Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 2 & 3 thread.

In which sense? That BP is such a big thing because it's a black hero? Yeah, it grates.

I felt the same about WW.

Should be just another movie to look forward to, it's 2018 and we have to shit ourselves if a non-white-bloke led movie is good or not? It's pathetic.

Why the fuck are we meant to be self-congratulatory over something that should be normal? Yay us, we stopped being quite as shitty, can we have a cookie for it?

Yeah, but that's the world we live in.

Millions of morons believe in giant sky fairies that hate buttsex.
That's a thing too.

You know, that SOUNDS like starry-eyed idealism on the surface, but it's really chicken-shittery.

Yeah, it SHOULD be normal.

But you know what?
Wave a magic wand, and make everyone pretend it's normal, and don't observe the milestone, doesn't make it normal.
Not when you've still got bigots, and systemic prejudice.
In a world where there's no more Klan, and no more Trumpism, then you get to let it pass without incident.
Just like in a world with no more Weinsteins you get to pretend Wonder Woman was no big deal.

And trying to get to that post-asshole world by pretending it into being is denial at best, kicking the can down the street for the next generation at worst.

No, we have to observe this stuff.
Chanting "oughta, oughta, oughta,", doesn't get us to "is".
People doing the work, and having the work observed does.

I dunno. Superheros by definition aren't normal. They are about a person being more than they are expected to -- Superman, famously, started off doing class warfare, standing up for miners against their bosses and for lodgers against their slum lords. And even later it was still a power fantasy off-setting the powerless pencil pusher Kent. I'd say an emphasis on powerful black characters in a world that often doubts them is a perfect subject for a superhero movie.

I don't give a shit that BP is the first black-led superhero movie; I care if it's a good movie. The trailers look good and the advance buzz is good, so I'm looking forward to it.

Politics external to the film will play no role in how I regard this film. I won't call a bad film good because of its cultural/political significance. A film must ultimately be judged on its own merits as a work of entertainment.

There was a bit of this last year with Wonder Woman. Though it was a good film, I thought it was a bit over-rated because of its cultural/political significance (first big tentpole female-led superhero film, first big tentpole superhero actioner directed by a woman). Fun, thrilling, satisfying? Yes. Academy Award nominee? Come on. Best superhero movie ever? No, not even top 10 (IMHO). It wasn't even the best superhero film last year.

FTFY

It helps that Black Panther is very probably going to kick ass.

"Meteor Man", had its heart in a very beautiful place, but it's barely watchable.

Black Panther the character has pretty big cultural significance, tho. IIRC, T'Challa was the first mainstream black superhero, introduced in Fantastic Four way back in the 60s. And he wasn't just some schlub who happened to be black, he was king of his own nation, a genius, a potent hero, and was quite popular with the comics-buying audience. In terms of comics history he's kind of a big deal.

Rotten Tomatoes says they're going to try to block any bot campaigns, or just plain fuckery.

https://www.cbr.com/black-panther-rotten-tomatoes-response/

And Facebook just banned them.

https://www.cbr.com/facebook-bans-black-panther-rotten-tomatoes-sabotage-group/

Did everyone forget Blade and Spawn?

Yep, pretty much everyone did.

Actually, Blade may be seen as the initiator of the modern comic book movie.

That's not the subject of the movie though is it? That's the story around the movie.

Although the context around that is White People Feeling Better About Themselves.

If feeling down that BP is such a big thing because, y'know, black people, rather than feeling good because a movie magically reduces white guilt makes me a chickenshit as Dicky says, I'll take that. Better than being Randy from South Park.

With Blade, I'm surprised the White Supremacist movements didn't go tits - few things paler than a vampire!

Oh hell, there's a whole raft of things you could twist Blade into if you were so inclined.

I don't know, and it will be interesting to see how they play that. The comic book oscillated. Sometimes its stories would be about black empowerment in various explicit ways ways, e.g. with Black Panther either telling African Americans to stand proud or even to find himself mistreated as a black man in the US to then be redeemed by his superior powers. Sometimes they would ignore this completely. Both the original and the current comic book versions choose to make the topic explicit.

In each of these cases, this certainly is true:

Historically end empirically, we have lots of African Americans saying that they experienced the character as empowering. So it was never only about white people feeling better about themselves. Nevertheless, there remains a lot of ambiguity about how the character is conceived, who gets to script and draw him, and what exactly it does to racial injustice to conceive of a respected black king from a superior fictitious nation in Africa that uses the rituals of a tribal society along with their spaceships. It's thorny.

However, it's not external to Black Panther; I would argue that at least implicitly, and often explicitly, the character has indeed always been about that. After all, Superman is technically, explicitly, not about a pencil pusher discovering superpowers, but about a superior alien being disguising himself as a pencil pusher. On a story level, that is not an empowerment fantasy for everyday white-collar workers (as Lex Luthor will be quick to point out). And yet the character as a fiction in many of its incarnations is very much about that empowerment fantasy.

That's always been my thought. Blade, then X-Men and Spider-Man.

Groundhog Day reference in Dr. Strange!

https://www.cbr.com/groundhog-day-reference-easter-egg-doctor-strange/

Interesting bit of trivia about Thor: Ragnarok.

I love it that everyone's back for the sequel (well, everyone who survived the last one, anyway).

Mary Poppins was the first female superhero film. Dick Van Dyke may hope to get up her chim-chiminy but the film ends with her off to another adventure without any suggestion she's going there - or, if she is, that her life doesn't revolve solely around him.

"Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down..."

Full Deadpool 2 trailer.

Black Panther's RT score is 100%!

Oh, yeaaaaaaaaah.

And the hits keep coming.
First Venom poster.
Venom trailer tomorrow.