant Man film. Ant Man fans will be deeply disappointed especially the GA who just think their getting more Ant Man hijinks. Non Ant Man fans aren't suddenly going to go watch Ant Man. Marvel made a product for no one but their writers room. Problem they have is it looks like The Marvel's is going to have the exact same whiplash.

This shouldn't be surprising. Bale is playing a random god in Gorr but if he does Batman again then he will want Nolan involved and thematic reasons for the characters return. I don't see why people can't always understand you can't just throw an actor/character at something and expect it to work.

I mean it's not "no one" but clearly Kang wasn't enough and they basically built the film around him. That in itself is a problem. Will viewers expect the same from the next film he appears in? I don't think you can call him as a concept striking home. It's a two hour film and he's in a significant proportion of that.

I mean first of all RDJ/Evans left. They;ll get numbers returning for a big film but Marvel can’t sustain off that. They need their other characters and films succeeding. Marvels will struggle. It’s another franchise they;ve twisted into larger story telling but this time with an anchor around Captain Marvels neck in the shape of two unpopular tv characters, Cap/Thunderbolts will be interesting. If they are quality then I could see a weaker opening but with better legs. They should be more grounded/winter soldier like (I hope!) - but Cap has a lot to prove, I don’t find Evans replacement charasmatic. I still think 2024 looks better than 2023 minus Guardians. It’s at least more stand alone.

They are at least showing some self identification of issues so that helps. Personally I think the concept is the problem (it should have been an Ant Man film) so personally I think they] guy behind hiring them needs looked at…

Ant Man has been a real roller coaster but ultimately wom and reviews matter more than anecdotes online.

If the worldwide box office has changed then the franchise will need to change with less content and cheaper movies. Hardly a win for fans. Alternatively make films which have a global audience.

Talk of haters is embarrassing. People discussing the top pop culture franchise should not be surprising. Anyway next weekend could be super interesting. If it has a soft drop then it's clear Marvel can keep people with the promise of the overall arc in the MCU regardless of quality.

GotG3 won’t help their next projects which are far from slam dunks. GotG for such a central franchise to the MCU stands separate in the same way Spiderman does. I don’t know why some are acting like the current MCU situation has precedence in the franchise. It simply doesn’t. GotG is likely it’s last outing with this talent pool. I don’t see how it’s likely success is encouraging.

I’ll be very honest that I didn’t think magical stones on a gauntlet would work for GA. Marvel made it work - the best thing about IW is there’s a single scene of exposition on what the stones are and then they just talk about ‘the stones’ and use visual clues for which ones Thanos uses. you can absolutely take these concepts and make it work. Personally I don’t think a multiverse arc works, the multiverse should just exist and be tapped into (Spider-Man) when needed. Have Kang as a long term returning villain rather than ‘the big bad’.

They cover their arses in End Game with this (but not in a Doctor Who, have the main character spell out why it allows for inconsistencies sort of way and joke it off) - technically they just say time in the Quantum Realm ‘works differently’ which is why they are actually able to travel back through time (I mean why Scott decided this was feasible due to slowed time is beyond me, but that’s the script). They never say 1 minute = 1 year, just ‘it works different’. It’s a shit answer and a single line could just explain it away but the writer seem to want to gloss over things rather than give a jumbo jump answer. Headcannon - the quantum realm has different pockets of existence, the pocket which supports life (where Janet was) runs in parallel with normal time. Other regions of the quantum realm are time traps and that’s where Scott was. Honest answer - they need Scott to somehow become secret genius and not a man whose gone mad floating in empty space for 5 years (if he somehow doesn’t starve to death!). it wouldn’t be hard for Marvel to come up with a line but that just shows their lack of craft in recent years.

The shows have abysmal viewing figures as well. I think this is going to have a big impact on The Marvels - they’ve tied weights around Captain Marvels neck (especially with the synopsis). Even Loki could have been a pretty great selling film. The TV shows clearly have diminishing returns as Marvel struggles to make the formats/quality work. For a connected universe it’s really hard to keep up with this many hours of content. Much of it not very good. I also think the MCU is becoming more connected not less post phase 3, which adds to the frustration of a random cinema goer.

Anecdotal I know but Thor 4 is the only MCU film I've had multiple conversations with people who switched it off and didn't watch it all. Probably better in theatres but it clearly rubbed some people the wrong way.

The majority of the public, including people who would call themselves fans of the MCU have no idea what is coming next except for trailers. No one knows who Kang is. In fact I bet there's some Loki viewers who haven't even made the connection. Loki really should have been a film. Most of the audience either don't care or don't know Kang is the next big bad. You can't tell people someone is the big villain, they have to follow the story and see them as that. The audience who care for Kang are going to watch any MCU content anyway. Captain Marvel was a break out primarily because it was a female lead when that just hasn't been happening in the MCU and it was during MCU mania between IW and EG. To most people they don't know who Kang is or why they should care. Instead Ant Man fans are seeing trailers which put two middle fingers up to the franchise and non Ant Man fans are still seeing Ant Man in trailers. Kang for me sounds like a very unfriendly character for mainstream audiences. If you don't read the comics (95% of viewers) then I think the MCU is going to appear super fucking weird for the next three years.

It's also the most straight forward film in recent years thanks to being an origin film. The fact Shang Chi is probably not appearing again (despite an excellent cliffhanger) until a big mash up rather than an original sequel is bizzare.

I really don't understand why this film is called Thunderbolts. It sounds like a mix of B Avengers. Guess we'll find out but strikes me as bad branding considering how 'The' Eternals did.

Eternals is not getting a sequel. Also if the MCU becomes a series of 500M films then Disney will put it's money elsewhere.

These cameos really aren’t assured. Also if MCU becomes a cameo machine that has longer term implication which are not good at all. —— Looking forward I think the ‘dangers’ for MCU will be the less grounded films. Guardians despite being in space has an ensemble cast who are relatable; The Marvels is surely going to be pretty earth based and straight forward. Then we have Captain America which again should be pretty earth based and straight forward. So should be a run that’s not a bunch of actors looking miserable on a flat sound stage which seems to have been a hinderance for Thor/Ant Man. They just need to reign in the writers and artists.

You would hope so from a known cast of characters.

I honestly think there’s a section of the influencers for these types of films who don’t know why they are popular but have to play to the crowd so get caught out when stuff like this happens.

Lurked without an account for a while. Wanted to raise that all the discourse I see online about this film is about entire phases of the MCU but it’s more than that for me. Why is this an Ant Man film? These are grounded (to some degree) and skew to funny (AM2 I find extremely disappointing but that’s just a bad film) - instead we have Ant Man and Co. minus some characters from the other films heading off into a cgi world to fight battles and set up the main MCU villain. There’s a reason Ant Man went the funny route. It’s a funny premise. They grounded it with a simple father/daughter relationship. Who greenlit this third films concept? I feel like they just ignored the series so far and basically treated it as a cookie cutter MCU character to fit into any story. That doesn’t work. My expectation has always been this film does around the same as AM2, boosted by Kang but losing some Ant Man fans along the way which I would see as a loss to the series. On phases; I feel like the sticking people on a sound stage with blue screen has become the standard. Without any geometry on said sound stage, so everything looks flat and the actors look intensely bored (Thor 4 looked misersble). It’s the fault of how their VFX pipeline works, they need to move it away from preproduction and let directors play around a bit. Theres too much MCU stuff so quality control is dropping and it’s much harder for them to respond to what the viewers like/dislike. MCU doesn’t really work without interpersonal relationships between films and there are literally none after they lost their original cast (mostly). This is going to be a problem imo.