MCU series: yes spoilers

Nah, you do a few phases with Kang, a few phases with Galactus, hiatus for 5 years, reboot and recast, and then start all over again!

I just read this article about the MCU, "Everyone is Beautiful and No One Is Horny", about the strangely chaste romances of the characters, and now I wonder: do Wanda and Vision fuck? I was listening to the Kino Lefter podcast which asked the same question - the hosts observed that the central couple act more like affectionate roommates than people who have had sexual congress. They also noted that mutants do a disproportionate amount of the fucking in the comics, so perhaps cutting out the X-Men also cut out a lot of the canonical eros that could have been adapted. Anyway, it's something to think about on your next rewatch.

At the very least, Tony Stark fucks. Very first movie (though that could have been a "before he became a superhero" exception), and then he had a daughter with Pepper in Endgame, which means they at least had sex 4-5 years before that. But yeah, very little even implied activity by grown-ass adults within the movies themselves.

Nobody remembers Hawkeye, who with three kids has done the most provable fucking.

(With Linda Cardellini, no less.) I remembered him, but didn't mention him after I realized my point of "anyone who DOES have kids had them years before their movie appearances, so 'past fucking' probably doesn't count."

Finally watched the last episode of Loki. This was a particularly underwhelming episode, since it was mostly just a 30 minute villain monologue explaining what the plot of the show you just watched was with a quick punchy fight at the end because someone figured they couldn't end their superhero show without characters punching each other into stuff. Overall I found the entire season kind of boring. The tone for me was off. Someone clearly figured with the critical success of Thor: Ragnorok, it was important to try to amp up the silliness, but they never fully committed to it or the creators just didn't have the right sensibilities to achieve that. You get occasional wacky stuff like Alligator Loki or you get the weird Brazil-like bureaucracy at the TVA in the first episode or two, but that is more or less abandoned for Dr. Who timey-wimey stuff.*



I thought the 70s retro futuristic setting was interesting. It was at least slightly different than the typical 60s retro futurism. Not sure it made sense for some dude/alien from the 31st century (I assume he's human since he appeared to be using human time measurements, something that shouldn't matter at all to gods from another planet, but you know, fiction) to decide that's the style he wants to go for, but maybe it's the pick of human bureaucracy. Like the Matrix. Still, it sometimes felt like it wanted some Wes Anderson quirky points for that, but it never really amounted to anything.



As a piece of television, I don't think it justified it's existence. At least not in a way that necessitated a near 5 hour run-time. They probably could have condensed this thing down to a movie (I feel the same why Bucky and the Falcon). There felt like a lot of filler. A lot of pausing to have slow conversations that I guess were trying to do the work of characterization since they had to get Avengers 1 era Loki to be his character from Infinity War. Also they had that nice clip show in the first episode, that way when he suddenly because a good person, you remember he was sad watching the clip show. I suppose it was supposed to be a Ghost of Christmas Future type of thing, but not sure they really landed that character growth. Structurally it would have made more sense to have Mobius show him that stuff later, after some double crosses to try and scare him straight, but then they'd have to think of another thing to get him to agree to help in the first place. Maybe the promise of seizing control of the TVA would have been enough.


The performances were fine. I don't think anyone got much to work with. Hiddleston didn't really get to do anything new with the character. He's already made the same turn to the light side arc before. I guess he gets to have a "romantic" plot. That's certainly a thing. I mean, a lot of to-do was made about Loki being canonically bisexual now since he made an off hand allusion to it, but in the end, even faced with an infinite number of other Lokis he could fall for, he picked the only lady one and they share a chaste, closed-mouth kiss. Sexy. Good job trying to manufacture a ship, Disney. I think my favorite performance was Owen Wilson, if only because it was a little different for him and I haven't seen him in anything for a while. So that was nice. Everyone else was okay but mostly had nothing to do. Not sure I really liked whatever Jonathan Majors was doing as He Who Remains. It wasn't hitting for me. I think it was supposed to come off as somewhat unhinged, but mostly just felt like a collection of acting ticks. I wanted some Christopher Walken/Jeff Goldblum odd menace, but sort of got socially awkward, billionaire tech-bro villain instead.



Couple of random things:

1. Where are the close ups? I think it was a common issue with this show. Lots of wide and medium shots with a lack of closeups on faces. I noticed it a lot in that long scene with He Who Remains. The camera just keeps pushing in and out from wide to medium without ever giving us a closeup. Dude was doing a lot of face work and I think some of the subtly was lost. Were they saving money by not having to set those shots up?
   
2. Look, if your central love story designed to pander to shippers makes casual viewers go, "Wait, is this incest?" Maybe that could be rethought.
3. Richard E. Grant as Old Loki was the best variant Loki. Alligator Loki mad no sense and felt like a manufactured meme. Gotta get that Baby Groot/Baby Yoda Twitter hype.
4. This is a bigger complaint I have overall with the MCU shows (and The Mandalorian, too), but you can fully see it here in this thread, but more and more these shows feel like they are relying on outside lore to inform the characters. Most of you are referring to He Who Remains or Sylvie by other comic characters (Krang & Enchantress or something) that I'm not familiar with and that seems to used to fill in a lot of the character gaps. I'm not super excited by it, but even though I've seen all the MCU shit, I'm starting to feel like GoT non-book reader. I can mostly follow it, but I have no idea who these new characters are supposed to be. Like if we were in a theater, and He Who Remains shows up and all the nerds start whispering to each other, I would know he's supposed to be someone, but have no idea who and am unsure if I'm being short changed because of it.

In closing, Loki is a show who appears to be designed to set up the next MCU phase. Want to understand what's happening in the new Dr. Strange? You'll need a Disney+ subscription and watch Loki. Want to see an end that is in anyway satisfying? Better keep that subscription for at least another year so you can watch the season 2.



*The more I think about it the more I think this could have easily been translated into a Dr. Who storyline. Sylive is a heretofore unknown incarnation of the Doctor. He Who Remains is The Master who keeps pruning Doctors. Loki is, of course, the Doctor. You barely need to change anything. Take out a few things. Make The Doctor a little less untrustworthy in the first few episodes. Maybe add one more episode where the story actually resolves itself through a massive plot contrivance and the sheer radness of The Doctor and your all set. Ooh, maybe have Dr. Sylvie, who has mostly felt like a selfish version of the Doctor sacrifice herself to save the universe or whatever. Could even push Loki Doctor to the safety to do it. Maybe build the tension by having the end of time be an actual ticking clock thing that the Master is controlling and using the power of to manipulate the past timeline. Taking him out collapses the bubble and resets the timeline back to GMT.

Don't worry, the next Disney movie features full penetration.

You don't like it when a billionaire is the good guy, you don't like it when a billionaire is the bad guy. Make up your minds, leftist nerds!

I’m not sure I’d say that article is “about the MCU” so much as it is “about changing presentations of visual physicality in movies”.

And I’d be curious to know if the author is male or female; as a chick, I actually find it really relaxing that they mostly haven’t bothered with romance in the MCU.  For so long it was just Natasha, and the last thing we needed would have been Everyone Is In Love With Natasha story arcs. On-going Tony/Pepper over multiple movies is enough.

There’s so much going on in those movies that it would be kinda pointless to try to slow down when fighting aliens to fit in any more relationshippy subplots than there already are, and there is a decent amount of evidence to lead me to believe it would be awkwardly shoehorned in/done really poorly if it were added just to say “oh hey here’s the obligatory romance beats” (yes Whedon, we are ALL looking at Natasha/Bruce but that’s not the only offender). If nothing else, the MCU has proven definitively to Hollywood that “it’s gotta have hearts n shit to appeal to the ladies” is pretty much horseshit, and that’s kinda nice, if not more than a little amazing. 

You can look here if you’re curious about Wanda/Vision fucking.

 

Yes I was really distracted by the notEvans voice, but that is typical for me; I am very into voices.

And as I am ALSO very into AUs, I liked it a lot.  But it was Peggy beating the shit out of people & being a badass; there was very little chance I wouldn’t dig it.

The second episode was an absolute delight (especially Korath, and also especially Thanos), and I really would have loved to see this story continue (which they were apparently planning on at one point).

Captain Carter was fun, but Star-Lord T'Challa was FUCKING GREAT.

Was it explicitly Korg or just a member of his species? 

That leaves them enough wiggle room for it to not be Korg if they want to use him in a sequel to that episode. That sounds like "we want everyone to think it's Korg but be able to walk it back later."

Third episode was easily the weakest to date; it suffered a little from 90s What If comics' "what if everything was terrible and everyone died" grimdark, though they had the sense to play it almost like a farce, rather than try to wring weighty drama out of it. The ending was kind of completely out of left field, too. But it was kind of fun, I guess.