What If, 'Dead Avengers' - August 25

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life still sucks, so let us talk about something else here – the third episode of ‘What if?’ maybe?

Well, yes, but also no, seeing how the first trailer for the upcoming ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ movie has dropped yesterday, and we will be talking about it too. Then, Where to begin?

We begin with the admittance that SM: NWH film will be having a strong moralizing plotline as well as anything else: in the comics, Spider-Man’s identity as Peter Parker was revealed from time to time to the general populace, but it would disappear eventually – because Spidey would make an especially dumb deal with Mephisto, or something else that. Here, in the trailer, we seem to have Peter do something similar with Doctor Strange…until he began to have second thoughts, and the good doctor screwed-up the spell most magnificently. Now what?

Well, the trailer only reveals that Peter is going to be end-up dealing with many villains in a single movie – maybe it is even an MCU version of the Sinister Six; who knows? That particular villain team has a rather flexible roster, so why not what we have seen in the trailer after all? However, where is the moralizing element?

Why, it is right there: Peter’s in the pickle because he wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He does not want to be revealed as the infamous Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, but he wants his friends to know it regardless; he is trying to sit on two chairs at once, and even with his fantastic sense of balance and other spider-skills, that will not work. Not for long, anyways, and as the trailer shows, the Sinister Six are coming to end this – and him after all.

Moreover, Dr. Strange is right there with him, since he cast the spell even though Wong warned him not to. Yes, Wong was just doing his part, seeing how he was actually going to challenge the Abomination to 10 rounds of good old-fashioned fisticuffs, but still, Dr. Strange is an adult here, he should know better – and he does. He certainly treats Peter in the trailer in a similar manner as to how the Ancient One, (Tilda Swinton version), has treated him in his first film, so there is that.

…Yes, continuity here is wonky; ‘here’ I mean between the previous film, (the one featuring Mysterio, duh), and this one, but that is to be expected: on one hand, there are the RL issues, such as the fight between Disney/MCU and Sony after the second Spider-Man movie ended, and on the other? So far MCU’s entire Phase 4 had been about deconstruction: the Avengers have disassembled after the events in ‘Endgame’ and they have experienced many different personal changes – just ask Wanda. Ergo, there is no surprise that Peter’s experiences and adventures after his aborted European tour have taken-off in an entirely new direction – and this brings us to ‘What if?’, which is all about storylines taken off in new directions. In this week’s episode, for example, Stark, Thor, Banner/Hulk and Hawkeye died, killed by a Yellowjacket version of Hank Pym, because his daughter Hope used to be an S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in this universe and had died on one mission, so he is now having his revenge. Groovy, right? …And also, just as out of the left field as T’Challa being the Star-Lord is. The series’ premiere – Peggy Carter becoming the world’s first super-soldier - was actually tame by the series’ standards, apparently. What is left?

…Not unlike the ‘proper’ episodes of ‘What if?’ the third Tom Holland Spider-Man film is about a ‘typical’ MCU hero – namely, the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man – who finds himself in a new, ‘atypical’ situation that wasn’t covered by his past experiences. He is existing – or is going to be existing, rather – in a brand-new scenario, in a different part of a Marvel multiverse, with Dr. Strange going along for the ride in a Doc and Marty McFly scenario, from the ‘Back to the Future’ franchise. Yes, I know that the current ‘Rick and Morty’ cartoons are a more recent example, but frankly, if I can use a more likable and sane example, then that is the one I am going to use. Where were we?

…By destroying ‘the sacred timeline’, Loki and Sylvie found themselves not just in a mess – in a several messes. One mess is the emergence of a new Kang, one that is more competent and coherent than the old, late, He Who Remains. Now Loki and Sylvie are going to defeat him, a task that will be even harder than the victory over the He-Who – but that is up to them. What is not up to them, apparently, are all of those alternate timelines, like the three that we’ve seen already on ‘What If?’, that would’ve been erased by the TVA pre-‘Loki’, but now are getting a chance to flourish – hurrah. The T’Challa one was a positive example; the Hank Pym going mass murderer is a negative one. Where will the MCU take us all tomorrow (next week)? That is only for them to know.

…And in real life, of course, Disney/MCU might have shot themselves in the foot with their new approach, of course. Having a ‘sacred timeline’ meant that there was at least some standard by which to measure the new timelines as well as an anchor point to which to return to. But now that the ‘sacred timeline’ is gone, everything and everyone is up for grabs, which means that no one and nothing is safe, just as this week’s episode of ‘What If?’ has demonstrated.

…Well, this is it, for now. See you all soon!

The Chair - August 23

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about… ‘The Chair’ for a change; the change here is that it is not a Marvel show, and so I doubt that it will take us long to talk about it either.

Is ‘The Chair’ any good? Frankly, to me, it was reminiscent of the ‘Over the Moon’ movie, and not just because Ms. Sandra Oh was featured in both productions: in ‘The Chair’, she is the main character, and in ‘Over the Moon’, she is the stepmother (to be) of the main character instead. No, the similarity here is that both works are well-done, solid, fun to watch, and – instantly forgettable.

No, this isn’t Ms. Oh’s fault; in ‘Over the Moon’, her role is episodic, more or less, while in ‘The Chair’… in ‘The Chair’ her character is depicted, (by her), not unlike her character in ‘Killing Eve’ – a harried Asian or Asian-American woman; I cannot help but feel that that is Ms. Oh’s default character setting, or at least – her best one; when she deviates from it – say, in ‘The Chair’, it just isn’t the same.

…To elaborate, ‘The Chair’ is not bad, it just cannot decide if it wants to be a comedy, a drama, or something else entirely. Yes, it tackles serious issues…that it undercuts with various comedic moments – from example, Ms. Oh’s character falling off her chair, (visual pun intended, no doubt). Ha-ha, hilarious, and it rather undercuts the show’s main message of racial, sexual, and age equality.

It is also reminiscent of the upcoming ‘Cinderella’ movie, the Camilla Cabello movie, one where Cinderella’s dream is not to marry the prince, but to open her own dress shop, for a start. Personally, I think that it has the potential to be a truly good movie, but the humor – seen already in the trailer, for example – is clearly extra here; for example, a mouse turned human claims that he cannot keep his balance without his tail, ha-ha. How funny and completely unconnected to the movie’s main message…but where were we?

…Pretty much where ‘The Chair’ has went: it could have been a serious drama dealing with some serious issues… or it could have been a comedy show, maybe even a rom-com… or it could have been something like ‘Bob Hearts Abishola’, which is a rather touching romantic interracial ‘comedy’ show…notably naïve, but it works… but ‘The Chair’ is none of that; rather, it is a well-delivered mess that is well-loved by the critics. Well, the critics have also loved ‘The Suicide Squad’-2021, and we can see for ourselves that that isn’t enough for the audiences to love it; the same, and more, can be said for the ‘Over the Moon’ Netflix film, which was also panned – a lot – by the critics and the like – and which has also disappeared without a trace into Lethe, the river of Oblivion. ‘The Chair’, it seems, is destined for the same fate; the fact that Netflix tends not to release various clips of its’ shows, movies, and the like doesn’t help either – the promoters often don’t have a lot of material to work with, and people these days are still rather frugal with their monies and may not invest it, as well as their time, into a relative unknown such as ‘The Chair’. That is that.

…And that is also the end of our discussion for ‘The Chair’…at least for its’ 1^st season. This is it for now; see you all soon!

What If, 'T'Challa the Star-Lord' - Aug 18

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and the U.S.’, (but also NATO’s), actions in the RL Afghanistan showed it to everyone, loud and clear, on August 16, 2021…onwards. I really want to talk about it, but, conversely, many other people have already talked, and are talking, and will be talking about this for a long time from now on, so let us talk about something else – the second episode of ‘What If?’

What happens here, of course, is that Disney/Marvel/MCU are trying to erase J. Gunn’s live-action GotG franchise and replace it with a better one, one that is animated. I am guessing that whatever beef they had with ScarJo in regards to the ‘Black Widow’ movie pales in face of their feud with J. Gunn! What next?

Well, the Western world will need to figure out what to do now that the Taliban, as well as their Pakistan backers and superiors have won a major score – oh, we are talking about ‘What If?’ No…well, yes, but here is where ‘The Suicide Squad’ deserves a special mention.

The new version of the 2016 film is a good movie although it has its flaws, just as the 2016 version had its’ virtues. For example, in 2016, Waller was assembling a team that was supposed to be custom-made, to be precisely tailored to deal with various threats…on behalf of the American government, (cough). Yes, it didn’t go smoothly, not quite to plan, but in the end? The titular characters actually delivered…pretty much as Waller and her cohorts had expected them to be, and maybe even surpassing the expectations, (not that there was too much height to clear). Here, in the 2021 version, the Wall not so much assembled as collected a literally motley crew of bits and pieces that don’t even fit together, and make MCU’s AoS crew seem cohesive – and has the gall to be surprised when the mission literally dissolves into shite.

…No, I am not talking about the massacre on the beach but about how the team Bloodsport did its’ job in the completely opposite direction from where the Wall…assumed that it would go, apparently? Seriously, she collected some of the worst people in the DC-verse and sent them off with minimal oversight – Colonel Rick Flagg and whatever means of keeping an eye on both teams, (drones? Satellite cameras?). The result was that Flagg died and the news about the American government’s involvement with Jotunheim and Starro leaked out all the same – something that Waller wanted to avoid. Peacekeeper was nullified, Blackguard died, and her FBI underlings turned on her, (guess they heard what she did to their predecessors in the first movie). I have no idea as to what agent Waller will do next, but that is not why the movie failed. Rather, it failed because the American audiences had their fill of movie theaters for the moment, plus all of the baggage that was carried over from the first Suicide Squad movie, one that HBO/WB/DC/whoever never managed to quite divorce from the new one…

Back to ‘What If?’ Yeah, sort of. In the first GotG film, we had a ragtag group of characters, literally, who went forth and saved the galaxy. In the second film, they progressed, becoming more competent and more comfortable together. Moreover, in the ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’ movies, they did their best to stop Thanos, and stop him they did…with losses along the way, but that was unavoidable.

And now we got the second ‘What If?’ episode that has none of that, but instead we got T’Challa succeeding at practically everything that Peter Quill had struggled with. Maybe that is justifiable, but as we have seen in MCU, both in CA: CW and the first ‘Black Panther’ film, T’Challa has had his own problems so clearly, in his ‘What If?’ episode, (Earth-TRN877), this might be some very alternative T’Challa, (though he and Yondu both were fought to a standstill, cough, by this dimension’s Collector)… Anything else?

The tendency to play it safe as it was depicted in the series’ premiere is running here true too – all of the characters are familiar to us, its’ their roles that change. In the series’ premiere, this was downplayed, sort of, but now and here, in the episode 1x02, it is played-out to the max, in an almost vaudeville-like manner. So, what next?

Sadly, I have no idea, or at least – no concrete idea. I have some theories, but nothing that I want to air for the moment. Therefore, for now, this is it – see you all soon instead.

What If, 'Captain Carter' - August 11

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the series’ premiere of Marvel’s ‘What if?’ Yay?!

…Actually, I got nothing. Nothing new, that is. As we have talked earlier, ‘What if?’ is a rehash of MCU and MCU alone – no X-Men, no Defenders, no outriders, put otherwise. The series’ premiere is a reboot of the CA: TFA film, with a gender role gap – it is not Steve Rogers’ who the titular hero is no, but Peggy Carter, (already known as the star of the ‘Agent Carter’ (AC) series). Surprise?

Well no, not really. The first three phased of MCU had been a carefully choreographed affair, and now that Disney/MCU is writing – essentially – a fanfic version of itself in a cartoon layout, (as opposed to live-action), so far there won’t be too many surprises, and this first episode is the most straightforward of them all: Captain Carter, The First Avenger. Some people were surprised by this plot twist, others were not, but for the moment, Disney/MCU & co. can afford to shoulder the slings and arrows of the hard-wrought fortune (or whatever was that Shakespeare wrote down in our universe), and pull out such pieces as the ‘What if?’ series’ premiere – after all, they aren’t risking anything; WASP women are probably the most powerful social minority after their male counterparts, according to the progressive scale, so Disney/MCU is playing it safe. Again.

The technical side of the situation… yeah, it’s less than perfect, but, again, when it comes to technical issues, that is another situation altogether: technical issues can be resolved, or sidestepped, easily enough, as the remake of Disney’s ‘Aladdin’ showed in regards to the blue Will Smith. Here, it is more of a voice acting issue, and I will not comment on it – that would be a low blow. And what is a high blow?

There is no high blow – Marvel’s ‘What if?’ is beginning with a low bar, one where there aren’t any surprises, something that was shown to the audience in all of the teaser trailers that gave us enough material about the first three episodes at least; plus, there’s the show’s S1 poster that shows us enough material to foresee as to what will happen in that season – and knowledge is half of the intrigue!

Pause. In discussion the ‘Captain Carter’ episode, we have no other path to go but around, in circles, for for the moment, there is nowhere else to go – the journey is only beginning, and we have no idea as to where it will take us. Right now, we have enjoyed watching the first episode, but nothing more; maybe that is what Disney/MCU wants, so who knows?

…For the moment, however, this is it. See you all soon.