zslane

Oh, totally. The problem is that I don't think MCU Thanos will spend that much time in his armor, which means he'll spend more time out of his armor in one movie than he did in his all of his comic book appearances combined. To me that says the creative team for this movie doesn't like the look of Thanos in armor, no matter how badass it might look to us.

WB isn't, but the CW is.

Apologies, but I can't quite parse the second statement. Before/after the time of which creation?
 
Bear in mind that the Infinity gems/stones are manifestations of the universe's fundamental axioms of existance/reality, whereas the rings of power are just magic items forged by an Elf smith guided by a Maia during Earth's pre-history. At best the rings are equivalent in power to Mjolnir.

6e2 usually goes for a low price like that in the second-hand market. It is 6e1 that is much harder to find for under $100-150.

It's hard enough as it is to maintain creative integrity in just a single tentpole film while holding at bay the slavoring demands of the corporate overlord and its voracious bottom line. Doing so over the course of a decade with a mega-franchise made up of smaller sub-franchises is nearly impossible. Long-form storytelling is just not cinema's forté, and the fact that Feige and Co. have managed to succeed to any degree is nothing short of miraculous. I cut them considerable slack when it comes to things that you normally don't do (or even get to do) in film, like long-term romance development, or recurring villains, or complex intertwined mysteries (ala Lost). Some things will inevitably be sacrificed at the altar of the Mega-Franchise and the need to "rush" to the big party that will rake in all the cash. It's fine to point out those flaws when they exist, but I don't think it is terribly realistic to believe it would be easy for the creatives to do any differently given all the pressure that comes from so many opposing interests, none of which care at all about striving for narrative perfection.

I'll never understand how Liefeld ever became a big deal as a comics artist.

There is no one Marvel continuity; in fact there there is a fairly lengthy list of them. Throwing around the term "universe" will just confuse things. Each continuity is basically self-contained, and no matter the similarities, they are separate from each other. The MCU is a re-imagined, mashed together riff on several different continuities, and is not a reboot of any one of them. It is its own thing. It shares no timeline history with any of them, and that's what makes it its own continuity (with its own continuity number) rather than a reboot of an existing continuity. It is a matter of definitions (Marvel's, not mine). You may think you know better than Marvel does what a "Marvel continuity" is, but you can't expect Marvel (or me) to agree with you.

Not quite. The MCU is not a reboot of Earth-616 (or any other Marvel continuity), it is its own continuity entirely. The key distinction here is the continuity's historical timeline. Oddball crossovers notwithstanding, a new continuity shares nothing with any previous continuity except character names and essential origin elements. Continuity histories/timelines are completely separate, and that's what makes them separate continuities. Thus, Earth-616 is still Earth-616 no matter how many times you "reboot" it, and it will always be a separate continuity from Earth-1610 (Ultimates), Earth-199999 (the MCU), and so on.

I find Steve's solution perfectly acceptable. As long as END is being paid, then I would allow Mental Illusions to provide an OCV/DCV bonus (for offsetting the Flash penalties) proportional to the level of effect achieved on the MI "attack".

T'Challa understood that when a mission goes sideways, you still have opportunities to bring in (or kill) a fugitive of the state, but you only get one chance to save a man's life after he suffers a mortal wound. It is a grave matter of ethical priority-setting, and T'Challa had to make a very quick decision on the spot. It's what leaders do. W'Kabi, presumably having never faced such tough decisions, was in no position to judge IMO.

The question of why Vision is worthy to lift/wield Mjolnir is less interesting to me than how the enchantment is enforced. If the answer is, "It is just is," then I think we should also be satisfied with answering the Vision question with "He just is."

The question of why Vision is worthy to lift/wield Mjolnir is less interesting to me than how the enchantment is enforced. If the answer is, "It is just is," then I think we should also be satisfied with answering the Vision question with "He just is."

I take a different approach. I think to myself WWAAD: What would Aaron Allston do? (if he were alive) and then I build that.

Swordapalooza simply doesn't fit her character, period, and "making it kewl for the kiddies" doesn't change that.

It would seem that the personal struggle we got to see was Okoye's. I guess they didn't feel they had time to do that for W'Kabi too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And rather than T'Challa's death making him angry (and maybe even a little vengeful?), like it did everyone else who was close to T'Challa, W'Kabi just thought, "Good riddance"? Look at how Killmonger's rise to the throne tore at Okoye's heart. It even forced to her completely re-evaluate her notions of duty and loyalty. W'Kabi exhibited no such conflict within him. I guess I'm just placing far too much weight on T'Challa's (misguided) understanding of his "best friend's" regard for him.
 
If the movie intended to paint W'Kabi as a co-villain, then I'd say it surely succeeded. But if it intended to make W'Kabi's actions sympathetic and "understandable" then the movie failed for me in this respect.

Typically by convention, a necromancer takes out massive armies with an even more massive undead army. Summoning swords to whack-a-mole at the enemy soldiers does not seem fitting. But I guess if Marvel's view is that any costumed super-hero/villain based on Norse mythology must have an attack based on an ancient melee weapon, then I guess it really doesn't matter which weapon they choose since such an association is completely arbitrary to begin with.

I think the biggest issue is the versions of the Heroes they are portraying. 
 
All of them, well most of them, are greater than life HEROES.  They never were intended to be "relatable to the average person" or "a reflection of real life".  And yes there are many half-assed attempts to destroy the character concepts in the 90s/00s.  But overall the core concept was always "greater than life" both physically and ethically/morally.
 
Cavill was a great choice for Superman.  Unfortunately the script and visuals of Man of Steel were not about Superman. 
 
Wonder Woman was awesome because even though they changed time period and tweeked characters, they kept the substance, personality and concept of the Heroine intact.
 
Suicide Squad flopped because they turned Harley Quinn from the extremely popular and recognizable quasi-villainess into a grunge reject.  They may have kept a portion of the video game croed, but they drove away the far larger older crowd that know HQ from the original show. 
 
For me statements by various people from the studio as well as directors about how dumb and outdated superheroes are, indicates they have no idea of what they are in the first place or why they are popular. 
 
I don't watch a super movie or TV series for a lesson in ethics or a directors' opinion on current affairs.
I watch it for fun. 
 
Superman was always a beacon of light that always acted "right" with a priority to protect.  Not a brooding whiner that gets pissed, brawls and can casually kill enemies. 

I think with the right fx, death auras can definitely translate into terrifying visuals and dramatic fight scenes.
 
In general I'm just a really big believer in tight character concepts. No death/underworld goddess I'm aware of (Norse or otherwise) was the "goddess of magically-materializing pointy projectiles", and there's a good reason for that (it don't make any dang sense).

When Thor defeated Surtur at the beginning of the film, Surtur did not have the benefit of being imbued with the Eternal Fire. Once he was reborn from that Flame, Ragnarok was then in full swing and I don't think any Asgardian, not even Odin, would have had the power to stop the destruction of Asgard. The way I see it, Asgard was the target--as decreed by prophecy--and Hela was the collateral damage.

I thought this movie was very well done and definitely deserves to be ranked up there among the best of the MCU films. But, as others have mentioned, it isn't perfect.
 
I agree that Killmonger was too easily accepted as king; the fact that Wakanda's laws allowed for him to take the throne by simply goading the sitting king into accepting a challenge shows just how fragile and perhaps outdated their system of government truly is. But perhaps this was meant to show how fragile any culturally-isolated monarchy would be in the modern world?
 
I also didn't care for W'kabi's attitude towards T'Challa when he failed to bring in Klaue. You'd think he would understand that complex covert operations, conducted within the borders of distant sovereign nations do not always go as planned. Rather than see T'Challa's failure as nothing more than a failure of mission execution, he chose to see it as some sort of ideological betrayal ("I thought you would be different. But it is just the same thing.") That's just lazy Hollywood writing IMO, shoe-horning a wedge between close friends just to lay the (unearned) dramatic groundwork for the Wakandan civil uprising that needed to happen in the third act.
 
I also kinda wish Nakia wouldn't have repeatedly stressed that she was "just a spy" when she clearly had extensive combat training, including the expert use of those Tron identity discs (hey, now we know who invented those for the MCP!).
 
But the merits of the film vastly overshadow its shortcomings, IMO. The bad CGI Panther-action animation throughout the movie was par for the course for Hollywood (they really, really don't know how to do superheroic fighting action while also maintaining a proper sense of mass, inertia, momentum, and speed), but all the other fantastic visuals made up for it. And while I was disappointed to see two really fun and interesting villains killed off (Klaue and Killmonger), that was just par for the course for the MCU and was mitigated by the survival of all the wonderfully badass women in the film (including Shuri who was badass in her own, adorable Q-like way).
 
I can see how some people might feel that the movie's "message" was a bit heavy-handed, but I didn't feel that way. I felt it delivered its message of optimism and duty (to those who desperately need help) with just the right combination of eloquence and urgency. I am absolutely on T'Challa's side when it comes to his new mission to show the world how to reject disunity, and to step up and help all of humanity. Let's just hope the other tribes remain on board with his vision for Wakanda's future.

Three different writers are given writing credit for the screenplay, and I'm sure many uncredited others were involved. I reject the notion that there was a single unified vision for the screenplay that can explain (or be blamed for) the "logic" behind each narrative element of the film. The fact that we can, with a little discussion, make reasonable sense of things means they did a pretty good job given the odds stacked against them.

I still haven't seen Black Panther yet. Not being part of the advanced-sales feeding frenzy suits me quite nicely.

I thought this movie was very well done and definitely deserves to be ranked up there among the best of the MCU films. But, as others have mentioned, it isn't perfect.
 
I agree that Killmonger was too easily accepted as king; the fact that Wakanda's laws allowed for him to take the throne by simply goading the sitting king into accepting a challenge shows just how fragile and perhaps outdated their system of government truly is. But perhaps this was meant to show how fragile any culturally-isolated monarchy would be in the modern world?
 
I also didn't care for W'kabi's attitude towards T'Challa when he failed to bring in Klaue. You'd think he would understand that complex covert operations, conducted within the borders of distant sovereign nations do not always go as planned. Rather than see T'Challa's failure as nothing more than a failure of mission execution, he chose to see it as some sort of ideological betrayal ("I thought you would be different. But it is just the same thing.") That's just lazy Hollywood writing IMO, shoe-horning a wedge between close friends just to lay the (unearned) dramatic groundwork for the Wakandan civil uprising that needed to happen in the third act.
 
I also kinda wish Nakia wouldn't have repeatedly stressed that she was "just a spy" when she clearly had extensive combat training, including the expert use of those Tron identity discs (hey, now we know who invented those for the MCP!).
 
But the merits of the film vastly overshadow its shortcomings, IMO. The bad CGI Panther-action animation throughout the movie was par for the course for Hollywood (they really, really don't know how to do superheroic fighting action while also maintaining a proper sense of mass, inertia, momentum, and speed), but all the other fantastic visuals made up for it. And while I was disappointed to see two really fun and interesting villains killed off (Klaue and Killmonger), that was just par for the course for the MCU and was mitigated by the survival of all the wonderfully badass women in the film (including Shuri who was badass in her own, adorable Q-like way).
 
I can see how some people might feel that the movie's "message" was a bit heavy-handed, but I didn't feel that way. I felt it delivered its message of optimism and duty (to those who desperately need help) with just the right combination of eloquence and urgency. I am absolutely on T'Challa's side when it comes to his new mission to show the world how to reject disunity, and to step up and help all of humanity. Let's just hope the other tribes remain on board with his vision for Wakanda's future.

Three different writers are given writing credit for the screenplay, and I'm sure many uncredited others were involved. I reject the notion that there was a single unified vision for the screenplay that can explain (or be blamed for) the "logic" behind each narrative element of the film. The fact that we can, with a little discussion, make reasonable sense of things means they did a pretty good job given the odds stacked against them.