|
SpaceCommie posted:For just a moment I thought that, at least for a while, Sophia Di Martino was going to become the main cannon Loki when they pruned Tom. Yeah same. I mean, Loki's definitely my favorite Marvel screen thing since Guardians of the Galaxy - loving it so far - but I definitely had that moment of feeling like Marvel were genuinely doing something daring and brave there. I don't know why, because I had that same feeling at the end of Infinity War, at various points during Wandavision, and countless other times across their recent films, even though they invariably play it as safe as they can with these big franchise characters. But yeah, this series is cool and a step up from the other two so far. I loved the first few episodes of Wandavision, which started off feeling genuinely mad and experimental in its storytelling and presentation, but it very quickly turned into standard Marvel meta-quipathons overexplaining all the (already obvious) subtext, before ending up in maybe the biggest superhero cliche imaginable, two dudes locked in an energy beam stalemate. A huge letdown. I never really got behind all the military black ops side of marvel so bounced off Winter soldier fairly quick. Loki feels lots more like it genuinely has its own aesthetic, the cast is perfect, and it doesn't feel like characters are constantly turning to the viewer to say 'are we really doing this?'.
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2021 14:23
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 11:50 |
|
|
Gumball Gumption posted:I think part of it is that the VTA also doesn't know. Nexus events appear to be events that cause things to be different enough that a new timeline needs to split. Why they split still isn't clear but the longer the show's gone on the more it seems the TVA doesn't control time and isn't writing the sacred timeline, they're just stopping any nexus events so that there is only one timeline. What's "supposed" to happen isn't decided by them. They also don't know exactly why nexus events happen and new timelines form, they just know that they do and they need to stop them or else they won't have control. Apparently 2 Lokis from different timelines falling in love during an apocalypse is so weird that a new timeline has to form and it's going to form in a way that's different from the normal splits. I think the reason timelines split is pretty clear and shouldn't be overthought, they explain it in the first episode: when somebody goes off-script to the extent that the bigger picture will deviate and form a new timeline. So if you eat something different for breakfast than what you were supposed to, the timeline will probably correct itself because its repercussions are going to be fairly contained to your kitchen, and its implied that things just kind of convalesce back into how they were supposed to be. But (especially in a comic booky context), a hero developing their powers in a different way, or a different person being bitten by a radioactive spider etc etc, is going to have repercussions big enough to create a new continuity. But in the former example, there's still a chance that for whatever reasons those repercussions spread - your choice of breakfast causes you to be inspired to act in a certain way later in the day and causes a chain of events that then alters the course of history - the TVA still steps in. Its why the lokis can hide in apocalypses, because anything they do off script will have limited repercussions for the universe. The show seems to kind of present it as the space a deviation is taking up - like a tiny deviation confined to one room probably won't hurt, but the chain of cause and effect for some stuff will spread out until it reaches critical mass and demands a new timeline to split off. The Grumbles fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Jun 30, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2021 18:35
|
|
|
XboxPants posted:It doesn't really seem like this is any real stakes to this, no. The actors are charming and it looks and sounds good but that's about it. I mean, this describes every single piece of media in the MCU to be honest
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2021 18:47
|
|
|
tsob posted:I don't know that I'd quite agree with that, because (a) they cast relatively unknown actors in big roles when the safe bet would just be paying out the nose to a big name actor, (b) they've done (or at least authorized) things that would probably be seen as risky within Hollywood boardrooms like making a Black man Captain America and (c) I think the problem is less "they don't take any risks with their characters" and more "they're willing to put characters in weird situations, but always choose a simple and pretty safe outcome to that situation". I'm just thinking in terms of pure storytelling, which often feels hamstrung by the obvious vested interest in their cast. Like, killing off the lead character half way through their series would have felt incredibly bold and exciting, and it did seem for a moment like that's where they'd gone with this. All of their business decisions are incredibly safe and go through more focus groups than any property in the history of film - including casting. There's a reason so many key moments are CGIed up years before production begins in earnest. I mean look, I don't have unrealistic expectations for this. The MCU always been late capitalist entertainment in its purest form. But there are always these moments that feel like maybe they're doing something brave and not focus tested out the wazoo, and I forget what I'm watching and get overexcited before it all falls flat. As I say, still really enjoying Loki though. It has a cool aesthetic, Owen Wilson is very watchable, and they've toned down a lot of the winking to camera that usually turns me off of Marvel.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2021 20:20
|
|
|
I gotta say this show is for me doing a pretty good job of not making the time travel stuff feel too confusing or contradictory, like I don't really feel like it's creating big huge headachey paradoxes. When I watched Tenet I legit had a migrane for like 2 days because my brain couldn't stop trying to make sense of it all. I mean, there's still time for it to go into 'the end is also the beginning' territory. One of the characters is literally called Moebius. volts5000 posted:This is my current working theory, and I'll spoiler the whole thing just to be safe. Just to say I really hope it doesn't turn out to be the case that the TVA made that happen. The only entertainment property that is allowed to do the whole 'the events of the thing before this thing were actually all supposed to happen like that because of an even bigger puppetmaster we are only now introducing' is Metal Gear imo. It just strips out any meaningful conflict from prior stories - which is the whole point of Metal Gear - but would be a shame if Marvel went down this route (although not knowing the comics too well, I'm sure they pull that stunt plenty).
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2021 10:09
|
|
|
Frankenstyle posted:See I think it's doing the exact same thing Tenet did. Being super vague and non-committal about the internal rules of the universe, and settling for that being a smokescreen inferring that there's more going on than what you can see. That way the writers don't have to do any real work to justify how they choose to kick the plot down the road. I guess for me it feels more like they can get away with it more here - to be able to just say like 'this place exists kind of outside but adjacent to time and the universe' because it's also a comic book universe that includes things like demons and wizards. Whereas Tenet's whole vibe is 'this is completely plausible in a real world context with the addition of this one technology' - and in Tenet there's a lot of moving about within the one timeline. Like, I don't think they're being vague, I think they're just keeping it super simple, for now. Everything in TVA-land moves in one direction, but from within the TVA pocket universe you can dip into wherever you want in the multiverse, however time in the TVA still moves forward at the same pace relative to you. If you muck about and change things when you time travel, you'll probably end up creating a new branching continuity. I think for me, if/when people start time travelling within the TVA's continuity, thing's will feel a bit more sketchy for me. tsob posted:It...does? Why? How? A more common compliant I can at least understand is "the stakes in these movies are so far beyond human experience they're alien", but the D+ shows are mostly human stakes, so I don't even see how you can complain about that in Loki. The stakes in the show are Loki literally being recognized as a being allowed to exist and to have a future of some kind, as well as now maybe having a future for Sylvie too. You could extend that out to whether Loki is allowed to be more than the villain of someone else's story, and have some self determination. That's some pretty relatable, human stuff though either way. The show also deals with a huge, time spanning organization it might eventually be destroying, but that's the kind of over the top stakes people complain about a lot, and a lot less important to the character than securing some kind of future for himself. I think we're talking in different contexts here - I mean in the sense that, like, of course all the plots are about 'saving the fate of the universe' or whatever, but this isn't Season 1 of Game of Thrones, and watching these characters in peril I never really feel like anyone's in any kind of genuine risk. It's just not that kind of media and it's a different kind of fun.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2021 11:46
|
|
|
tsob posted:I suppose I can understand that in Tom Hiddleston's case, but I don't feel like that extends to anyone else in the show and I wouldn't be surprised if Mobius, Ravonna, Hunter B-15 or especially Sylvie dies. She's a love interest for Loki and an other dimensional being, so I would be more surprised (happily so, but all the same) if she lived. I definitely felt a pang of fear this episode when B-15 lit her baton and demanded to be left in to see her, for instance. At the same time though, I think that's a bit of a weird complaint in a general sense, because most shows don't really ever treat their leads like they're in genuine danger and one of the reasons Game of Thrones hit so hard in the social consciousness is specifically because none of the main characters felt safe. I mean, GoT is an extreme example, but the MCU is definitely on the other end of the spectrum to it for me. There are the good and there are the bad and the good will win given enough screentime. I think the various marvel bits play it safe to varying degrees - Infinity War was essentially a string of fight scenes in which character A is about to land the killing blow on character B before character C quips in in the nick of time - but it's broader stuff like even if a character dies they're not truly gone, a hero isn't gonna do a heel turn and turn into a villain for the sake of an interesting story, your expectations aren't really gonna get subverted too hard, etc. We're definitely in an age of TV where a lot of amazing stories are being told that do all that, and have for some time (see: every prestige/HBO style drama in the past 20 years). I don't wanna go down this path and completely take over the thread so you'll probs just have to accept that for me, MCU narrative is storytelling with the guardrails all the way up. I don't think that's even a complaint because these films and TV shows are largely designed for the broadest possible audience, but doesn't mean they can't also be fun to watch. Artelier posted:One thing to this show's credit is that it's not too concerned with the time travel mechanic; it is "we can travel anywhere in time" and "we can influence events by crossing paths with other travelers" and "one person can keep going back to the same time all the time" and "everything has to be handled in real time" all at the same time. But the show is not getting hung up trying to explain the details to us, so I feel it's a lot more acceptable. It's not trying to say "This makes sense," it's much closer to "Well these are the circumstances they're in, how do they deal with it?" That's a good way of putting it. And it helps so far that it's keeping it all relatively simple, too. Unlike things like Tenet or Primer, I don't feel the need to look up someone's ginned up diagram to figure out what the hell just happened or how it all makes sense - so I'm more willing to just go along with the ride.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2021 12:13
|
|
|
jassa posted:Yes that's exactly my point. It's possible, it's looking like that's the direction Disney's going with, and it's a lovely thing to do to one of the few gender diverse characters in Marvel. I'm not saying that trans issues and trans representation aren't important - and its also fine to give a critical reading of a text in a trans context, even a very mainstream one like this - but it's kind of silly to suggest that what they're doing with Sylvie is mean-spirited, or that they're going out of their way to shut down trans representation in their show. Loki is written for a broad mass audience, and you're assigning a lot of nuanced implications to the dialogue choices around character that is essentially 'Loki, but a lady', in the context of the audience its for, and the Goddess of Mischief line is just a pithy one-liner in a franchise built on pithy one-liners, and not some strategic shutting down of the trans lobby. It doesn't read at all to me like they put that line in just in case anyone would think she was a trans woman. Yeah, the fact that it's a missed opportunity to explore that area of human experience is obviously worth talking about, and what you're saying makes sense as a critical reading - up until the point where you suggest it's an active moment of erasure, because the entire presentation of the character as well as the mainstream broad-base programming context that it exists in is 'Hey look, it's Loki, but female'. Honestly, Loki's representation in the MCU otherwise has very obviously been 'male', and if anything's worth getting stressed about it's the lazy use of 'fluid' in the credits as an incredibly pandering attempt at being inclusive in the most cowardly way possible. The Grumbles fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Jul 1, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2021 16:18
|
|
at you using the "if you don't like it don't watch it" logic in 2021 though. I wouldn't be so disappointed in this one element of the show if I wasn't enjoying other elements of it.
|
Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:This whole argument feels a little like the Mephisto situation or when Star Wars fans spent months trying to decipher who Rey's parents were and were reading the clues in everything, but then flipped out because Disney didn't follow "their plan" and made her parents "nobodies." Then, Disney had to reverse course so hard that they used the next movie to say, "Well, her parents were nobodies. But, her GRANDparent was the Emperor! Your fan theories weren't for nothing!" You see it a lot across all mainstream media, and it's because of a generation with degrees and postgrads that involve close critical reading of texts then applying that skillset across all of pop culture (I am one of those people), and also the farming out of those skills to a mainstream audience thanks to lit crit style youtubers looking for something useful to do with their fine arts majors. I mean, it's mostly a good thing, because its caused an obvious critical reckoning with the way a lot of pop culture propagates prejudice, but it's also done a weird thing to fandom where it's blurred the line between enjoying a piece of media and deciphering it/identifying how it might reflect the problems inherent in the culture that created it. But this stuff is designed to be accessed and enjoyed on an immediate, surface level, and I think often people forget that going on your lit crit deep dive is employing a specialised skillset to interact with a text in a very specific way, and doing so also makes you arguably not the audience for the text as soon as you're doing that.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2021 16:32
|
|
|
Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:I really doubt Kang is going to enter into the series and since the Timekeepers are fake it feels like the "big bad" has to be some kind of variant Loki. Even that would be kind of strange because it would mean a version of Loki somehow developed the ability to control time, wipe memories, and delete history, but never used it in his own reality. Or how he got to some weird pocket dimension outside of space and time. Happy to be wrong but I bet if it is this Kang fella I bet we'll only glimpse him in the post series post credits. Have they even cast that role yet? Happy Noodle Boy posted:Kang would be cool but I doubt they can get him for this AND also use him in Ant-Man without diluting Loki’s overall goals and story. Weren't people saying that the TVA gets glimpsed in one of the Ant-Man films? When he becomes super tiny? so maybe there's the connection for the next film?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2021 16:35
|
|
|
Harlock posted:Jonathan Majors is playing Kang Are there any Marvel archvillians who aren't big buff men with big square heads
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2021 16:42
|
|
|
Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:MODOK isn't buff and his head is big, but cylindrical. My friend that 100% falls into the category of 'big buff man with big square head'. Also I'm now realising that I've encounted Kang before, because I read the Spider-Geddon series, and he shows up there as Kang the Conglomerator, arch-nemesis of Spider-Punk.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2021 16:45
|
|
|
XboxPants posted:Let me ask this: how many MCU characters can you name that have had lines to specifically establish the sex or gender they were born as? I kind of took that line as more of a slightly limp Marvel attempt at a moment of feminist girlboss triumph, a bit like that scene in Avengers where they had all the female heroes fight alongside each other. Just triumphantly/smugly drawing attention to her womanhood rather than clarifying it." I mean, I see the frustration in the sense that any form of representation in these things is pure rainbow capitalism and about increasing market share without also alienating people. Which sucks! For me it's in the same camp as when a big game studio establishes a character as gay in a tweet or buried in a biog or supplementary comic somewhere, but doesn't go any further or have that character meaningfully intersect with the gay experience, or even worse - and Blizzard does this with Overwatch - they'll kind of hand-wave away their lack of ambition by suggesting that the fictional world they've created is so progressive that nobody cares about peoples sexualities or gender identities and are just cool about it, which is why it never impacts the interactions characters have with one another or on the plot.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2021 20:51
|
|
|
Gangringo posted:One of the great things about sci-fi is that it can allude to important issues in society without touching the proverbial poop. I mean yeah there's some allegorical stuff there about how you identify/present yourself to the world for sure, but this conversation was more about explicit representation in media, which is slightly different. I don't know if Star Trek is the best example though because it's still arguably incredibly dated in so many of its sensibilities on the issues of its time - which if anything are more obvious because the show is trying to present itself as this future utopia. I mean, Star Trek has always been progressive in certain very specific ways for its time, but the gender politics in the original series (and a fair chunk of TNG) are pretty bad. And a lot of its utopian politics are from the whole 'end of history' Fukuyama era of thinking that never really lasted beyond the 90's. Allegory can make certain topics more palatable and accessible to a contemporary audience, but it doesn't stop the politics of your show from dating poorly.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2021 21:08
|
|
|
Supercar Gautier posted:Incorrect; prior to Sylvie's introduction, all they had shown were a buff Loki, a long-bearded Loki, and a Loki who won the Tour de France. And they all looked like Hiddleston. Episode 2's twist is predicated on the audience expecting to see Hiddleston under that hood, and it's a big surprise when it's not. You're both wrong, they showed like a big demon lookin' Loki, a Loki with blue skin, etc, but also the whole series is very obviously exploring the nature of identity and how we construct our sense of self in a way that invites people to think about identity politics including issues around trans identity. But also this thread is getting incredibly confused because some people are also arguing that the actual text of the show has suggested that certain characters are actually trans, (which I don't think the show is doing at all), and then those people are arguing with the subtext people even though those are two completely different conversations. Data is not autistic, the Clacks are not the internet, Sauron is not Hitler. But those things are frameworks to explore aspects of those other things.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2021 12:55
|
|
|
Avalerion posted:I don't think the "I was born a goddess of mischief" line was to be taken literally because we know Loki was born a frost giant runt? Also if Sylvie has always been a girl they wouldn't have named her Loki, I assume. I thought the implication of that was she gave herself a new name as a rejection of the set path she was supposed to go down as part of the sacred timeline, as a gently caress you to the TVA or the idea of fixed destiny or whatever. Again, there's definitely some light subtext there that makes you think about gender pronouns and self-identification but I think people are giving the writing too much credit as if its some elaborately subtle queer-coding magic eye picture. I don't see why she couldn't have been named Loki as a girl.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2021 15:50
|
|
|
Comrade Fakename posted:Seems odd that I haven’t seen much talk anywhere about the obvious metatext of this series. The TVA zealously guards an arbitrary timeline in an effort to hold back deviant forces, just like Disney has been jealously guarding the MCU timeline and denying outliers like Agents of Shield and the Netflix Marvel shows from being acknowledged. So if, as seems likely, this show ends with the multiverse being set loose, that could herald incorporation of this fringe fiction, as well as the opportunity to go wilder with the weird poo poo in general. Loki (the show) could be an opportunity to ease the audience into this stuff, and I wonder if we’ll see references to AoS or Daredevil or whatever, even if it’s rather oblique. So from what I understand the character of Moebius in the comics is based on a key member of staff at Marvel who was known as a keeper of lore and continuity, so there is a little hint of stuff to do with our relationship with the idea of 'canon' in a comic book universe. In terms of what you're saying about this being a step in the direction of Disney letting loose, I actually think it's the opposite in terms of corporate jealous guardianship - by broading out your various strands into a multiverse where everything's all connected, it not only lets you expand your lore into whatever directions, revisit characters as much as you want (even if they die or whatever), but still keeps it all within the confines of your heavily curated theme park. It's applying a thick coat of corporate synergy over what would otherwise be a cool collection of disparate stories. Like, I'm probably alone in having preferred Warner Brothers' appraoch with DC over the last few years, where they seem to give directors the chance to tell interesting stories using those characters without sweating too much whether it all fits into a shared universe and what other films you might be in danger of contradiction plot-wise (with the option for creators to link stories together and have some multiverse fun if they wish!). I feel like ultimately that's a much better approach that lets filmmakers be more creative without ultimately having to figure out how their stories work within an underlying corporate cosmology.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2021 15:51
|
|
|
VagueRant posted:This episode sucked. Worst one so far. Jarring compared to the previous ones, deffo reminded me more of the weirder parts of Falcon. I thought the plot did progress! and it established some v significant things about Loki and what he's capable of. Speaking of which, that whole Richard E Grant bit about how he'd escaped Thanos by turning into debris. It's pretty much a given that that's setting up a way for Loki to have actually survived the main timeline right? Like, he's going to go back to 2012, play out his role through all the Avengers saga, and then we'll see him do exactly as Richard E Grant said on the spaceship at the end of next week's episode, right?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 7, 2021 11:59
|
|
|
Because all the military hoo-rah type stuff bores me to tears (couldn't even finish that second captain america film everyone gets jazzed about), I couldn't make it through FAWS. Is there any key future of the MCU stuff I need to know from that? I will never watch it.Desperado Bones posted:Yeah I still believe it's not Kang. I'm holding to my Loki variant theory. There's still a couple of scenes from the trailers we havent seen yet and I doubt that's TVA Loki. They've avoided doing any of the flat circle style time travel stuff where the end is also the beginning so far, which is good because that always feels like a cop-out, and now you're getting me worried that's exactly what's going to happen next week. Like, it's a Loki that got erased by the TVA who then created the TVA in order to eventually free himself, or something equally terrible. The Grumbles fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jul 7, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Jul 7, 2021 17:40
|
|
|
Mulva posted:There are a lot of things I could say about Winter Soldier, the movie that explicitly says that the Nazis learned things about being evil from the US Government and that they were able to take over because there was functionally no difference in what they wanted and what the military-industrial complex wanted, but "military hoo rah" would not be one of them. The climax is literally saying the United States government can't be trusted to do the right thing and that our heroes will be ignoring them from then on. I don't necessarily mean in the message - I'm well aware of how that film is not US propaganda - I just mean in the more general sense of military people doing military maneuvers with military hardware. Give me a goofball in a weird costume or a space wizard or whatever over that stuff. It's more just about what types of superheroes/villains I find interesting.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 7, 2021 23:33
|
|
|
Infinitum posted:I'm all in on the BEHOLD THE GRIM VISAGE OF DR. DOOM! reveal instead of Kang Me too! I mean, it'll never happen. But one of those is one of the all time iconic comic book villains with a clear backstory and who is instantly recognisable whether or not you're into comics, and the other is some dude with an incredibly confusing wiki page who looks a bit like Thanos. I think one thing people are forgetting about Kang is that it took a decade of films for the MCU to get to Thanos in any meaningful way. And even then, it was like 7 years between his first appearance and the infinity war films. And they clearly changed tack a few times during that run - his first appearance makes stronger references to the original storylines with Death etc. So I think it's probably going to be a while yet for this guy. I mean, I hope I'm wrong because I'm finding it hard to get excited about Kang and so I kind of hope Doom is gonna be the big bad for the next decade or whatever. There's been a couple of references to him in Wandavision, and I could totally see the Fantastic Four film setting him up as a villain right at the end.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2021 11:38
|
|
|
Why would you change your name to Kang? Nathaniel is a perfectly nice name.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2021 11:57
|
|
|
I know people always joke about Hawkeye being the most rubbish Avenger in terms of superpowers, but honestly everything else about that character is so forgettable and unremarkable. Its like they had to put that scene in Endgame at the start to just try and make us feel something for the character after all this time, but he's still just this weird blank slate non-person. I couldn't tell you anything about his characterization beyond 'has kids' and 'good aim'. I hope the series finds something there but I don't have much hope.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2021 11:37
|
|
|
Casnorf posted:MCU Hawkeye is Batman. I'd have thought that's obviously Iron Man (rich but buff dude buys toys to become hero). It's not one to one but yeah. Hawkeye is like, Captain Boomerang. But more bland. Casnorf posted:MCU Hawkeye is a guy who is trained and whatnot, but he's still fundamentally 'a guy.' He's literally the part of the narrative that says 'hey in this world of superpowers and crazy poo poo a normal dude (like you!) could hold their own' in exactly the same way Batman is. I personally like the optimism of that, but he necessarily must be a bit of a cipher to fill that role. But like even normal people have like... interesting and/or memorable personalities? I just don't think he's very well written tbh. The Grumbles fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Jul 10, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2021 14:56
|
|
|
Casnorf posted:Cipher. Audience surrogate. By necessity he must not have any outlandish or defining characteristics lest any given person be unable to place themselves in his role, especially if they are unable to imagine themselves in any other more exaggerated one. Yeah I know what that means, but you can have the "everyman" be interesting, relatable memorable and even a little idiosyncratic, especially in the marvel context where "everyman" just means "not a wizard, robot or a billionaire". There's tons of room there to be relatable while still having strong characteristics - an audience surrogate doesn't mean exactly what you're suggesting it means here. I don't think they've made him bland out of some weird mechanical necessity, they just haven't really dug into the character properly. That said I'm noticing more and more that they also have a weird formula for giving characters kooky characteristics so I'm not sure I want that either (see: tuna melts, jet-skis)
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2021 17:12
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/BAKKOOONN/status/1413687517291991040 This 100% Loki vs Falcon & Winter Soldier (and all of the military/spy-adjacent marvel stuff) for me. The Grumbles fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Jul 12, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2021 11:51
|
|
|
live with fruit posted:The weed movies rely too much on the visuals, particularly Ragnarok and Doctor Strange. I mean, they're comic book films, so I'd certainly hope so!
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2021 16:26
|
|
|
stev posted:I feel like I have so many logistical questions about how Kang works and how he does what he does. Okay, I think a lot of people are really overthinking the plot here because it's all time stuff. But it's really straightforward. On the above question: It's because there's nobody in charge of the TVA once he dies, which means there's nobody around to prune variants across time, which is going to cause multiple universes to split off, which means more Kangs. It's not that the work's undone, it's that you have to keep at it. The universe wants to split off in different directions and so the TVA needs to keep on pruning, otherwise you end up with multiple versions kang once you hit the 31st century. On the final shot of the episode, I think it's pretty obvious that there's only one TVA because they've gone to such great pains to show how it exists outside of time/the universe, and because there are now multiple Kangs across time and space, one of them has somehow retroactively taken it over. Lastly, He Who Remains is, at the start of the episode, the only Kang who has ever existed, but only because he won the multiverse war, and then went and did the work of stopping any other Kangs from ever existing. That's why he says that stuff to Sylvie at the end - all she's doing is creating the conditions for the multiversal war to once again happen, in which case He Who Remains and his timeline will eventually win out because that's what happens. I could be wrong though - it could just be that this time around a more evil Kang is gonna win out, who might be the guy we see as a statue at the end. Really great performance though. It makes me actually excited for the next phase of the MCU. I hope the characterisation doesn't change too much now that it's going to be a less benevolent version of Kang
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2021 18:43
|
|
|
stev posted:Also the actual version of events isn't really different from the fake story the TVA was given. They were created to prune branching timelines and stop a multiverse war from breaking out. The only real difference is that Kang himself seems to be the main cause of the war (as opposed to the millions of other war mongers in every timeline). He didn't really need to go to the trouble of building robot Time Keepers. I was thinking about the robot time keepers thing. I think it fits this characterisation of a dude who is just trying to stop universe-level destruction and isn't trying to rule or anything. Like, he's created a system to keep things in order, including fake people in charge - I guess because he knows that his ego is potentially a dangerous thing to feed. This is a Kang who has done a fair amount of therapy.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2021 18:47
|
|
|
Also, when Jonathan Winters was giving his backstory about inventing so much crazy time/space travel poo poo that he ended up meeting with, collaborating with and fighting with infinite variants of himself, did anyone else's mind immediately get drawn to the citadel of Ricks? edit: i guess its more that the latter is inspired by some version of the former fro mthe comics which makes way more sense
The Grumbles fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Jul 14, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2021 19:04
|
|
|
^^^^ do you ever get to find out anything about fat reed Klungar posted:I mean, the latter is just a rip-off of/homage to the former/the Council of Reeds I mean as someone not au fait with comic books something like that did cross my mind as more likely an explanation
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2021 19:14
|
|
|
Squidster posted:This was an extended trailer for an unrelated movie, and not a season finale in any meaningful way. Kang left me completely cold; I was reminded of BBC Sherlock's Moriarty, a hollow two-legged plot device carried only by an actor's ker-aazzzzzy performance. B-15 was showing her colleagues that they were variants by showing them Renslayer pre-TVA - I thought that one was pretty obvious? And I don't know why people are treating the Loki nexus event like some big mystery. It's either that they fell in love, or (less likely) that they were about to die and weren't supposed to. It hasn't all been reset - I bet Renslayer has actually got out. It's setting up for a second season.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2021 19:26
|
|
|
Geo Fixer posted:I saw a fan casting that puts Adam Sandler in the role of the thing and I really couldn't think of a better actor for the part. Misread that at first and thought you were saying Adam Sandler as the role of Doom, which would own actually
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2021 22:37
|
|
|
thrawn527 posted:So I guess this is what finally brings the Eternals out of hiding? The Eternals was supposed to come out last year so probs not.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2021 22:39
|
|
|
God Hole posted:so the infinity stones are all-powerful and can work in different universes (as evidenced in Endgame), yet somehow this earthling can create a space where they are basically rendered paperweights? The TVA is a magical fun-time comic book fantasy zone where you gotta go along with its vibe lest the whole thing unravels before your eyes. The infinity stones bit was very much a 'here's the tone of this place' kinda moment
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2021 23:09
|
|
|
Pastamania posted:It was telling that a huge chunk of this episode was 3 characters sitting in an empty room exactly 2 meters apart from each other. That's almost definitely coincidence. I lived with someone who worked in TV during 2020, and tbh the industry figured all that stuff out really quickly. A production just forms a big bubble where everyone goes in with a negative covid test, they all live together and don't socialise with anyone outside of the production for the length of the shoot. It's basically impossible to make narrative TV and abide by any kind of social distancing, so there's no reason to make your actors even try.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2021 23:19
|
|
|
Mulva posted:Why would it be? In the last episode they do explain the universe thing (not a huge spoiler but is in the last ep so:) the multiverse is lots of universes stacked on top of each other
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2021 23:27
|
|
|
Georgia Peach posted:I guess this pretty much retroactively neutered the stakes for Endgame. It didn't matter how many possible futures Dr. Strange saw. I mean obviously they were going to beat Thanos because it's a movie, but now in-universe they were always going to win as well, they just didn't know it. I think that's right. I mean, I guess it depends whether he who remains is in the background making sure that they win, which isn't really clear here. I agree that introducing an even bigger puppetmaster can sometimes flatten the stakes for everything prior in that Metal Gear Solid kinda way. But I feel like just because there's someone out there who knows how a scenario plays out doesn't automatically remove the agency of the people who have played it out.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2021 10:53
|
|
|
Georgia Peach posted:I wonder if eliminating half of all life had any effect on not-quite-Kang's existence. Either it would have prevented him from existing at all, in which case he (or whoever is pulling strings) kept the one possible timeline where he's the one to keep the other versions from existing. Or perhaps removing half of everyone led to something worse down the line. Or maybe it was that way just because it was always that way in that one particular timeline. The 'they did what they had to do' thing is in reference to the avengers time travelling - that's not in violation of the TVA, because them bouncing around time is within the bounds of the sacred timeline. But yeah, its probably the case that the dude we keep spoilering even though nobody's going to be reading this thread if they're at all concerned about spoilers and also it's obvious who we're talking about anyway didn't intervene because the avengers winning was the favoured outcome. You can see them going in and pruning universes where that doesn't happen though, involving variants of the avengers. Hence thanos copter.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2021 11:45
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 11:50 |
|
|
Overall thumbs up on the series, and Alligator Loki is a good actor, but for me he's a rare major casting misstep for the MCU — or at least directorial misstep. At almost no point did he give off any feeling or energy of being Loki in any of Hiddkeston’s portrayal of the character. Obviously a big part of the point is that they are completely different species with different goals and desires, but I think that philosophical difference between them would have worked a lot better if they felt more in-sync through the rest of the series. He simply didn’t feel like a variation on Loki so much as a completely unique character from the very beginning; Richard E Grant played the role in a way that felt very “yeah, I could see Hiddleston’s Loki aging into this” by comparison. It’s not a bad choice or portrayal so much as it’s one that didn’t work for me at all; I think spending some flashback time with him would’ve gone a long way toward establishing why he is so different (more of the showing versus telling us about his being an alligator) as well as making it more clear that he is an alligator. Or just making him more of a direct King K. Rool adaptation rather than being “a Loki”.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2021 15:25
|
|