SI, 'Promises' - June 28

Obligatory disclaimer: the dead rat is actually gone. Wait, what?

Let me try again: real life sucks, but for a while there was a dead rat, located not far from where the dead skunk had been lying, but because the rat – a female one, judging by its’ size – was lying on private property, it was gone in a matter of days going for weeks, rather than weeks going for months, as the skunk had been. Pause.

Again, real life sucks, but when I tried to do something different and continue to watch Marvel’s™ ‘Secret Invasion’ series – the second episode, ‘Promises’. Again, so far SI feels like a prequel to something – there’s action going on, true, but mostly there’s exposition and talking; ‘Promises’ was driven less by action and more by dialogue, which is ironic, given how the writers are going on strike in Hollywood, and lately, (June 2023), quite a few actors, (even A-List actors) are threatening to do the same. This may be the reason as to why SI is being downplayed in the online news, especially since SI was using CGI artwork in its’ episodes – because otherwise my only idea is that USA, RF, UK, and several other countries will team up to take the Skrulls down. Put otherwise, this is a ‘Ms. Marvel’ situation – when an MCU (Disney+) TV series made such a tone-deaf semi-political SNAFU that everyone is doing his or her best to pretend that it doesn’t exist. Fun!

…On the other hand, what else is there to discuss? The evolution of the vulture birds? Thanks, but Mr. Keith L. has done it already, having written a very interesting and comprehensive book about them, (published and released back in 2022). In it, he discusses those overlooked and often neglected birds of prey, clarifying their relationships to each other, (which are more complex than how they look), as well as their evolution, ecologies, interactions with humans, and so on. Given that vultures are even less popular animals than the hyenas are, Mr. Keith L.’s achievement is quite something! Positively better and more interesting than SI is.

SI, on the other hand, is flat-out lackluster. Pardon me, but it is. My home city of Toronto has only turkey vultures out of all the scavenger birds, and only in summer, but even that is enough to see that SI may be joining ‘Ms. Marvel’ in MCU’s hall of fame as one of its’ aspects that is not so much as good or bad, but just lackluster – and we’re only two episodes in. Harsh, and yet I find myself almost wanting for some sort of a vulture to swoop in and to carry-off the streamable series into the land of the dead – but that is a different story…

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

SI, series premiere - June 21

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about Marvel’s™ ‘Secret Invasion’ series instead.

The series’ premiere episode, ‘Resurrection’, is… no, it may be indicative of the series (mini-series), as a whole: it lacks heart.

No, let us try again. ‘Secret Invasion’ is a remake-reboot, not unlike TLM-2023, only if TLM-2023 is obvious, then ‘Secret Invasion’ is a ‘subtle’ way of rebooting both S.H.I.E.L.D., (AoS), and S.W.O.R.D., (WV, remember?). After AoS, WV, and – the ‘Ms. Marvel’ series, SI is the third attempt for MCU to develop a secret agency something or other. AoS was a spy TV series that veered into new pastures at the end of S4 or around that time and it took the titular S.H.I.E.L.D. with it. That series ended with S.H.I.E.L.D. flourishing… an ending that came from a previous incarnation of the show, and which ended in a metaphorical cul-de-sac as they were replaced by S.W.O.R.D. in WV. Skrulls also played a minor role in that series, but play they did, and as we’ve seen in the trailer for ‘The Marvels’ film, they, and S.W.O.R.D., were supposed to play a role in MCU – and so the Skrulls do. 

S.W.O.R.D., on the other hand, got replaced by something called S.A.B.E.R. with nary an explanation, though in ‘Ms. Marvel’ we just had surrogate S.H.I.E.L.D., represented by the government, chasing Clan Destine, aka surrogate InHumans, with Kamala being caught in the middle. However, by the end of MM, we learn that none of the above applied to Kamala, who had her own destiny, and who got swapped with Carol ‘Captain Marvel’ Danvers at the end – an act that ties-in directly with ‘The Marvels’ as the trailer shows – but there the villains are to be the Kree, not the Skrulls. Pause.

Going back to the first ‘Captain Marvel’ film, we learn that in MCU the Skrulls are good, while the Kree were bad. Therefore, now we got a splinter group of the Skrulls, who are bad after all, and Fury, Hill, and the good Skrulls need to stop them. Can we say ‘unnecessarily complex’? Whatever was going on in the heads of MCU’s creative team regarding them will remain unknown – it just too convoluted to be revealed.

However, the ‘plot development’, where the splinter Skrulls are beginning a conflict between USA and Russia is all too predictable: it is safe. Sure, MCU could have used China, North Korea or Iran, (to name a few), in place of RF, but RF is safe. Disney/MCU knows that it will not offend anyone by using RF as cat’s-paw for the main villains – the splinter Skrulls – and anything else is more risky.

Sure, USA is not too happy with China these days, for example, (just ask Biden the POTUS), but Disney/MCU is ready to commit to that train of thought and would rather be somewhere else. As it was written before, Disney loves to make money, but it hates to lose money even more, and controversies cost money, and so Disney prefers to end controversies before they begin. The result? Things like the almost featureless ‘Elemental’ that go down easy, go out easy, and are forgotten just as easily. You remember the Spider-society in Sony’s™ second Miles Morales film? On one hand, this organization is quite democratic - we got people of all shapes, colors, sexes, species, etc. On the other hand, this organization is quite inefficient, as Miles is able to avoid them… period. The Spider-society is less of an organization and more of a crowd that is not very efficient at executing tasks period. (The titular organization of AoS had a similar problem, but on a smaller scale). This is… not unlike the actual US society these days, which is quite democratic and politically correct, but not very good at executing various tasks; the fact that the RF’s ‘special military operation’ is floundering is their fall, not US’ achievement, and it shows. If RF ever gets its’ things together, (a tall order, true, but still), then Ukraine is in real trouble…

Leaving real world behind and going back to ‘Secret Invasion’… we got more of AoS, really. AoS had FitzSimmons to show the American unity with the U.K., and here we got Ms. /agent Sonya, who is a member of MI6 and Fury ally, (supposedly). In reality, the relationship between the two countries is more fractious, but Disney/MCU has nothing to do with reality, you know? Real life sucks as it is…

‘Secret Invasion’, on the other hand, is just lackluster – it isn’t as bad as ‘She-Hulk’ had been, but judging by the more than slightly subdued reaction from the media, everyone is aware that it isn’t ‘What if?’ or even ‘Sam & Bucky’. It is just a much-shorter clone of AoS, and people are treating SI as such. Pity, I would say, but there is nothing to pity – Disney/MCU should have just stuck with S.W.O.R.D. instead.

For now, then, this is it. See you all soon.

PJ Masks & FH - June 18

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us briefly talk about the new FH development instead.

Ok, no, first I need to address the issue of why I am not talking about the current PJ Masks’ development. To this, I reply: real life sucks already, so why should I talk more of the same? In greater detail, listen: here, Disney Junior is trying to softly and slyly reboot the PJ franchise, just as Disney/Marvel is rebooting AoS via the upcoming ‘Secret Invasion’ series, and Disney itself is rebooting its’ animated movies as well – just look at the TLM-2023 version and compare it with the original 1989 one. However, in the case of PJ Masks, the soft reboot ran into a specific problem – the lack of continuation. Seriously, look at the previous seasons, as I’ve written before – there’s no consistent character development either among heroes or villains; neither side seems to learn anything from their repeated clashes, or they do, but never utilize it – and thus, all of them are caught in an endless loop of fights, night after night. You could really write a dark story here, about several children who are caught into some sort of a crazy Groundhog Day – pardon, night-like – scenario and cannot escape it unless they do something drastic…

Ok, this will not happen because the titular characters – the PJ Masks – have daytime/civilian identities and their nightly emergencies have something to do with their daytime issues. That is fair, but sadly, the series reboot seems to have gotten rid of this, now there is even more nighttime action and even less daytime, making the cartoon series even less realistic than it was before… Yes, I do understand that ‘PJ Masks’ was never about realism, but still, this is depressing, so I’m ignoring the series for the moment, and am not commenting on it either.

As for Ubisoft’s FH property… yes, they seem to be going Mesoamerica now, and are introducing a new named character Vela the conquistador. Yes, the conquistadors were the initial conquerors of Mesoamerica for the Spanish empire. For me, though, they strike closer to home: one of their most famous members, Hernan Cortez, appeared in the third and final season of DW, where he faced-off against Ivan the Terrible.

I have written before that the match-up didn’t make historical sense: like many eastern despots, Ivan IV the Terrible stayed safely behind the front lines… of course, so did the king of Spain during Cortes’ times… so the point here is that in this episode, DW had a Russian/Eastern villain defeated by a Western/European anti-hero! How novel… not. Still, DW is done and gone now, and what is left is… FH, for as we talked before, the creative team behind FH has plundered DW for ideas a lot, and the new conquistador character is yet the latest example – with one difference.

For the melee weapons, Hernan Cortes used a halberd, (which became a trademark weapon of one of the original team knight characters – the Lawbringer), as well as the ‘espada rapera’ – the Spanish rapier. However, since FH’s new character is based on their previous Warmonger character, their weapon is the Warmonger’s old weapon – the flamberge sword. Essentially, this is a rapier/sword combo, with a wavy, stylized blade, a la a tongue of flame. Put otherwise, the FH team also seems to be running dry, Mesoamerican styles or not.

…So, what we got here is the ‘PJ Masks’ show, which has transformed from a relatively decent pre-teen superhero fable show into its’ flawed imitation, where style is more important than substance, and conversely, we got the latest FH update, which has delivered – so far, but still – another update, also on style, nothing more. That is flat-out depressing. Have I mentioned that real life sucks? It does, and one can always count on oneself and one’s family to make it worse.

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!

Elemental - June 15

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. This is all I want to say about it right now, so let us move onto the ‘Elemental’ movie instead. Regrettably, ‘Elemental’ is much of an improvement, topic-wise – it also sucks, not unlike how ‘Doolittle’-2020 sucked, only moreso.

Let us elaborate. Superficially, ‘Elemental’ isn’t too different from Disney’s ‘Zootopia’ film (2016), save that in place of anthropomorphic mammals we got anthropomorphic elements instead – air, earth, fire and water. No, the ‘Avatar/Korra’ franchise had people who could control such elements instead, (and they had people who had no such powers too). The world of ‘Elemental’ is more restrictive than the world of Aang and Korra is, as well as the world of ‘Zootopia’ – there are only four main elements, (any ‘crossbreads’ such as mud or steam embodiments don’t appear in this film), and nothing else. In fact, at least some critics are asking why are there sentient/self-aware elementals, of water, for example, and then there is just plain water, which is neither sentient nor self-aware.

Next, we got the actual plot. In ‘Zootopia’, we got a love story between a red fox and a bunny rabbit, an unintentional and flattering parody of Harry and Megan. They have to solve a mystery of the night howlers, figure out who is trying to set carnivores and herbivores, (well, ‘predators’ and ‘prey’) against each other, as well as deal with prejudices, biases, preconceptions and superstitions against each other. In ‘Elemental’, we got a female fire elemental named Ember and a male water elemental named Wade who… pause.

The main conflict in ‘Elemental’ is that Ember had blown stuff up, and Wade has to report her to the city hall. Since that would put the kibosh on Ember’s entire family and their dream, done in the ‘Straight-off-the-boat’ style, Ember has to persuade Wade that she isn’t so bad and he shouldn’t report her – and when she does achieve it, in a manner of speaking, (among other things), she loses her temper shortly afterwards once more, and creates another explosion that she and Wade have to solve together. Fair enough, but the plot of ‘Zootopia’ is simply better and more complex out of the two.

Then we come to romance. As it was said above, in ‘Zootopia’, romance is only a part of the movie; the mystery of the night howlers is just as big a part. In ‘Elemental’, there is only romance… wait, what do I hear? It is an interracial romance and therefore it is more important? Right, once again, from the topic.

As TLM-2023 showed, racial issues are still big and thorny in the U.S. society: after TLM-2023 aired, I saw many videos and read fan reviews that – while claiming that they were not racist, certainly made a lot of noise about H.B. and her race. The fact that TLM-2023 is a bad movie on its’ own merit does not help the situation either. However, what matters is that TLM-2023 is one side of a coin – a film that brings out a lot of race-based critique in a manner that helps no one.

…Meanwhile, ‘Elemental’ is the other side of the same coin: it is supposed to be a responsa to the interracial relationships’ critique, but it does so smoothly and glibly that it helps no one.

Again, the U.S. society, or at least its’ elite, don’t deal with interracial relationships very well. Look at Disney/Marvel, for example: in AoS, there were no WASP/POC relationships; in ‘Avengers’ – ditto, and SW did not do any better. TLM-2023 handled this sort of thing very, well, heavy-handedly, pardon the pun, but at least they tried – and ‘Elemental’ doesn’t do the interracial relationship any better, certainly worse than how ‘Zootopia’ did it.

Put otherwise, ‘Elemental’ is ‘Zootopia’, not only simplified to just four races/species, but with all the rough edges sanded and smoothed out, which only hurt the film. In ‘Zootopia’, characters had to deal with real prejudices and outright segregation – tall, small and short characters were often treated differently from each other and without any political correctness either. ‘Elemental’ does not really have that; yes, Ember and Wade come from different social classes, but ‘Elemental’ does not explore that either; the main conflict here is that Ember and Wade are fire and ice…I mean, fire and water, ha-ha. Couldn’t they make them earth and air instead? Are earth and fire, for example, all that compatible?.. Never mind, where were we?

Flat-out, by smoothing out any controversies and conflicts, the creative team behind ‘Elemental’ has decreased its’ value, has decreased the value of Wade and Ember’s relationship… period. Tom Holland’s Peter Parker and MJ have value as a couple; Sony’s Miles Morales and Gwen, (as well as Peter B. and MJ Watson) – ditto. Ember and Wade – not so much. You want to see a fictional interracial couple that works as a team, defeating enemies and overpower obstacles? Go and re-watch ‘Zootopia’ once again. ‘Elemental’ is just a faded copy of it.

Anything else? Yes, Ubisoft’s FH franchise seems ready to go Mesoamerica soon – already there is a conquistador-like character in the works. There was a conquistador – Hernan Cortez himself – in the third and final season of DW, but that is another story…

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

Miles Morales Spider-Verse movie - June 2

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the ‘Across the Spider-verse’ movie instead. To put it concisely: it works. Why?

Firstly, it deals with the multiverse correctly – it is a huge, jumbled complex that can accommodate, well, everything, from myriad of spider-people to a world without shrimp, or something along those lines. (Also, Gwen Stacy as a Spider-Woman? That does not sound quite right). As a result, whereas MCU is struggling to fit the multiverse into itself, Sony’s Spider-Verse does not – the spiders do not control the multiverse and let it flow as it is… or not.

Enter Miguel O’Hara, who is one of the movie’s main protagonists, (especially for Miles): he is not so much evil as orderly – he is a champion for inevitability of fate, (cough, Thanos, cough), and he and his cohorts are doing their best to enforce this P.O.V. across the Spider-verse multiverse. By contrast, Miles, Gwen, and their cohorts are more about freedom of choice – hence their conflict with Miguel and his team.

…The more traditional struggle between good and evil here is embodied in the character of Spot, who, (he is a canon Spider-Man villain, BTW), is trying to demolish the Spider-verse multiverse just because; this version of Spot is chaotic evil, and unapologetically so. …Of course, since this is a good movie, Spot has his own journey to travel before he arrives at this alignment, and so he does. What is next?

The delivery of the movie – there is humor in it, drama, and everything else beyond. The style of the Sony Miles Morales’ films is something else – I found it unnecessarily distracting and overwhelming in the first film, and I consider this the case now. However, given the popularity of these films, I am guessing that the overwhelming art style of theirs’ also works. Anything else?

The film doesn’t have a mid-credits’ scene because it has ended on an open-ended ending, pardon the tautology – the conflict between inevitability of fate and the freedom of choice, (mostly human, though there are sentient pigs, cats and non-avian dinosaurs as well), is still going strong, while the Miles Morales that the audience got to know and love, (cough), is still at large in the Spider-verse multiverse because he can. There are consequences for one’s choices, always, but following/believing in inevitability is one of them, not an exception or an alternative. Also…

Also, the relationship between Miles and Gwen, (throughout this movie at least), is an interracial one, cough. Mind you, it is nothing new – Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and Zendaya’s MJ relationship is an interracial one too, not to mention the actual relationship between the two actors in question – but Hollywood follows its’ own rules when it comes to interracial relationships, it seems.

Yes, I am talking about the upcoming ‘Elemental’ movie, which is a weak rip-off of ‘Zootopia’. The racial history of the U.S. is a messy and a complicated one; these days, (the early 2020-s), there are still people who have issues with race and interracial relationships, but the sort of a vapid response that ‘Elemental’ is offering is no solution but the other side of the problem; not to mention – I suspect – that it is the reason that we didn’t get any sort of a ‘Zootopia’ sequel after the ‘Zootopia+’ mini-series had been released, for otherwise ‘Elemental’ would’ve been blown clear out of the water, (pun intended). What next?

MCU’s ‘Secret Wars’ mini-series, apparently. This is MCU’s latest attempt to fix the whatever hole/damage AoS had inflicted on its’ narrative – but that is another discussion, for another time. (Sony’s Spider-Verse had wisely avoided any but the most basic mentions of MCU. Good for them!)

For now though, this is it. See you all soon.

TLM-2023 - May 26

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. I would rather talk to you about tigers or some similar creatures, but let us talk about the TLM-2023 movie remake instead.

Basically, it works. It is not the best movie of 2023, but it works. It is not the most remarkable or the most memorable, but neither is it the most horrid film of 2023. Anything else?

Ok, there is the species-changing operation of Scuttle – the bird changed from a male seagull into a female northern gannet. It is the same principle as changing Eric into Ariel or vice versa – these are two different seabird species and they are not really related to each other at all – you could just as easily replace humans with dogs, horses, or elephant in TLM-2023 – the basic principle would be the same.

With geography, it is the same mess as it is with biology – initially, Disney’s TLM franchise was based on Andersen’s fairy tale, which was set in the North Sea – but now Disney is proclaiming that their original TLM movie was set in the Mediterranean instead, and the remake is set either there or in the Caribbean. Yay.

Again, this mess is completely unnecessary, as is changing a bird’s species – does it really matter if Eric and Ariel live in northern Europe, in southern, or across the world in Central America? They are imaginary characters, for crying aloud! …But since the same question could be asked about the film itself – did the TLM really needed to be remade? It had spawned one or two movie sequels, as well as a TV cartoon spinoff already – but that Disney franchise became completely upended as well.

Getting back to characters… Disney did not really deliver anything good with them either. So, Ursula really is Ariel’s aunt – so, how did she end up with tentacles? Is she a mutant, or has the High Evolutionary, (the MCU version), had a hand in her transformation? Ariel was the one to end her rather than Eric? Great, more gender misbalance in Hollywood – Barbie and Ken are going to go down great!..

No, seriously, have you seen the trailer for the Barbie movie? It is all about girl power, about the titular doll character going into ‘the real world’ (such as it is in the film) and learning… something or other. This is an old trope, one of the first characters to do this sort of thing had been Buddha, the deity behind Buddhism, but Barbie is no deity, and whatever she is going to teach her audience will not be any new modern Buddhism. Rather, the cast and crew behind it are going for a new Pinocchio film, the wooden boy replaced by a plastic girl… and her sidekick, Ken, who – in the trailer at least – seems to be about as helpful and coherent as Ariel’s animal sidekicks are, (and that leaving behind the chemistry either between Diggs and Awkwafina, or between their characters), and can you imagine a modern film, where a male character goes on a true character development, and a female character is a comic relief? Well, I cannot, but we digress.

No, not really – these days the TLM remake is all about Ariel going out and about, learning who she is and embracing herself… just Disney’s Pinocchio remake had been. Del Toro’s take on the wooden puppet is something else entirely, so let us leave it off to the side for now, and we are left with what?

..Aside from a lame-ass excuse that Awkwafina’s character changed species to become a diving bird so that she would take to Ariel and friends underwater – seriously, it is a world with mermaids and who knows what else, why a seagull cannot dive here? – there is the odd reluctant of featuring Ms. J. Alexander, who played Vanessa, Ursula’s alter-ego. For a while I thought that Ms. McCarthy would just play Vanessa herself – Eric was in love with her only through a spell to begin with, who cares if ‘Vanessa’ looked like Ms. McCarthy without CGI and make-up – but no. This might have been too risky; plus Ms. McCarthy, (Ursula), and Ms. Bailey (Ariel) are too different from each other as people, so, again, we get Ms. Alexander as Vanessa and no particular reason as to why she did not appear in the trailers. What is left?

Nothing of any significance. The queen – Eric’s mother – is the same actress who played the grown-up Hermione Granger-Weasley in the original HPCC theater production. That… might’ve been one of the reasons as to why HPCC didn’t succeed – Ms. Dumezweni and her male counterpart, who’d played the adult Ron Weasley didn’t look anything like Hermione and Ron; they just as easily could’ve been a pair of OCs who got caught in the latest Potter and friends’ madness – but that story is over. The story of TLM-2023 also probably is – while it was received better than HPCC was, it is not by much. People may be invested, and investing, into the TLM franchise, moreso than they had into the DnD film – and hah, was not that painful – but not by much. We will just have to wait and see as to what will come out of this in the future, immediate and otherwise, instead.

This is it for now. See you all soon.

GotG Vol 3 - May 6

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and I apologize for my tardiness. Now let us talk about the GotG, Vol 3. What is it?

A really great film, to put it down concisely. Without getting into details too much, let us point out as to what is absent from GotG Vol 3 – multiverse and Kangs.

No, seriously, let us try again. Throughout the GotG series, aside from the Christmas special that titular characters went from challenge to challenge, growing and developing as a team/family from film to film, including the ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’ movies – only not, as some of them were dusted by Thanos… and Gamora died in a non-reversible way – and got replaced by an earlier copy of herself, who acted quite differently from the previous incarnations. So what?

Therefore, compared to the previous Marvel film, ‘Quantumania’, GotG Vol 3 is more toned down out of the two, it is more restrained, and the stakes for the cast and crew – not the characters – are higher. Put otherwise, the former put a better performance than their counterparts in ‘Quantumania’ did. What next?

Next, the movie is more restrained, by Disney/MCU standards. ‘Quantumania’ is supposed to be a leap into the multiverse. Sadly, Disney/MCU hasn’t gotten the hang of the multiverse so far; the best take on it is ‘Loki’, and so far the info about its’ upcoming second season is kept close to the chest: apparently, Disney/MCU is aware that they haven’t figured out as to how to play the multiverse card correctly, and ‘Quantumania’ was supposed to be a test run. Like a test run into something new, it was not a smashing success, even if Elon Musk’s went worse, but that is real life for you – it sucks.

Back to Disney/MCU the fact that the titular characters disband at the end of the film, marking something of an end for the group. This is important, for everything has to end, for otherwise it risks overstaying its’ welcome. Now, this is something that has been harped about in regards to Disney/MCU for a while now, so some elaboration is in order. Let us begin.

Firstly, nothing is set in stone, and as long as MCU continues to make money for Disney, it will continue to run. However, the overall reputation of Disney/MCU will continue to suffer and what will come out of that is another question. Of course, this means that the voices of Disney/MCU’s critics will continue to sound, but by themselves, they are nowhere near enough to end the MCU, for they matter less than they like to. In the elections of 2016, the American mass media did its’ best to ensure that Hillary Clinton would win – and she did not. Since then, the American mass media wasn’t the same, and neither is the rest of the American society – but the Donald is still neither arrested nor affected overmuch; he may’ve lost the election-2020, but he’s still kicking, and the Democrats are trying to stop him from running for the election of 2024, and are mismanaging that strategy…badly, but that is another story.

Back to GotG Vol 3, they have actually ended and kudos to them for this. Disney tends to make its’ series a trilogy, and GotG confirms to this… unlike the Ant-Man franchise, whose third film, ‘Quantumania’, feels more like a beginning instead – but it also leaves the ant-family high and dry. That is a cheap shot, it is, and even Disney (and MCU) admit it… somewhat.

Ah yes, the villain issue of Disney/MCU. Until ‘Quantumania’, the villains of this franchise came and went in a range of a single film – normally. There were exceptions. Thanos was one, obviously. The characters in AoS were another, but AoS itself is buried deeper by Disney/MCU than Thanos is, but where it does leave Kang?

Pretty much in the same place as the rest of the villains, save that now there is a multiverse – as in a nearly limitless supply of Kangs. Now when one Kang dies, another can replace him with little effort, and that is it. It is the same old story, just cheapened even more, since death of any Kang will be almost meaningless on one hand, and on the other, the rest of the villains are now redundant as there’s probably always a Kang who can do their job just as well.

To expand – ‘Quantumania’ differs from Vol 3 is that it has a hero, who was left high and dry, as with ‘Quantumania’ over, there’s no indication as to where the Ant-Man and the rest of his family will go, (i.e. they are all left hanging), and on the other hand, it has a villain that had no meaning in the greater structure of Disney/MCU, no matter how much the latter tried to up-play the multiverse. Sad, but GotG Vol 3 did not have these issues, which is why people like it much better than they had ‘Quantumania’, and that is that.

This is also the end for now. See you all soon!