I disagree on Kang but am totally onboard with your thoughts on Cassie. Although I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. It may have just been the lame dialogue.
Redstone said:
Very happy with the casting of Kang the Conqueror - Marvel / Disney continues to lead the way for social progress, and our 5 year old is really looking forward to the new Little Mermaid.
Brian Earl Spilner said:
Oh and forgot to mention, MODOK was absolutely ridiculous, and not in a good way. Super cringe. Got a laugh when he first showed his face, and not the kind of laugh they wanted.
Brian Earl Spilner said:
Yeah...that was not good.
Best way I can describe it is it felt like an amateur screenwriter wanted to emulate the irreverence of Guardians of the Galaxy and failed badly at it.
There's minimal stakes and I really never cared about anything that was happening onscreen. Just an orgy of random, wacky CGI creatures and fight scenes.
How can you say there were no stakes? It was literally life or death at every turn, and the Scott/Cassie of it all was about as personal as stakes get. To say nothing of trying to keep Kang from escaping and wreaking havoc again on multiple timelines.
Also I like how there was absolutely zero explanation given for how anyone in the Quantum Realm even exists. So Kang was there alone, but then what? He says he built his empire, but out of what? Thin air?
Janet basically said that Kang's suit was the key to his tech/powers. When they fixed his multiverse engine core, it instantly allowed his suit to come back online, so to speak, basically revitalizing his tech/powers. Then, when she broke the core again/sent it even deeper into the quantum realm, he lost his ability to leave, but not his ability to still use his suit/create.
As for the other "humans," I got the impression that their ancestors were banished there (same as Kang, just way earlier). As in, that level of the quantum realm was the perfect banishment zone to send all kinds of life forms from all kinds of timelines (and banished there by anyone with the technological know-how, not just Kang variants). Also, other lifeforms likely evolved there naturally, no different than life evolved on earth. Regardless, none of that bugged me at all.
And not gonna lie, Kang did absolutely nothing for me. It's nothing against the actor per se, but there's just not much there. He kind of just screams at people and shoots blue energy and has force powers. But other than that, we know absolutely nothing about him, and frankly I don't care to.
If this is the new big bad that's supposed to be the next Thanos...eesh.
All that said, I'm going to have to agree with you about Kang. Jonathan Majors is giving an incredible performance, but I found Thanos to be so much more intimidating, and more importantly, his goal was infinitely (no pun intended) more clear/simple; collect all six stones, then eliminate half the universe. He had a philosophical reason that was easy to understand, and he was imposing as hell every time he was on screen. But after two Kang appearances now, I still don't quite get what he's about or is trying to do, due to the very nature of him not being one but hundreds of variants, each with different motivations. It's already exhausting having to think about keeping track of all the different personalities/iterations, how they'll interact with who's left of the MCU, etc, and I'm just not really interested in any of that at all. Admittedly, of the two post-credit scenes, the Loki season two tease was a nice treat, but only because it was fun to see Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson back together, not so much because of yet another Kang variant.
I would say it's definitely in my bottom 5 MCU movies. Not particularly excited for the next phase to be very honest.
Oh and sidenote, a group of 3-4 people in my row walked out about 45 minutes in. I don't think I've ever seen that in a major blockbuster, much less a Marvel movie. (And in IMAX no less.) And can't really blame them to be honest. I made it about another 15 minutes after they left before I was bored and just waiting for to it to end.
With maybe 20 minutes left, two different couples in our showing got up and left as well, within a couple minutes of each other. I've never seen people give up so late into a movie. One person clapped at the end, but this was definitely the tamest Marvel audience I've seen a movie with at the Chinese Theater, where people usually go apesh*t for anything and everything MCU.
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How can you say there were no stakes? It was literally life or death at every turn, and the Scott/Cassie of it all was about as personal as stakes get. To say nothing of trying to keep Kang from escaping and wreaking havoc again on multiple timelines.
jokershady said:
Um………..should we tell him?
The Porkchop Express said:
The ants didn't destroy him, they temporarily disabled him.
And what did Thanos do in his early appearances to show what a threat he would become? Sit in a chair? Pick up a glove? His first 2 plans also failed utterly - obtaining the tessaract from Loki via conquering Earth and retrieving the power stone from Ronin in GOTG.
Brian Earl Spilner said:Quote:
How can you say there were no stakes? It was literally life or death at every turn, and the Scott/Cassie of it all was about as personal as stakes get. To say nothing of trying to keep Kang from escaping and wreaking havoc again on multiple timelines.
Because they talked about this as an "Avengers-level" movie for months before release, and it just didn't feel that way in the least. Cassie being in danger was the only stakes that mattered to me at all.
They kept talking about the havoc Kang could wreak if he got out, but...that's all it is. A lot of talk. We've never really seen why we need to actually fear this guy. It's almost like we just have to take his own word for how evil he is.
Plus, they've not really done any legwork to make us care about any other multiverse other than the main one we've seen throughout the MCU. (Except for a bit in Loki I suppose. And maybe MoM.)
But even then, they're putting a lot of trust in everyone having seen Loki.
Side note, little strange you felt the need to try to counter my opinion point by point, but hey. Agree to disagree I suppose.
Very surprised you liked it, to be honest.