Phaedrus' Street Crew
  • Content count

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Roderick










    So fuck 'em. I'll catch Brian on YouTube.

  2. Okay, Spider-Man: Far From Home.



    I was on the fence for this one. I didn't really expect they could capture lightning in a bottle again, but they just effing did it. I loved the movie and it's been a while since I exited the theatre in a state of such utter excitement. In fact, the first Spider-Man film was probably the last time I did!

    I have been waiting for Mysterio to get his moment in the spotlights for a while. He's an interesting villain, and one that is way more dangerous than he's usually given credit for. Read the Old Man Logan comic (brilliant in its own right) and you'll know what I mean. Having said that, the trailers seemed to put a hugely different spin on the character, and I suspected they might do some sleight of hand with this, but it seemed all too plausible this movie would head into multiverse stuff. Given that the recent Spider-Man animated film pulled this off with flair, and how the MCU-audience is pretty much primed for anything right now, it wasn't out of the question.

    But I was secretly hoping Mysterio would turn out a big hoax, the failed magician of yore, trying to fool everyone. And, err, BOY DID THEY GO THERE. The big reveal scene in the second half was just so awesome and provided exactly the same thrill Michael Keaton's Vulture did when he opened the door to Parker's classmate in the first movie. Far from feeling obvious or repetitive, this was such a joyous moment to drink in. And staying true to the story too - a multiverse storyline with interdimensional beings isn't nearly as interesting as a two-bit conman trying to bamboozle the whole world, and the stakes, while bigger than before, are still largely about Peter's friends surviving and his struggle with growing up as a superhero.

    So hotdamn. Surely, SURELY they won't be able to pull this off a third time, a few years from now? Spider-Man is already right up there with the Captain America trilogy as the best thing coming from the MCU and it might just supersede it.
























    The shows I currently follow:

    - GoT

    - Gotham

    - She-ra

    - Dix Pour Cent

    - Planet Earth

    - Brooklyn Nine-Nine

    - The Good Place

    - Star Trek Disco

    - TNG




    I could do with a few less.



  12. About Captain America's time travel adventures: it is implied that he didn't "return" to the original timeline by jumping back. They try to get him back, but he doesn't show up. Rather, he's sitting a ways away on a bench, as if he's been waiting there for them to appear. As in; he never left the same timeline and just waited it out. (Otherwise he should be wearing his spiffy quantum realm suit, and would've appeared near the device Hulk was operating.) This does, in a big way, undercut the whole time travel system.


    Again, I understand why they'd do it like this, because it is the most emotionally satisfying end, but it comes at the cost of blowing up the system.




  14. Endgame



    Everything you're saying, all of it, makes perfect sense. I didn't trip over a lot of it in that way, though I must admit that Ned not being in college and not being FIVE YEARS OLDER to Peter Parker is actually a big weird thing.

    I liked the movie, but mostly in the way that I like most Marvel movies: it was fine, just fine. It was also silly in a way I hadn't expected, after Infinity Wars' perfectly balanced gravitas. The time travel shenanigans felt very "Ant Man" and there were two body morphing comedies going on, one with Thor becoming the Beach Bum Lebowski and the other, less problematic of the two, Hulk's entirely off-screen resolution into Hipster Hulk. I didn't mind either, though it was only amusing at best. Iron Man and Captain America's arcs were satisfying and well done. Hawkeye's started out very strongly, then dissolved into nothingness.

    Some bold choices (FIVE YEARS LATER), some ho-hum feelings (retreads of the earlier movies, which weirdly gave Endgame less of an identity of its own), a tiring finale blow-out (wasn't expecting them to keep it small, but meh), and a poorly developed time travel plot.

    The time travel is weird. First they lampshade that the normal way of time travel in movies is wrong and say that even if you go back to the past, that's still your future, so you'll never be able to actually change anything, you're just, like, changing scenery as if you're rewinding a movie and taking props from the decor. And sometimes those props can travel along with you to the present, like Thanos and his army did. But then Tilda Swinton tries to turn the thinking back to the standard timelines-going-awry stuff, and in the end the movie tries to have it both ways? For some reason the infinity stones need to be brought back (though Thanos didn't have to!), and Steve can stay behind and yet reappear in the timeline he left behind.

    I don't mind stories to choose the emotionally satisfying resolution over plot coherence, but this was some major fumbling.

    Then again, the disappointing inclusion of Captain Marvel said a lot already. It's a boring character that is all-powerful (until she isn't), and there was nor eason she couldn't have appeared ten minutes earlier to save the day. Or stick around. Even Endgame considered her such an inconvenience that they had to find ways to keep her the hell away from this movie - which raises the obvious question of why did they even set her up as the savior to begin with, and why bother with her in the first place?








    And I'll also say that it feels like after the yuri-fest that was Yurikuma, the creator seems to have felt he needed to go the opposite route: this series is unabashedly gay, but in just as sweet a way as the previous show. Having said that, I've never quite seen three people link up as anal beads to extract a person's desire from their rectum before, so what the hell am I talking about when I write the word 'familiar'?





    I'll certainly finish it, of course, it's quite enjoyable.