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Reviews are out for Black Widow and none of it is really too surprising. The consensus seems to be: - There's two very well-choreographed action scenes and the rest are fairly typical competent, but generic action movie fair. - The movie starts to explore some interesting themes about moral relativism, identity, fate, and how society/government/family/institutions mold people and shape their ethics without them consciously realizing they are being guided, but ends up letting those themes kind of peter out and not following through. - Some people complaining that it is entirely self-contained and doesn't really serve as a "send off" for Johansson/Black Widow. - The movie is a stealth recasting of Black Widow with Pugh. - Taskmaster has some really interesting concepts that are used in some action scenes, but as a character he is pretty forgettable. - The story is a pretty standard spy genre script - except for one major twist that multiple people note. Other than the twist, it could have been a Bond movie and has almost no connection to the broader MCU. - David Harbour is fantastic and Rachel Weisz has nothing to do. - The score (by Alexandre Desplat and Lorne Balfe) is very strong. 82% on Rotten Tomatoes. Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Jul 5, 2021 |
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Jul 5, 2021 06:30
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man nurse posted:Weren’t they also tossing around a Origins: Magneto movie before that point? Am I right in assuming that kinda just got rolled into what became first class? Pretty much, yeah. After Origins: Wolverine was a critical disaster (not sure on its box office but probably disappointing enough) they pumped the breaks on that and basically went for a good ol' soft reboot.
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Jul 5, 2021 12:09
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man nurse posted:Weren’t they also tossing around a Origins: Magneto movie before that point? Am I right in assuming that kinda just got rolled into what became first class? It would've been "Magneto: Nazi Hunter".
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Jul 5, 2021 13:40
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Whats everyone general thoughts on X-Men movies? Logan Deadpool Days of Future Past X2 Deadpool 2 First Class X1 X Men: Origins Wolverine The Wolverine New Mutants Apocalypse Dark Phoenix X3
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Jul 5, 2021 13:59
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live with fruit posted:It would've been "Magneto: Nazi Hunter". This, and I think the rumors at the time were that it was going to be bookended with a framing story in the modern day with Ian McKellen as old Magneto.
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Jul 5, 2021 14:43
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Pillowpants posted:Whats everyone general thoughts on X-Men movies? there's only like two movies on this whole list I'd ever think about rewatching
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Jul 5, 2021 15:10
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Chairman Capone posted:I never saw the "X-Men 1.5" DVD cut that came out just before X2 - is that worth checking out? What exactly does it change from the original? Not specific to 1.5 but my favorite part of the first X-Men is out of shape wolverine Edit - just looked it up again and he could definitely beat me up. But it's amazing what Hugh did when he started scientifically tailoring his diet and workout to min/max his lean muscle and water mass Dignity Van Houten fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Jul 5, 2021 |
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Jul 5, 2021 15:27
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Pillowpants posted:Whats everyone general thoughts on X-Men movies? I love Days of Future Past because they go for every single piece of time travel low hanging fruit within reach throughout, and never ever miss an opportunity to do the most absolute stupid and obvious thing in any given scene. It's just completely shameless.The first thing Wolverine sees after getting sent back in time is a lava lamp, I think? And it's full of dialogue along the lines of "someone should check their phone" "how would a phonecall help?", or "look it up on the internet" "how would catching someone in a net help"? I'm pretty sure Wolverine tells someone to invest in either Apple or Google at some point. I can't stress just how much of this stuff is in that film.
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Jul 5, 2021 16:53
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Reviews are out for Black Widow and none of it is really too surprising. What's the big twist?
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Jul 5, 2021 17:02
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RBA Starblade posted:What's the big twist? None of the reviews say. They just say that the plot is pretty standard spy genre except for one major plot twist.
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Jul 5, 2021 17:33
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Dignity Van Houten posted:Not specific to 1.5 but my favorite part of the first X-Men is out of shape wolverine It is insane to look at the difference in body standards for action/superhero movies from 2000 compared to now. Jackman was still very much in shape in the first X-Men, but he looked more like just a guy who works out and not the ridiculous slabs of muscle that superhero stars are expected to be today. He looks positively skinny compared to all the Marvel people today or even himself in the later X-Men movies.
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Jul 5, 2021 17:34
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The Grumbles posted:I love Days of Future Past because they go for every single piece of time travel low hanging fruit within reach throughout, and never ever miss an opportunity to do the most absolute stupid and obvious thing in any given scene. It's just completely shameless.The first thing Wolverine sees after getting sent back in time is a lava lamp, I think? And it's full of dialogue along the lines of "someone should check their phone" "how would a phonecall help?", or "look it up on the internet" "how would catching someone in a net help"? I'm pretty sure Wolverine tells someone to invest in either Apple or Google at some point. I can't stress just how much of this stuff is in that film. As weird as that sounds, I don't have a problem with this kind of joke as long it's someone going back in time. If it is someone coming to our day/the future from the past, I find all the "there is a small man in this box making music" humor extremely tired.
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Jul 5, 2021 18:20
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:None of the reviews say. They just say that the plot is pretty standard spy genre except for one major plot twist. It's an odd way to phrase it because having a major plot twist is pretty standard for the spy genre
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Jul 5, 2021 19:13
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Pillowpants posted:Whats everyone general thoughts on X-Men movies? First Class, X2, and Logan are pretty much the top? Also you could watch those three as a trilogy and have a fairly interesting viewing experience I think. DOFP is entertaining but not on the level of the best entries. X1 probably also in that tier of more good than bad but not a standout. The rest are middling to outright bad. I have no intention of seeing New Mutants and fast forwarded through a lot of Deadpool 2 though.
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Jul 5, 2021 19:40
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Some days I wonder what kind of person I would've ended up if I had been bolder at age 15 and saw an R-rated movie instead of X2. The R-rated movie was The Matrix Reloaded
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Jul 5, 2021 19:46
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2house2fly posted:It's an odd way to phrase it because having a major plot twist is pretty standard for the spy genre (spoiling because it's speculating on the review's cagey spoiler)
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Jul 5, 2021 19:58
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Timeless Appeal posted:It would be pretty ballsy if it turned out that the movie's not a prequel and that's not actually Black Widow. Watch the twist be something like "This is taking place in a splinter timeline" or something.
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Jul 5, 2021 20:05
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Pillowpants posted:Whats everyone general thoughts on X-Men movies? I’d probably go Good tier: X2 First Class DoFP Logan Dece tier: X1 The Wolverine The Deadpool movies Bad tier: X3 Origins Didn’t Watch tier: Apocalypse Dark Phoenix New Mutants
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Jul 5, 2021 20:15
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It might be interesting to go back to X2 and see just how much it differs from the MCU style.
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Jul 5, 2021 21:06
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RBA Starblade posted:What's the big twist? According to some (potentially fake) plot leaks it's that Taskmaster is actually *gasp* a woman! *gasp*, and is a character that Black Widow "killed" in the prologue, but actually survived and is now out for revenge.
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Jul 5, 2021 21:28
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Robot Style posted:According to some (potentially fake) plot leaks it's that Taskmaster is actually *gasp* a woman! *gasp*, and is a character that Black Widow "killed" in the prologue, but actually survived and is now out for revenge. That one is definitely fake. They have kept it out of the trailers, but it is not exactly a secret that O-T Fagbenle is playing Black Widow's former handler just named "Mason" who is a double agent and taskmaster.
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Jul 5, 2021 21:33
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Roth posted:It might be interesting to go back to X2 and see just how much it differs from the MCU style. I caught a little bit of the Ed Norton Hulk movie the other day and had similar thoughts, especially watching the university battle scene. When was the last MCU movie that painted the US military as villainous? Not just in a sense of corrupted by spies or traitors within the ranks or whatever, but the actively doing bad things and harming innocent people. Hulk also outright murders a couple dozen US soldiers throughout the movie, which would never happen now. Stylistically otherwise the biggest difference was probably the lack of quips? There are some sight gaps and such here and there but it's a fairly dour movie compared to even the early MCU stuff.
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Jul 5, 2021 21:38
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Mat Cauthon posted:I caught a little bit of the Ed Norton Hulk movie the other day and had similar thoughts, especially watching the university battle scene. When was the last MCU movie that painted the US military as villainous? Not just in a sense of corrupted by spies or traitors within the ranks or whatever, but the actively doing bad things and harming innocent people. Hulk also outright murders a couple dozen US soldiers throughout the movie, which would never happen now. The villains in Iron Man 3 are literally wounded US army veterans and Tony kills several of them. The X-Men movies also have quite a few quips and visual gags. "You're a dick." Wolverine's claws as middle fingers. Jokes about how hairy Wolverine and Sabretooth are. "What's a Magneto?" "You're a mutant? No, I'm Canadian." The numerous jokes/references about coming out of the closet as mutant or sexual jokes. The numerous jokes about terrible comic costumes and metajokes about being sequels.
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Jul 5, 2021 21:45
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X2 has a loving amazing scene when Logan takes Scott's car and N*Sync blares on the radio. Other than that, it's fairly concerned with the Mutant = Gay thing and commits to pretty serious universe. Oh and kids being taught instead of being prepped for war //Yeah, there's a lot of great fun stuff that follows from character work. Closest to QuipMan in X2 is Nightcrawler doing the whole introduction bit every time. My name is Kurt Wagner. But in the Munich circus, I was known as The Incredible Nightcrawler! FilthyImp fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Jul 5, 2021 |
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Jul 5, 2021 21:46
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Antman and the Wasp's low key villain is kind of the military that conscripted Ghost into being an assassin and who she and Fishburne are on the run from.
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Jul 5, 2021 21:48
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Also, who could forget the infamous "What happens when a Toad is struck by lightning?" quip?
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Jul 5, 2021 21:48
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Also, who could forget the infamous "What happens when a Toad is struck by lightning?" quip? "I'M HOPPING MAD" "Looks like it's SLIME TIME, CYKE" "Just a little TONGUE TIED here, Sabretooth"
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Jul 5, 2021 21:51
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FilthyImp posted:MCU Xguys would make Toad punny. They actually used the tongue tied line and a slime gag in the original X-Men movie. It's such low-hanging fruit that no scriptwriter could resist.
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Jul 5, 2021 21:54
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Pillowpants posted:Whats everyone general thoughts on X-Men movies? I'd rewatch Logan and First Class, maybe X-Men 2 if really bored. No desire to watch any of the rest ever again.
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Jul 5, 2021 21:54
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The weird thing about the original X-Men movies was how bad the action was for being ostensibly action movies. The wire-fu and the millions of ways they shot scenes to avoid showing anyone getting stabbed or exploded still haunt my dreams. Every single fight is terrible CGI and people flying in slo-mo with wires. Sabretooth's power is just to throw people and cars in slow motion. The Nightcrawler White House scene sticks out so much because the rest of the action set pieces were so forgettable. THIS was the climactic action scene they wanted to make a selling point of the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VagrTsi5vsw&t=41s Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Jul 5, 2021 |
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Jul 5, 2021 21:58
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X-Men 2 in general had way better action, besides the Nightcrawler scene the brief Wolverine/Deathstryke fight was decent too and it had a lot of other cool moments.
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Jul 5, 2021 22:13
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The leather outfits, at least in X1, were so tight and stiff that the actors basically could barely do anything more strenuous than an urgent walk. Which makes the gags about how bad and not-serious the traditional costumes are funny in a different way.
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Jul 5, 2021 22:15
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:The villains in Iron Man 3 are literally wounded US army veterans and Tony kills several of them. Those are disfigured or disabled veterans that the movie explicit portrays as so disgruntled at their mistreatment by the US government that they sign up for some shady medical experiment because it promises them some measure of revenge or so desperate for medical treatment that they sign up for the the same program and go along with the super soldier insurrection plot because they become addicted to the Extremis substance - in either instance, corrupted. Either way they're not really meant to be seen as part of the military or government anymore, save for Miguel Ferrer's treasonous VP character. I guess there are some fight against German state security forces and nu-Shield personnel in Civil War, but none of those guys die. The bad guys in Black Widow will probably be linked to Russian state security forces somehow but we all know that "commies" don't really count here.
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Jul 5, 2021 22:48
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Neo Rasa posted:X-Men 2 in general had way better action, besides the Nightcrawler scene the brief Wolverine/Deathstryke fight was decent too and it had a lot of other cool moments. Yeah, everyone still remembers the Nightcrawler attack but I still like the Wolverine/Deathstrike fight a lot. drat, now I'm remembering 18 years ago and how totally stoked I was to see X2 when it came out, and how the whole theater was digging it. Roth posted:It might be interesting to go back to X2 and see just how much it differs from the MCU style. X2 is one of the only Marvel movies, at least of the "modern era," without a Stan Lee cameo. I think the Blade movies are the only other ones? Chairman Capone fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Jul 5, 2021 |
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Jul 5, 2021 22:51
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I mean X-Men was more or less the first example of a successful modern comic book movie, right? Didn’t it pretty much kick off the idea that you could make good movies out of comics? I seem to remember it being the progenitor of a sort of renaissance of the genre. One could even argue it’s the first example of a “film universe” that various timelines and spin-offs all take place in.
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Jul 5, 2021 22:54
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Blade came out in '98, but X-Men is defnitely the first one that people think of when talking about the origin of modern comic book movies, but a lot of those early 2000's superhero movies had been in and out of development throughout the 80's and 90's, so after stuff like Batman & Robin pissed in the pool it's likely that all the studios were waiting for someone else to test the waters before jumping back in. New Line went first with Blade, followed by Fox & X-Men, and then the others soon after.
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Jul 5, 2021 23:12
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Blade was absolutely important but also kind of handicapped by not being as well known. So you didn't have a bunch of internet nerds saying they hated how Snipes didn't have the traditional 70s look. X-Men was kind of the test for a popukar/established line, I guess.
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Jul 5, 2021 23:19
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I loving hated Xmen when it first came out….I wanted the original xmen drat it. I’ve had to rewatch most of these movies with my son recently… They nailed the casting with X1 but putting Rogue in the role Jubilee should have been in ruined it for me. I’m bothered that they made Colossus and Iceman young students given how much they’ve actually done. X3 could have been two separate Movies. I loved First class and DOFP. Apocalypse had potential but failed and served as nothing more than a set up to another failed Dark Phoenix.
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Jul 5, 2021 23:44
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I had no idea Blade was a comic book movie until many years later. It actually kinda took away from it.  Still rules though. I'll never forget on like the 2nd viewing at a discount theater someone dropped a pepper bomb or some poo poo cause everyone started coughing and we had to run out at the end.
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Jul 6, 2021 00:44
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I think it's fair to say that Blade, The Matrix, and X-Men all dropping from 1998-2000, together, made the "comic book movie" as we know it now possible. And X-Men 2 in 2003 cemented it as being here to stay even if there were some missteps and time between it and Iron Man.
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Jul 6, 2021 03:43
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