The Marvel Movies, MCU series and new Star Wars series were revealed by Disney Plus. All of the Warner Brothers movies are going to HBO Max. It seems that Disney Plus, HBO Max and Netflix will be major Global Entertainment platforms that most people in the developed world will subscribe.
Alfred Molina will return as Dr. Octopus in the Spiderman Movie. Spiderman will go full Sinister Six and Spiderverse in live action.
Hawkeye — with Hailee Steinfeld confirmed to be joining original Avengers star Jeremy Renner as the young archer Kate Bishop.
She-Hulk — Tatiana Maslany will star opposite Mark Ruffalo as Jennifer Walters, and The Hulk star Tim Roth reprises his role as The Abomination.
Secret Wars — Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) race to stop a Skrull invasion of earth.
Ironheart — If Beale Street Could Talk’s Dominique Thorne has been cast as Riri Williams, the inventor of the most advanced mechanical super-suit since Iron Man.
Armor Wars — Col James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) must stop his late friend Tony Stark’s technology from falling into the wrong hands.
The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special — featuring the original cast and directed by James Gunn on the set of vol 3.
I am Groot — original Disney+ shorts featuring the Guardian.
SOURCES- Disney Plus, Beyond The Trailer, IGN
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Anyone recall how, after The Last Jedi poisoned the waters for the Han Solo movie, Disney execs tried to avoid blaming anyone, especially themselves, for giving one cowboy director the keys to do whatever he wanted to a forty year old franchise they had payed billions for.
Instead they made the weak sauce argument about how they had come to realize it was too much Star Wars at once and they had exhausted the market.
A more honest thing to say would have been something about how too much BAD movie making had exhausted the Star Wars market. As the old regime is replaced, it would seem that they do know this, especially considering how well Favreau's Mandalorian is doing).
Now True Blood lost me in the first episode.
There are vampires (sorry, spoiler). Well OK, I accept that this is the plot and I suspend my disbelief. Carry on.
And the vampires behave in a way that normal people don't really behave. But come on, they have experiences and power and feelings and thirsts that normal people don't have, they totally WOULD behave differently. Yes. I get that. Disbelief not really needing to be suspended any more than it already was.
And there are normal people, and we are informed as part of the actual story line that these are normal people. Yes. I will expect normal behaviour from them. Got it.
And one of these normal people wakes up in bed with a dead woman, assumes he'd killed her while blackout drunk. Confesses to cops and gets arrested. But then it turns out the dead woman (apparently a normal woman) was faking it the whole time. So he sobs to some other chick (also normal person). And she finds the idea of this guy sleeping with other woman while so blackout drunk, and being so naturally violent, that he can easily believe he had killed her… she finds this a huge turn-on naturally so she leaps into bed with him… St, no, wait. I could go with Vampires drinking blood and being immortal superpowered monsters but this is taking it too far. Forget about it.
Tyrion and Arya were always my favourites too.
I felt pretty cheated that Arya didn't actually get to kill any Lannister at all after the whole assassin training thing.
So many plotlines just got left completely forgotten in GoT that you could make at least one more season out of them alone.
At this point I just identify the oversexifying of story adaptations as a weird HBO quirk to sell it more.
I first noticed it in Rome, but even then it was actually more tame in that series than it ever was in GoT.
The HBO True Blood series just completely derailed the book plots early on to follow some weird sex cult angle.
At one point I'm pretty sure that another TV production company/channel Starz started copying HBO's sex tactics with Spartacus – though it did fit into that series plot more naturally than it ever did in GoT.
I agree that the ability to pour hundreds of millions into creating a finely crafted masterpiece of 2020 cutting edge cinematography is looking as though it might be lost with the market as it is.
But let us not forget that we can, and do, see year 2000 spec cinematography coming out of TV studios for costs that CAN be justified for today's world. Even home made amatuer stuff is comparable to George Lucas or Stephen Spielberg from the 1980s. Often with much better writing.
We've only lost 20 years of development. Ever improving, ever cheaper, technology will get those 20 years back again before we know it.
And we will still see the big budget stuff. It'll just be much rarer, and limited to productions that have some other way of paying for it.
To be fair, the Hulk was always about his own personal problems. And to a lesser extent that was the whole Marvel theme when compared to DC.
But I enjoyed the Frank Miller batman so I'm clearly an unforgivable barbarian. In fact I'm thinking of making that the title of my autobiography.
I don't mind GoT at all, though it's very clearly not suitable for children. And really doesn't need to flash topless women every couple of episodes unless the entire point was to get the current generation of scolds to shriek and make noises and so create publicity.
All these moves to streaming platforms works for specific types/genres of cinema and story telling, but there are some types of cinema that don't stand well unless in a large theater. Denis Villeneuve in a recent interview talked about WB/HBO Max moves to release the new Dune movie as functionally killing it (and the expected sequels) due to piracy and theater revenue being insufficient to recover the costs of such a tentpole movie.
https://variety.com/2020/film/news/dune-denis-villeneuve-blasts-warner-bros-1234851270/
Somebody was saying that if you want to create the same class of film on a streaming platform, you need revenues of a billion dollars, which has yet to be demonstrated for a primarily streaming release film.
so.
as someone who clung to alternative comic media and their associated video releases (Dark Horse, Vertigo, Ellis, Hickman….) and never felt any passing interest in DC/ Marvel, AND if they had time over the holidays to watch 20 MCU movies — what might one watch and in what order so that they got the Best of that Genre?
fair enough. my fondness for the Tyrion and Arya characters certainly caused me to overlook other flaws – though the Battle of the Bastards (i think- with the flayed man armies) was one of the best 'charging war' scenes that I have ever watched. And I do have a mildly evil, guilty pleasure at the thoroughly anti-woke gestures of the gratuitous sexuality and nudity, etc.
All over the map with Vikings, though certainly accelerated loss of interest with the Brothers shenanigans, etc., late 4th or 5th season – -always remember the Blood Eagle though – i'd like to think I am jaded enough to be 'unaffected' by most debauchery – but woah. good watchin.
This!! I could upvote it a 1000 times.
We have historical examples of military tech being both lost and suppressed.
The best suppression example is that of post 1600s Japan, where firearms were (largely) suppressed and everyone pretended that swords and bows were still the only option. In more modern times we've seen poisonous gas suppressed from a mass produced weapon of war in WW1 down to something kept under lock and key.
Lost options are more numerous, because civilisations do collapse from time to time. And with them the structures required to support many military techs.
The germanic tribes that moved into and took over the western roman empire being the best known example. They didn't voluntarily give up any Roman military tech. If
King Ælle of Sussex (477-514 A.D.) could get and equip Roman style legions, he totally would have. But it required high quality steel, skilled fabrication, and the ability to pay, train and feed thousands of professional soldiers that he just didn't have the resources to do.
We have dozens of other examples. Bronze became too rare and expensive for mass soldier weapons after the Bronze age trading networks that supplied tin from remote locations to the Middle East broke down. Greek Fire, an infamous incendiary weapon of the Byzantines, was lost when their empire fell and is still not known today. The trans-continental capable sailing ships of Admiral Zheng He were destroyed and the tech abandoned for internal political reasons by the Chinese Empire in the 1430s.
Needs some Karpyshyn love too.
KOTOR or go home.
Precisely.
The MCU's main problem is that it is owned by Disney.
Because of this fact the villains never really have staying power and with few exceptions are either quickly killed off or are never seen again (Abomination and The Leader, looking at you 2).
The fact that it took them 7 years to bring back Red Skull and they couldn't even get Hugo Weaving to do the part is just tragic.
With this problem you never have any over arching problem for any individual characters beyond their own neuroses and personal baggage – it just leads to very anaemic storytelling, and in Thor's case incredibly watered down storytelling that needs both Hulk and Jeff Goldblum to prop it up.
Nooooo.
Vikings was better than GoT.
There wasn't enough of the politics of the novels to make GoT good for me and the increased sex was just a pointless addition to a story that literally starts with an incest scene.
At least Vikings had the excuse of starting from basically nothing – and they did a very good job of it at that.
It only fell apart after Æthelstan is murdered by Floki, that cut the heart out of a great series in my eyes.
The best explanation I've seen is that Star Wars was actually happening in the ruins of a collapsed civilization. They were limited to using the tech they still understood how to make.
agreed. but it is more subtle and nefarious than many think – for it is easy to see the overwhelming 'tripe' (what is that anyway? something related to haggis?) and be disappointed/ disgusted, but it is the media 'not made', the idea killed pre-storyboard, the plot dismissed by the influential agent as 'not for this political climate', etc., that true change occurs. The pre-filter. One need only look at the British Board of Film Censors early last c., and such, to see a distortion as not a crusade against 'shock for shock's purpose' but a mis-guided effort to 'morally engineer' a society. Lawsuits against rock-and-roll bands in the 80s. The Simpsons (if anyone ever watches) did a good take in: "To Surveil with Love" S21 and they got rid of Apu, lately. I trust that no uber-censor will emerge and that small studios will get it All out to us. But mores, norms, and cultural appropriateness slowly worms its way in quickest through popular entertainment. Spanking children. Public smoking. Various racial and sexist stereotypes. Vile in their own way, but to refuse to acknowledge their prior existence – revisionism was never a worse thing. Ho-hum.
That being said: re-casting Starbuck with Katee was genius – though she didn't seem that good as Bo-Katan in Mando.
Can you believe that that BSG series debuted over 16 years ago?
I agree with drPat that variety and freedom are key.
That's why one of the biggest risks for the future is someone trying to remove freedom of speech and thought from everyone's hands in the name of virtue.
The leftist-wokeist movement long ago took the task of owning literary, TV and movie production circles in America, in order to control what people see and hear and think as normal and possible. Making all other options and ways of thinking, unthinkable and immoral.
But they are fully aware they couldn't control the audiovisual and written media forever on the Internet, as technology and society spontaneously organize to defend themselves from the increasingly evident brainwashing and control in the "traditional media".
That's why they have moved to control the distribution channels (streaming platforms, talk forums, book sellers) and the laws themselves, removing the option of alternate channels for people to get entertainment and be exposed to other kinds of thought, or trying to flat out forbid them or coerce them into compliance. They aren't there yet, but are pushing towards it.
A big part of the increasingly strident political polarization we are seeing, is because a lot of people isn't buying into it anymore, seeing the peril for their own freedoms and and rejecting the imposition of values and thoughts, eventually violently I'm afraid.
Beware the slippery slope. When #metoo overcomes due diligence and the right to initial innocence as people's careers are crushed by barely substantiated 'allegations' we have entered a new phase of guerilla-woke. Diversity over merit. Substitution over inclusion. Managerial quotas and boardroom 'identity' washing as new corporate/ media banner-waving and virtue signalling.
I have nothing against transparency in promotion, limiting nepotism, and promoting as much opportunity as possible, but when the initial volley of demands are 'let us in' to a limited group rather than increase the number of the group to allow as much opportunity to all, we know it is no longer about 'giving everyone a chance' – its about: 'i want what you have'.
I get it. Few accept the idea that personality is a large portion of the job and that there are personality 'styles' that match a position 'slick' sales, obsessive and detail-oriented 'engineering/tech', ruthless business — all identified with toxic masculinity and cronyism – but this is creeping into media and causing a re-balancing that is instead an annexation. Quantity and variety will overcome All until it doesn't – i.e. monopolies, unions, government/NGO/association blame-fare. Flood us with media so choice conquers all.
When has military technology ever been given up by the winning side? At best, there are treaties that reduce the stockpile, and often as not build up newer versions at the same time.
If the Jedi could get their hands on a Death Star, they would use it.
In the real world, armies fight to win, not to preserve outdated honor.
If you love a character, do you really want a Disneyfied version of them?
My one grudging admission that they had an excuse for "gender bending" in the MCU what when Loki turned into a woman. This is actual canon. From the original Norse mythology.
Of course they didn't do it right, but I'll grant them that much.
Variety is all we need.
Nobody (OK, maybe members of your own family…) forces you to watch anything but the 0.1% that most appeals to you, so what do you care about the 99.9% of garbage (however you define that)?
If you do find yourself drinking from the sewer, perhaps you need to work on your own selection technique, rather than raging against other people's taste.
This is not to say that there aren't forces working to get the power so they CAN control what you have access to. Fortunately there are so many such groups they mostly work at cross purposes. You have the Chinese Government enforcing wholesome family standards in movies and TV while the perverted pornography industry is creating platforms that are used by feminists and 3D printing enthusiasts. It's a 5D tug-o-war and the net movement has been close to zero so far.
I think the only way to reconcile Star Wars military tech with actual modern military tech is to assume that, over 1000 years of peace under the Senate and Jedi, military technology (and tactics and strategy) was lost if not actually suppressed.
The only weapons that were in use were one-on-one interpersonal weapons used by criminals. Or the light sabre, which is a one-on-one, short range weapon emphasising extreme levels of personal training and minimising any risk of collateral damage: A weapon for an elite police force.
Then, as society starts to break down, people develop new weapons, from existing tech. So you get the blaster, which appears to generate a light sabre type blade, in temporary, weak form, but that can shot forward as a projectile. Even the intership cannons look to be developments of this. Looks cool… but it's about as fast as an arrow at best, and hence can be dodged or blocked.
This kind of worked for Episodes IV, V and VI, but once we see open battles between peer level forces, it becomes obvious that Earth soldiers from the 21st century, and the 20th, and arguably the 19th century would mop the floor with these guys. Try blocking musket balls with your swords. Or a shotgun.
Yeah, the audiovisual media themes depend a lot on what's the political leaning of those with the means to produce series and movies.
So far, the wokeist tripe reigns supreme, because that's Hollywood's mantra, and people still buy it.
But as soon as producing high quality, fx-rich series becomes cheaper and easier for smaller, independent studios, we will see much more varied content. Gratuitous violence, anarchist, libertarian, Christian conservative, story-driven adult content etc.
Not all will be good, but it will be freer and more varied indeed.
its a phase.
HBO's GoT and whoever did the first few seasons of Vikings started us back on the road back to entertaining vileness for mainstream-ish consumption.
It shall return.
Perhaps major Directors may do small series or episodic visuals – free of nanny-tv oversight.
CGI is becoming so commonplace, cheap, and doable by small studios that it is only a matter of time before outrage, unspeakable violence, ruthless debauchery, and a sprinkling of soul-crushing and inhumane plots spew forth again.
Me too, and not in the PC way. Star Trek is so "woke" it puts me to sleep – i.e. it's boring. Star Wars was showing its age even as the Lukas franchise was spinning out its last of the sextology, and it too suffers from mandatory human diversity, while losing the alien diversity that actually made it interesting in the first place. A bigger sign of age is that we entered the actual Drone Wars while Star Wars was just starting to use that as a device onscreen in a world far, far away and supposedly far advanced in time. Hand-to-hand combat was becoming obsolete in the 2000s if not before. Marvel made it work by being more character focused, but there are just too many spinoffs now and it feels like homework to tie them all together.
All these separate streaming services are getting cumulatively expensive (you left out Amazon Prime) and time-consuming. I'm so far out of the demographic I remember when TV was free.
Wish You All The Best In 2021!
They pretty much killed the Marvel franchise for me when they wrote my favorite character out of Infinity War, after hints that he was going to be in it. Just too much of a disappointment.
Though Marvel's wokening contributes to that. I hear they're even making Thor a girl. It's not a title, it's the guy's NAME.
Yeah, I can't seem to find any enthusam for these francises anymore. Not Star Wars, not Star Trek, not DC nor Marvel. They have all been done to death and/or run into the ground. Pick up a book.
I don't recall seeing Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors or a Dark Forces anything in the line up. Therefore, while good, not good enough. Gimmie back my Dark Forces stories, Disney LOL. SHAME.
Nowadays studios have yet to recover from the blow of the pandemic.
I think that now the vaccines are about to be massively applied, such recovery will be a matter of a year or two.
For the moment, the studios seem to cherish and plan more things for streaming.
My opinion on these series? I'm less interested in these franchises as time passes, I'd still probably watch a couple, but ignore the rest. I already do with the existing countless instantiations of comic book characters in TV there are, which look more or less the same to me.
But probably I stopped being the target demographic (teens, new adults, avid fantasy consumers), so what do I know?