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Thread: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
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2021-06-21, 11:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2021-06-21, 01:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
Negative, that was all told, not shown.
He wears a metal chest plate sorta thing early on, before going to Wakanda. Probably the closest thing to kevlar. It's certainly too thin to stop a bullet, but eh, movie representation, perhaps close enough to be considered armor. No real objection to that.
But he does show his scars plenty. He definitely isn't embracing the whole grey man ideal, yknow?
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2021-06-21, 02:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
If the argument is "his scars would make him recognizable during his black ops work and thus be counterproductive" then you actually need evidence that he was showing them to witnesses during said work. How he dresses after he's already been ejected from that unit is irrelevant.
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2021-06-21, 04:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
It's not a court trial.
It's a movie. If you want a person to be pictured as a doctor, you stick him in a white coat, have him talk about maladies, and so on. If a cop, you give the guy sunglasses, a badge, etc.
There are trappings that go with basically any role. You can put more or less work into setting up a character as a believable representation of any given role, but you generally want to go with at least the bare minimum of embracing the framing elements while the character is on screen.
Killmonger isn't really much of a special forces guy. Nor ivy league graduate. Nothing we're shown supports those things. Those elements are weak, and the audience is not likely to think of Killmonger in such terms.
Now, Killmonger as a kid bearing a grudge for wrongs done him while he was a child? Oh yes. That we are shown, and that is indeed very believable.
Now, why does this matter? In part, because it contributes to the zero stakes for the finale. You have two guys in invincible suits hitting each other. Killmonger is, ultimately, not that scary, so we don't actually fear T'Challa losing at this point. Mentally, we're checked out, waiting for it to be over. But when it's over, Killmonger is beaten, and he's talking about the grudge he bears....suddenly we're back to the movie working.
Without setup, there can be no payoff.
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2021-06-21, 04:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
Change of subject but it is related. People need to rewatch the Connery Bonds (not because they are good), for one of the things about this fictional character is he literally breaks his cover and everyone knows who this one man spy is and what he looks like including pictures in the newspaper.
Are we going to get people complaining about that?Stupendous Man drawn by Linklele
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2021-06-21, 04:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
I have no problem with you just not liking the guy, but you don't need baseless assumptions like "he's running around shirtless on missions and thus easily identifiable to his targets" to do that. Just say you don't like him no need for fanfiction.
And I already said I agreed with you that BP's final battle was weak. But it was weak because they were both running around in indestructible catsuits and thus one of them winning relied on contrivance, not because the other one held a gun sideways in an earlier scene. Yeesh.Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2021-06-22, 09:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
It's not about disliking the character, it's about a shortcoming of the film.
The indestructible catsuit is part of it, certainly.
Ultimately, the final battle in most such films is a fight that we have reason to think that the hero could lose. When we don't, it tends to be...well, we know the conclusion already, we're just waiting for the film to catch up. Consider the...hell, I don't even recall his name...but the male antagonist in Captain Marvel. Nobody was looking forward to another fistfight with that guy, because there's no reason it would be anything other than boring. Fortunately, they made that encounter quick.
Usually, this is done via some combination of making the hero bleed early on, and showing the villain doing awesome stuff. You establish that the hero can fail, the villain can win, etc. If you do that plausibly enough, we can suspend our disbelief enough to not think overly much about how yeah, this is the main guy in the movie, he's gonna win. At a minimum, we're interested in the how of it. How does the guy overcome this disadvantage?
And yeah, we don't really ever see T'Challa bleed if he's suited up. Or even be in much danger of losing. Tony Stark goes through suits like candy, we establish his vulnerability over and over again, but Black Panther? Eh, mostly skips that.
And we do see Killmonger win some, in that he pulls off heists, but that's a different sort of winning than taking over a country and leading an army. We have little reason to think he's better at that than T'Challa is, especially because the latter has already been shown to be pretty decent at leadership.
So there's no threat. All Killmonger's proficiency at this is tell, not show. And yeah, poor gun handling alone isn't the only reason, but it certainly doesn't help. He doesn't even try to save his girlfriend, which...sure, you're establishing evil for evil's sake or whatever, but the shot to kill him and not her is super easy by comic book standards. It undermines his competency.
And so in the final fight, it is obvious from the start, even on first watch, exactly what is going to happen, and there is nothing of interest to be found there.
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2021-06-22, 09:24 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
For the third time, I agree on the flaws of the final fight and the OP-ness of T'Challa's suit in general. The gun handling is rule of cool/visual shorthand because part of his persona is being a boorish thug/"gangsta", and thus not worth seriously dwelling on or living rent-free in anyone's head.
You dropped the shirtless thing which is what I wanted so I'll leave it there.Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2021-06-22, 09:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
We relate to final conflicts not just to the thrill of our point of view character may lose, but also for other reasons.
One of the reasons we do so is we empathize with both characters. (There are other reasons.). In the X-Men universe the Sentinels is the Big Bad, yet many of the stories involve the X-Men vs Magneto, or another Sympathetic Mutant. We can not empathize with The Sentinels, or The Sentinels’ creators for they are boring, they are banal, all they are people who are scarred and want to dominate to remove their fear and by creating 30 feet tall robots they have created the worse of all possible worlds.
No the X-Men tell “intramural” fights for lots of the conflicts is a debate of what to do to achieve the best of all possible worlds, everyone agrees the present is unsatisfactory, that the world must change, but how can we do it for the better? Thus the conflict is not just the physical thrill of enhanced reality people battling it out, it is also emotional stakes and thematic stories clash together. Mixed with some good sound editing, etc.
And sometimes the mixture of a dozen beats, beats too small you will not recognize them unless you rewatch and do so with a critical eye that writes down the details. Sometimes the mixture of a dozen beats is satisfying, and other times it is not. Likewise different people can disagree if it was satisfying or not.
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The goal with the Black Panther fight is to turn the grudge from Anger to Sadness. If this moved you it depends on whether you were allowing yourself to feel Sad in the first place with Killmonger. Did his tragic backstory and charisma moved you? Of course Killmonger was the worse, but with a few changes in his life he would be an ordinary jerk with talent, and jerks with talent can still do things to improve the world for everyone else, for his community. Likewise Killmonger, the man who is the worse, told truth when he pointed out this world is so [censored] and everyone there was both hypocritical and unkind with their choices, and the world must change or else someday there would be a reckoning.Last edited by Ramza00; 2021-06-22 at 09:33 AM.
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2021-06-22, 09:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
Sentinels aren't boring in the hands of a competent writing team; we just didn't happen to have one of those over at Fox.
When mutants finally come to the MCU, we will need a break from Magneto as the big bad.
EDIT to your edit: the outcome of the BP fight was fantastic, no arguments here - it was just the fight itself that was an issue. It was the worst kind of superhero fight - no way to track who is gaining or losing the upper hand, no weaknesses to exploit which mirror the weaknesses of the hero and villain's philosophy, the two characters are barely visually distinct, neither is in any real danger until the contrived thing happens, it was just smashing two action figures together until it ended.Last edited by Psyren; 2021-06-22 at 09:55 AM.
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2021-06-22, 12:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
I would agree with this. Same as I don't think Fantastic Four is actually unfilmable. We just got unlucky with the films made so far. It happens. Most of the ideas, if done very differently, could have made for a great film.
The Phoenix storyline in particular always ends up being pretty rough. For some reason they keep skipping over any kind of setup that might make us care about half the characters involved. Ultimately, it's not that different from any other apocalyptic threat expressed through a single person, but the setup for, say, Thanos, is wildly different than that for Jean Grey. Or at least, it has been so far.
I'd still put the sentinels in X-men as a more interesting villain than say, Apocalpyse. That movie was brutally dry. So much overblown pompous lecturing and reliance on CGI.
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2021-06-22, 12:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
On another forum, we basically concluded tha the best way to do a fantastic Four Movie would be to do int in the style of Late 50s/earliy 60s sci-fi pulp, payed completely straight but contrasted against the more serious modern rest of the MCU.
Start with the comics Origin: IT's the 60s, Dr. Reed Richards, his best friend Astronaur Bejamin Grimm, his girlfriend Susan Storm, and Sue's younger brother Johnny break into a secure military facility and steel the rocket ship that Reed was working on in order to beat the Soviets to putting a man on a planet from outside this Solar system after the Government shut the project down just after the ship was completed and conficated all the materials.
They go off into space, it works, but suddenly there's a storm of cosmic radiation and the ship's hull isn't thick enough to shield them, they all get radiated to hell and mutate...
But here's where we depart: Th cosmic storm doesn't just mutate them, it causes a time-space anomaly, so they end up crash landing back on Earth in the modern-day.
They adjust quickly, due to having each other to rely on, and they just act like 60s pulp heroes having 60s pulp adventures, like classic Fantastic Four comics but with less period-typical sexism because that's hard to sell, but with more modern characters just... Having trouble with it all.
Lampshade Reed's technobabble being technobabble, for example. In team-up films, make Peter Parker the only one who can understand him as an allusion to the comics where Peter is one of the few people smarter than Reed.
Villain: Don't use Doom! Doom is grandiose and overbearing, he's better as a phase villain set upon advance. Make mention of Reed's college roommate Victor getting repelled after nan accident, maybe include Doom in a post-credits scene, but don't use him as a villain.
Instead, use Moleman. An immortal elderly blind guy with an army of subterranean humanoids and monsters living in the secret tunnels under New York city. He fits the pulp feel and works as a decent enough oneshot villain for an introductory storyline.I also answer to Bookmark and Shadow Claw.
Read my fanfiction here. Homebrew Material Here Rater Reads the Hobbit and Dracula
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2021-06-22, 12:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
The key to the Fantastic Four is that they are not typical superheroes. Their goal isn't to fight crime (nor "avenge" it), nor deal with terrestrial threats - they are cosmic explorers/astronauts whose powers just happen to give them an edge against all the weird aliens and phenomena they encounter. They aren't even going around looking to right wrongs in space the way that, say, the Guardians of the Galaxy or Captain Marvel are - good FF stories are more like a pulp serial or sci-fi anthology than they are superhero comics. They end up saving the planet an awful lot, sure, but that's a side-gig and a consequence of their travels exposing them to stuff that the rest of the universe might not know how to deal with otherwise.
Even more core to their identity than being explorers is being a family. That aspect would have to be modernized quite a bit - too many writers think that Sue being the emotional glue holding them together means that the others shouldn't express a range of emotions of their own as a result, especially Reed - but with a bit of Modern Family juice injected in there we could get some compelling internal and external conflicts and dynamics.
I follow a lot of YouTubers who have ideas about what Fox has been repeatedly doing wrong with the property, but I think this guy discusses the core premise (i.e. all the stuff they need to figure out before getting into any specific plot) particularly well:
This was beat-for-beat MovieBob's pitch, though he went with Puppetmaster as the initial villain rather than Moleman. The 3rd act setpiece battle sounded amazing.
I definitely like this idea and hope they do something similar. Having Reed originate from the 60s could also tie him to both Howard Stark and Hank PymLast edited by Psyren; 2021-06-22 at 12:55 PM.
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2021-06-22, 08:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
Yes I can agree with we need a break from Magneto as the big bad.
And you can make Sentiels interesting. They are awesome inhuman horrors with the right writing, and the framing of the camera / panel. But you need something besides Horror, a human component in the tension whether powerless human, superpowered mutates, mutants, aliens, and about a dozen other sci fi concepts that the X-Men uses from time to time. (Can’t you tell I am an X-Men fan, and the comics are good for once since 2019)
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Since we are doing recommendations, (*points to the Patrick H Willems video about the fantastic four*), may I recommend the Connor Goldsmith X-Men podcast called CEREBRO.
The podcast started this year, and the host is Patrick H Willems friend Connor, the guy Patrick interviews twice for two different X-Men videos that Patrick did through the years. There has been several Marvel Writters, Editors, and Artists who guest stared in the CEREBRO podcast as well as many fans where they do a different favorite character of the week dealing with the lore and more importantly the vibes of what makes said character interesting.
They just past episode 40 this week, links to the website and you can listen in a browser or download it to a pod catcher like iTunes or Spotify.
https://anchor.fm/cerebrocastLast edited by Ramza00; 2021-06-22 at 08:48 PM.
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2021-06-22, 09:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
For MCU X-Men, I think Mister Sinister might be a good take, especially if you make him a recurring villain or even a Phase Villain instead of just a oneshot and contract him against your traditional Anti-Mutant Types.
Depending on the water, Mister Sinister either isn't a mutant, or he's not naturally a mutant, but he's very much pro-mutant...
But he's also a mad geneticist who sees mutants as fun things to play around with.
Honestly, how I'd set him up, if I wouldn't introduce him in an X-Men movie, I'd introduce him in a post-credits scene in a Spider-Man movie.
Do a movie that loosly adapts things like the Clone Saga and Spider-Island. A "Miles Warren," alias "Jackal" has scavenged PEter's DNA and is using it in experiments. Giving people Spider-Powers, creating Spider-Monsters, cloning Peter, some combination of that... Just, lots of stuff like that.
Hell, maybe Throw in Itsy-Bitsy or Spider-Cide while we're at it.
This can be used to set up Ben Rielly and Kane for a later story, maybe set up a spin-off starring the Slingers(That'd be a decent premise for a Disney Plus show) or it can just be used to beat the "the hero has to defeat an evil version of himself" completely to death whatever, doesn't matter.
What's important is that the final enemy Peter faces in the movie, be it ITsy, Spider-Cide, or some original creation has powers that Peter doesn't. Attention is drawn to this, but Peter isn't really in a position to question it right away.
The threat is defeated, but Warren gets away.
In a post or Mid Credit Scene, we see Warren coming into some backup laboratory... And shapeshifting into the visage of Mr. Sinister. Maybe have a computer greet him as Doctor Essex or something. Have his comment about how, despite the setback, he got everything he needed from Spider-Man's DNA, but he's going to need higher-quality Mutant DNA if he wants to carry on the next phase of his plan with something to hint to him turning his attention to a school in Westchester.
I'd do it this way because let's be honest, how many people would see it coming? And because it would provide an opportunity to do the clone saga properly which is always a plus, and because while Sinsiter's interests are primarily in dealing with mutants in the comics he's shown an interest in Spider-Man or affiliate more than once.
Also, in the comics Sinister and Warren have overlapping interests and specialties and are part of the same chain of Masters and PArentices: Apocalypse-Sinsiter-The High Evolutionary-The Jackal. HAving two people who do basically the same thing (clone the hero s and experiment with their DNA) might be a bit much and since here's already a connection...I also answer to Bookmark and Shadow Claw.
Read my fanfiction here. Homebrew Material Here Rater Reads the Hobbit and Dracula
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2021-06-22, 11:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
The human component is pretty built in - they are constructs owned and operated by Marvel's US government, to hunt down their own country's citizens, the majority of whom will be adolescents. Some of them even became sapient AI in their own right (e.g. Master Mold, Alpha) with all the sci-fi and ethical storytelling potential that implies.
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Cool, thanks for the heads upPlague Doctor by Crimmy
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2021-06-23, 12:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
Yeah but what I am trying to say it helps if the villains have panache, charisma, other words can go here that are not coming to me right now…
the point is you need something to make them stand out. I was sorta disappointed by X2 for military guy is just a dull placeholder. Yes you can make an interesting Human villain, I am looking at you Valerie Cooper
There is a reason why they used Peter Dinklage for Days of Future Past, and while this actor is talented I wished for something more with this so so Fox movie.
Originally Posted by PsyrenLast edited by Ramza00; 2021-06-23 at 10:46 AM.
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2021-06-23, 02:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
Yeah, Trask is supposed to be charismatic. He convinced the government to buy his autonomous WMDs and deploy them against citizens! Dinklage was a solid casting choice.
But that ties in neatly with the point I was making - you can't have a Sentinel story (at least, not an origin story) without their creator(s) showing up, and that brings in the human POV. Sentinels are almost always a Homo Sapiens creation.Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2021-06-25, 10:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
New Shang Chi Trailer (an actual trailer, not a teaser) this morning!
Initial thoughts:
Spoiler- We're getting some plot inklings now - namely, the clear Elan/Tarquin vibe between Shang Chi and the Mandarin.
- They are definitely leaning into the magic side if the MCU with this one. We see more overt supernatural stuff from the rings, and...
- Wong (from Doctor Strange) is in it! And appears to be... cage fighting? If this truly takes place during the Blip, that explains what he was doing. Most likely he'll be here to help explain the mystical stuff, like the Ten Rings' powers.
- His arena opponent looks like none other than Abomination. Is The Incredible Hulk about to get the Thor Dark World treatment? Retroactively improved by having its characters and major beats show up in later projects, I mean.
- Michelle Yeoh (from... a wide variety of things, but most recently Captain/Emperor Philippa Georgiou from Star Trek Discovery) looks to be in it, which has ratcheted my interest up to 11.
- In the water... was that... FFF?Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2021-06-25, 10:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
Last edited by GloatingSwine; 2021-06-25 at 10:50 AM.
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2021-06-25, 11:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
No that was definitely Abomination in the ring, news outlets are confirming it. (And Abomination is "finny" in the comics, the first Hulk movie just did a poor job translating his look to the big screen.) Here's how he looked in the 1990s TCG:
Regarding alien tech vs, magic - I suspect the line between those two is about to be pretty blurred in the MCU, judging by Loki, as well as the inclusion of Wong, and having characters with no rings like Michelle Yeoh do airbending(?) (1:05).Last edited by Psyren; 2021-06-25 at 11:37 AM.
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2021-06-26, 10:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
The line's been pretty blurry between magic and tech in the MCU since the very start. The Asgardians are a full on magitech society, and how much is technology and how much is magic has never been entirely clear. The assumption for most of the MCU (including during Thor 2) was that the Asgardians were using sufficiently advanced technology and calling it magic. This gets called into question with the introduction of Dr. Strange and further muddied by how Loki's powers are handled in the new series.
Last edited by Rodin; 2021-06-26 at 10:47 AM.
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2021-06-26, 11:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
It looks like Shang Chi will be a child of two worlds:
Spoiler
1) Controlling the Rings from his father's side
2) Whatever power the people on the dragon island have, e.g. Michelle Yeoh's airbending, from his mother's side
So it could be alien = magic or alien + magic (or even both).Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2021-07-28, 06:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
Shang Chi Trailer #2 released today.
It's not grabbing me. :\
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2021-07-28, 07:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
Great Man Theory is one thing, but Pareto's principle is extremely ubiquitous. 20% of people own 80% of wealth. 20% of criminals commit 80% of crimes. 20% of internet trolls cause 80% of Twitter outrage. This, in the real world, where nobody has superpowers or superscience to further tip the scales in their favor.
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2021-07-30, 08:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
In Marvel lore, are the Ten Rings the actual glowy-ring-thingies we see in the trailer, or were they something more?
Just from their mention in Iron Man, I always assumed that the Ten Rings was some sort of coalition of bad-guy associations, each of them being a "Ring." Does that actually exist, perhaps based on the glowy-ring-thingies? Or is it just the glowy-ring-thingies?
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2021-07-30, 11:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-07-31, 02:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
They are completely different in the comics, but leaving them as actual jewelry would probably be too close to infinity stones.
As finger rings, they were also an iconic part of the original Mandarin's rather questionable design.Last edited by Psyren; 2021-07-31 at 02:25 AM.
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
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2021-07-31, 06:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
The original Phoenix storyline had a LOT of buildup. There were months and years of storylines that revolved around the changes that had happened in Jean, how she was much more powerful but her powers were prone to burning out at bad moments, how she felt strange and disconnected since cheating death. And that in turn was building on years of Jean Grey being the token girl and the weakest of the original team. The big selling point of the original Dark Phoenix reveal was that it was a character nobody would expect to go mad with power doing just that. Problem was, when the defining moment of a character is built around a surprise, you can't really replicate that surprise.
And now whenever Jean shows up in any adaptation, it's just a countdown to the familiar "goes Phoenix, goes nuts, dies, gets better" arc that everyone is expecting. It's not helped by how Dark Phoenix herself, even in the original, is not a very interesting villain--generally, she just jobs out the X-Men, kills a bunch of unnamed NPC's and brags about how awesome she is.Last edited by Azuresun; 2021-07-31 at 06:27 AM.
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2021-07-31, 10:05 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: MCU Phase 4 Trailer
Originally Posted by Cikomyr2
The Ten Rings refers to the Ten magical rings that give the Mandarin its powers. They are actually ancient alien technological device that may or may not be retaleted to the 10 Eternals.
At this point Michelle Yeoh and Awkwafina are the two main reasons I’d be interested in seeing this, but I don’t know how much of a role they’ll have.