Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

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Cuenca 'ammer
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by Cuenca 'ammer »

not a fan of anything other than the Capt. America films and I think iirc that Endgame was pretty good.

here's a review that I came across while perusing the Houston Press (a free paper that I keep up with because it does great Houston Texans articles :hush: )

https://www.houstonpress.com/arts/revie ... a-15092726

From there, it's a largely standalone effort: a green screen morass that advances the overall storyline more in the final five minutes (and the mid-credits scene) than in the entirety of the movie that came before it. Quantumania looks like a Star Wars movie that takes place entirely on a planet-sized version of the Mos Eisley cantina, complete with simplistic revolutionary subplot.

Among Quantumania's other faults (and this appears to be a feature and not a bug of the MCU at this point): it can't stop sniffing its own farts. Call them callbacks or simple laziness, but Reed strips stuff from everything from Captain America: The Winter Soldier to Thor: Ragnarok, which makes you wonder what might have shaken out if they'd spent some of those fat CGI dollars on a story consultant or two.



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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by Kludgehammer »

Kludgehammer wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 1:40 pm If you're one of the people waiting for the 2nd half of The Nevers to arrive, I'd advise you to stop holding yourt breath, as HBO has canned it.
OTOH. there's some chance it may turn up on some other service, eventually, as I believe filming has actually concluded on episides 7-12.
Rather to my surprise, the last 6 episodes have just turned up. The whole lot is apparently available on something called Tubi, which I've never heard of befoer now
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by Rio »

Saw Quantumania last night

I quite liked it. Couple of hours of throwaway entertainment. Sets up Kang quite nicely in the MCU. It's not the greatest Marvel effort, but far from the worse.

Its fun not bleedin Das Boat. I honestly think the over analysis of everything due to social media will lead to the end of the universe, not Kang, Thanos, Moyes etc
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by WCpete »

Just heard a review of Quantumania that made me laugh a bit. The one statement he said that sounds like sums the film up best is, "It's like eating your 500th Big Mac at McDonald's."
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by hammers92 »

Rio wrote: Tue Feb 21, 2023 1:31 pm Moyes etc
Fair play for sneaking this into the superhero thread. Lot of time for that. :crylol:
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by WCpete »

What would his super power be?
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by Rio »

WCpete wrote: Tue Feb 21, 2023 6:41 pm What would his super power be?
Inertia
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by alf git »

WCpete wrote: Tue Feb 21, 2023 6:41 pm What would his super power be?
Procrastination.
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by Cuenca 'ammer »

alf git wrote: Tue Feb 21, 2023 7:05 pm Procrastination.
that's my one super power then..

I have actually decided to give up procrastinating......the day after tomorrow

:crylol:
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by Kludgehammer »

Watched Quantumania and... it was alright, I guess. FX were pretty good (as far as I could see on a hooky cam copy), though MODOK was absolutely ridiculous (hard to tell if that was bad design or deliberate choice, because, well, MODOK). Story was OK, but annoyingly slow in parts.. the number of times we got the standard "I'll tell you later, first we have to..." bull**** was a bit excessive, and all through it just felt a bit predictable.

Not dreadful, not great.. an enjoyable mid-tier Marvel film, probably on a par with the first Ant Man, and definitely better than the second one
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by billybondsballbag »

I saw Quantumania in 4DX at the weekend. 4DX is gimmicky and I wouldn't bother again but some of the slow-rise sequences looked/felt really effective. The film was alright, as most Paul '6/10 on IMDB' Rudd films are. In our house, 'Ruddiocre' has been used to describe his output for more than a decade.

Also, who else came away from it really fancying a Kinder egg?
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by mumbles87 »

Kludgehammer wrote: Wed Feb 22, 2023 8:01 am Watched Quantumania and... it was alright, I guess. FX were pretty good (as far as I could see on a hooky cam copy), though MODOK was absolutely ridiculous (hard to tell if that was bad design or deliberate choice, because, well, MODOK). Story was OK, but annoyingly slow in parts.. the number of times we got the standard "I'll tell you later, first we have to..." bull**** was a bit excessive, and all through it just felt a bit predictable.

Not dreadful, not great.. an enjoyable mid-tier Marvel film, probably on a par with the first Ant Man, and definitely better than the second one
interesting, normally you are very much panning movies (if i got the right person lol) is it because with ant man you go in with lower expectations than thor for example?
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by Kludgehammer »

I didn't expect much from either of them, to be honest - after their trailers, I was expecting Ant Man to fall flat and for Thor to be a crapfest - I was somewhat pleasantly surprised by this Ant Man and hideously disappointed, even from very low expectations, by Thor 4.

There are several key differences - the attempts at humour in Ant Man didn't totally dismember any attempts at drams, and there weren't so overwhelmingly many of them; the story they were attempting to tell in Ant-Man (overmatched little guy takes on overwhelmingly powerful foe in fairly traditional action film) was a lot more palatable than Thor (overmatched big guy takes on overwhelmingly powerful foe in really shitty rom com with achingly terrible jokes).

The Ant Man film isn't anything particularly new - you could probably predict pretty much every plot point before you watch it, but it at least executed it reasonably well and didn't pull you out of the film continuously with infantile unfunny attempts at jokes.

Also, I think it's slightly unfair to say I pan everything - I pan a lot because i think there's a lot of half-arsed genre films (notably pretty much all the DC films and several of Marvel phase 4), but if the film is good, I'll say so.
Last edited by Kludgehammer on Thu Feb 23, 2023 12:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by last.caress »

Going to see Quantumania this evening with very little enthusiasm. I'm only going because the father-in-law bought us a pictures-and-a-cheeky-Nandos voucher for Christmas, and mrs.caress doesn't want to use them on Cocaine Bear which she says looks (quote) "****ing stupid".

I'm hoping that having low-to-zero expectations leads me to be pleasantly surprised.

I don't even particularly like Nandos.
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by last.caress »

Random thoughts as I watched Quantumania last night:

-Bloody hell, stop saying "Quantum"! If anybody did a drinking game where they took a shot every time someone said "Quantum" or "Quantum realm", they'd be dead fifteen minutes into the movie.

-Oh, not another spunky teenage girl who's low-key trouble (routinely getting nicked) but who's also a tech genius for no reason.

-Hang on, Janet Van Dyne has never mentioned even ONE facet of what was apparently a full, rich life down there in the quantum realm?

-"There's no time to explain! Just trust me! We have to keep looking for Scott and Cassie! So, can't you walk and talk?

-The all-CGI environment is both good and bad simultaneously. It's good because it's been very well done. It's bad because it's uninspired, full of discs and domes and pointy spires in murky browns with galaxies and black holes above in matte backdrop, just like every sci-fi mobile phone wallpaper you've ever seen on Zedge or DeviantArt. There's also a fair bit of cribbing from Inside Out (Doctor, 2015), and a LOT of cribbing from every Coruscant or Tattooine scene in the Star Wars franchise. Is this Quantumania, or Mos Eisley Canteenmania? Also of course, this much CGI can end up looking/feeling flat and lifeless no matter how well it's done.

-The environment is uninspired but the creatures down here are quite interesting. Some of them.

-Did Disney run out of VFX budget before they got around to MODOK? His head looks like a compositing effect from the early eighties, now freely available on numerous Snapchat filters.

-Oh, not another humorless warrior woman wanging on about the suppression and supplication of "her people" all the bloody time?

-At least it's all moving at a fair lick. Many of these latter MCU pics grind almost to a halt about two-thirds through for a fat bunch of exposition dumps, but this one's kept on trucking, even if logic be damned. Let's give it its due here.

-Kang's abilities seem poorly defined. He seems either omnisciently powerful or merely mortal depending on whether a given scene requires that he be on top of proceedings, or that our protagonists be on top of proceedings. I'm still a little bit (ie completely) uncertain as to his motives, too.

-Hang on. Hanks ants went through some time dilation doohickey where they've been down there effectively for a thousand years, even though obviously they arrived long after Kang had spent thirty years turning the previous floaty nothingness of the quantum realm into ****ing Coruscant from Star Wars, so their thousand years in the realm hasn't passed as a thousand years either in our world, or for the Pym/Lang family who came in with them, or for the quantum realm itself? Is that right? Or did I miss something? If I didn't, then how does that work? Just because something something quantum, yeah? Okay then.


Hm. That was a lot of whingeing with very little credit to balance it out but, in truth, it wasn't all that bad, IF you leave logic at the door and ignore the plot contrivances, it's a decent enough little ride even if it makes little sense on its own terms. I enjoyed it considerably more than Wakanda Forever, that's for sure. That's not exactly endorsement of the century, I admit, but it's true nonetheless.

Wasn't a patch on Black Adam though.
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by WCpete »

Kids talked me into seeing Antman3 last night. Nothing to add from what has already been said. I walked in with the bar set firmly on the ground. It was close but the movie cleared the bar. I wanted to walk out of it during the first 15 minutes. Once Kang's story line got going it all leveled out and was entertaining enough. What LC said about Kang is true though. One minute destroying entire time lines, the next getting chucked around by Paul Rudd. So which is it then?
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by mumbles87 »

Was at a lose end this morning as kids out and done everything I wanted to do round the house

So decided to go see it

Not as bad as the critics make out

Don't get me wrong it's not amazing

I just think marvel is suffering from trying to make one long movie when these movies don't really end

Still better than iron man 2 or Thor 2
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Post by Kludgehammer »

John Bernthal has been confirmed to be returning as the Punisher in Daredevil: Born Again, due some time next year
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Post by WCpete »

Apparently Kevin Feige has been fired from Star Wars and his upcoming projects binned. I wonder if he is on 'win the next 3 games or you're out' status with Marvel as well.
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Re: Superhero ( & sci-fi / other relevant) films

Post by last.caress »

Finally watched Peacemaker and thought it was a lot of fun. Really good stuff. Shame it's effectively shelved for the foreseeable while Gunn concentrates on Superman Legacy and on rolling out the rest of the new DCU. Seems we'll certainly be seeing more of Peacemaker in Waller, hopefully we'll see more Vigilante and Eagly too. Do ya really wanna, do ya really wanna taste it?

Still dreading Shazam! Fury of the Gods though. Reviews are not good and it looks wholly uninspiring, like an MCU phase 4 picture. Might just be the first misstep from DC since Suicide Squad (Ayer, 2016).
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