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When did He-Man join the MCU? Did I miss something? 😉

Oh, I'm sure you're right about that, and while I quite enjoyed the movie myself, I certainly didn't expect it to get into the billion-dollar club. But let's look at some numbers. Ant-Man and the Wasp had RT scores of 87%/75%, while Captain Marvel had RT scores of 79%/45%. Ant-Man and the Wasp outperformed Captain Marvel on RT (that 30% differential in audience score is painful) but brought in only half its box office. Thor: Ragnarok had vastly superior RT scores and yet fell short of Captain Marvel's box office results. I know that RT is kinda broken, but it isn't so deeply flawed that its numbers don't have something meaningful to say here. If Captain Marvel hadn't hitched a ride on the Endgame hype train, it is profoundly unlikely that its 79%/45% numbers would have resulted in a $1B box office total. Hell, given its RT score, I'm not sure it would even have done as well as Ant-Man and the Wasp if given its slot on the release schedule.

Ant-Man and The Wasp was released nearly a year (10 months) before Endgame, whereas Captain Marvel was released only one month before Endgame. By the time Captain Marvel came out, most people had largely forgotten all about Ant-Man and the Wasp, and many friends I spoke with told me they had to be reminded what it was from that movie that led Scott to drive up to the Avengers compound in the first act of Endgame. The hype machine was running on all cylinders in the Spring of 2019 and Captain Marvel was the appetizer that was fed to a ravenous fandom who hadn't seen an MCU movie in nine months and were frothing at the mouth for Endgame and anything/everything connected to it. And nothing appeared as connected to Endgame as the movie that came out only a few weeks before it. I stand by my assessment that had Captain Marvel been released in Ant-Man and Wasp's slot in 2018, that it would have done box office business similar to it, and that the fact that it enjoyed massive (i.e., much larger than Ant-Man and the Wasp) success was due entirely to being placed right before Endgame.

Fair enough. Unfortunately, that slots so effortlessly into Snyder's aesthetic that it becomes difficult for me to discern who's creative vision I'm experiencing. I never read Teen Titans, so to me it just feels like Snyder's deconstructionist agenda is dragging most of the characters down, including Cyborg. The main thing that saved Cyborg for me was Ray Fisher's palpable charisma.

Aquaman had entertaining moments, but was mostly a mess from a filmmaking perspective. I'm not inclined to give it a pass, as other are so willing to, just because it was colorful and kept my retinas stimulated. As for characterization, well I just could never get on board with Snyder's vision for Aquaman, Superman, or the Flash. The only DCEU characters who favorably impressed me were Wonder Woman and Cyborg, though I would have liked to see a Cyborg that wasn't just a walking dark cloud of brooding angst most of the time.

Yes, it was. However, most folks I've heard discussing the movie since its release acknowledge that its massive success was entirely due to being the prelude to Avengers: Endgame rather than being a particularly great movie or because it carried the banner for female representation in the MCU. In my estimation, had it not been the lead-in film to Endgame, it would most likely have squeaked past the $600M mark and not much further.

Yep. Technology moves faster than society. After a new media format becomes profitable, it always takes a few contract renegotiation cycles before the unions (SAG, WGA, DGA) manage to get their fair share. Usually they have to threaten to strike to get any kind of concessions from the studios, which shows the necessity of the unions (though there's also a downside to unions for their rank and file members).

Hard to imagine that since she was working with Disney on a Tower of Terror movie. It's possible that project was dead and that fact had yet to ooze out into the trade press. But if not, then she sacrificed it on the altar over a fight she won't win.

With any luck, Namor will be portrayed so well in the MCU that everyone will just forget about Momoa's Aquaman. I find the entire DC cinematic line-up completely underwhelming except for Wonder Woman, and even there Jenkins managed to foul that up in her sequel.

Scarlett was tapped to be part of the Tower of Terror movie with Disney, but that won't happen now. The worst thing you can do (for your career) in Hollywood is become litigious. This will end her relationship with Disney full stop. And other studios will be very cautious to work with her, afraid that they might get sued if she doesn't like something. She should have saved this fight for the next SAG contract negotiation, and used her clout to assist the entire union, rather than making herself persona non grata in Hollywood.

Or Dr. Who. Yes, thanks to the revolving door of actors who have played Bond (or Dr. Who), you have a highly fractured fanbase. This is the same problem DC has with their characters. They go through Batmen the way the Broccolis go through Bonds, and it creates a complete mess within the fandom. No one version ever acquires enough traction to become truly iconic, except maybe the very first one (e.g., Sean Connery). Marvel largely avoids this problem by only very rarely switching out actors. Moreover, they don't reboot their franchises every few years, they expand upon them instead. Star Wars had become as fractured as DC, but now there is a glimmer of hope now that Favreau and Filoni are taking on a larger role in that franchise. I'd like to believe that Disney has learned their lesson with Star Wars, and that they have formulated a plan to avoid the kind of sh*tshow that live-action DC has been.

Unlike comic book characters who can remain the same age for decades, actors get older, they want to move on to other things, or they social-media their way out of a job. Clearing the decks of one set of characters to make room for the next generation of characters is an unfortunate necessity of live action cinema. Until we perfect digital actors who look 100% real, with no uncanny valley effect, and can be performance-captured and voiced by numerous actors over time, we won't have superhero characters that continue on for two, three, or more decades. The Iron Mans will have to give way to the Ironhearts, and one Captain America (or Black Panther) will be replaced by another, and then another, etc. All we can hope for is that Kevin Feige does a good job of this. I, for one, have no problem with Kate Bishop taking over for Hawkeye, to take just one example. As long as they do a good job with these new characters, I'm still all in on the MCU.

As Greywind's link explains, Brie Larson never said anything about not wanting a "particular demographic" to go see Captain Marvel, or anything to that effect. But this is the Internet where misinformation becomes mythologized and believed without much question.

I stopped the video about 1/3rd of the way because it was evident to me that he was mostly just harping on DC, and I don't need to be reminded of just how misguided and inept WB/DC is. But the future of the genre isn't dependent on them; they've managed to make themselves almost completely irrelevant, in my view. I'd say that as long as Feige is in charge of Marvel Studios, the future of the genre on film is still pretty bright. And the fact that he has successfully supplemented big-screen MCU with connected small-screen content shows that there is still an awful lot of life still left in the genre.

I don't tire of superhero movies. I just tire of action movies that pretend to be superhero movies. Naturally, that statement is entirely based on my personal definition of "superhero", which not everybody shares. So the movies that disappoint me don't necessarily disappoint others, and the trends that make me weary don't necessarily make others weary, etc. I think that as long as Marvel keeps mixing things up--at least a little--in their MCU movies, there should be something for everyone, even me. As for DC, well, I lost faith in them a long time ago, and not even the first Wonder Woman movie was able to change that. They are a lost cause as far as I'm concerned, and I won't be looking to them to supply me with any superhero entertainment worth my time.

So at what point did everyone realize it was Luke Skywalker coming to the rescue in the finale? When Ahsoka said that a Jedi might come searching for Grogu (and that not many were left), three episodes earlier? The moment an X-Wing fighter landed on the light cruiser? The moment a black-cloaked figure appeared on the video monitors? The moment the figure swung a lightsaber? The moment the lightsaber was shown in color (being green)? Only after Luke pulled back his hood? (I don't know how to make this into a poll).

I would have loved to see a prisoner break-out sequence. It would have been far more entertaining, and it would have made a lot more sense. But it would also have taken a lot of time out of the episode (to do properly), and they had a very important date with an Imperial terminal to focus on instead.

Hollywood is becoming dependent on Chinese box office the way western society is dependent on Middle Eastern oil. It is difficult to be the master of your own destiny when you are beholden to someone else's resources.

Been watching Mandalorian season 2. Episode 7 was the "Mando and Mayfield Show", and it was full of contrivances and plot holes big enough to drive a sandcrawler through. And how did Fett's armor get so clean and freshly painted? Are we to believe he kept a supply of dark green and red paint on Slave-1 all these years just for that purpose? Also, his armor doesn't look like Beskar because it doesn't look like raw metal. But I don't know much about Beskar and if it can be--or typically is--painted.

Yes, indeed. You did a much better job at articulating the crux of this than I could. My general point about Marvel feeling the pressure still stands. One wonders if Kevin Feige will let fan pressure dictate his production slate ever again though, particularly when it conflicts with his (or his boss's) business instincts.

Yes, that's right, slikmar. Disney gets all of that sweet, sweet streaming revenue, and they don't have to share any of it with theaters or foreign distributors. They get 50-60% of box office returns domestically and only about 25% of foreign box office, so raking in 100% of the streaming revenue surely feels like a win to them. However, the all-important optics of being a box office smash still mean more from a purely PR perspective than the financials will ever justify, even in the age of COVID. And in that regard Black Widow is another disappointment (along with other MCU "under-performers" like Ant-man). But honestly, even had the theatrical schedule not been torn apart by coronavirus, I don't think Black Widow would have done much better than Ant-man anyway. It's just not the kind of movie that gets that many people excited. For instance, I also don't think that a Falcon and the Winter Soldier movie would have fared any better. In fact, Black Widow might have been better placed as a Disney+ show than as a marquis MCU movie. But Marvel was feeling intense pressure to make another female-led superhero "blockbuster", and so here we are.

Greywind put it quite succinctly. The rings of power amplify the intrinsic nature/character of the wearers. Dwarves only want to mine for treasure and build great mountain kingdoms, so it turned out there was little there for Sauron to exploit through his One Ring. Men lust for power and immortality, and that is a very easy thing for Sauron to take advantage of. And while it's true that Sauron would not have been able to "touch" the Elves through their rings, he would no doubt have been able to discern the locations of those rings through the One Ring, and would have spent considerable and terrifying effort to obtain them (and use them against the Elves in some fashion). I would say that the One Ring has the ability to Sense the other rings of power over any distance, but this "Sense Rings of Power" is not a common ability of all rings of power, just the One. I would also say that the One Ring has the ability to extinguish the powers of the other rings, excluding the Elven rings of course. One has to imagine it was the threat of this that kept the Ringwraiths loyal to a large degree. I suppose you could write that up as some kind of Transform, but for simplicity's sake I wouldn't bother since the One Ring is essentially just a Plot Device artifact anyway.

The One Ring was designed to make it easier for its wearer to dominate others, particularly those of weak mental fortitude or those easily corrupted. Sauron was all about domination and control, and the One Ring reflected this. He knew he would never be able to subdue and control his most hated enemy, the elves, through military action or the sheer power of his will alone, so he tricked them into crafting the means by which he could: the rings of power. His greatest fear in the Third Age was that his ring would find its way into the hands of someone who could use it against him; an elf lord, a descendant of the Kings of Westernesse, or another maia. They would have the means to bend Sauron's armies to their will rather than his, and he would be supplanted as the "lord of the rings" (and all of Middle-Earth as a result). In terms of FRPG "powers", I would say it grants Invisibility with a very slow Transform Self into Wraith side effect, and a small Cumulative Mind Control with a massive Area of Effect that can only be unlocked by someone with a massively high EGO and PRE (and the Endurance to keep it going long-term).

Disney works very hard to make all their Marvel stuff "must watch now" type content. They heavily promote the notion that their movies and streaming shows are cultural events. You don't want to be left out of the national conversation about what's going on in pop culture right? That's why their streaming shows are released one episode per week, and why nearly every Marvel movie is designed to set up the next one in the series. They want everyone feeling like they have to see this stuff at release for fear of spoilers and basic FOMO. This strategy seems to work very well on most fans under the age of 50.