{"id":2898,"date":"2021-04-16T07:45:58","date_gmt":"2021-04-16T12:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/?p=2898"},"modified":"2021-06-07T07:39:36","modified_gmt":"2021-06-07T12:39:36","slug":"blog-a-little-something-extra-pcr-talks-the-mcu-hits-and-misses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/?p=2898","title":{"rendered":"[BLOG] A Little Something Extra&#8230;PCR talks the MCU hits and misses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hey all, PCR here.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s no secret that I&#8217;m a fan of the MCU.\u00a0 Going all the way back to our Year 1 celebration we&#8217;ve talked about it, hypothesized about it, fawned over it and reviewed aspects of it.\u00a0 Today, I&#8217;m going to dive a bit deeper into the &#8220;why&#8221; I enjoy it so much, and some things they do that I&#8217;m not fond of.<\/p>\n<p>First, the Infinity Gauntlet comic crossover is, by far, my favorite comic crossover.\u00a0 End of story.\u00a0 Was it perfect?\u00a0 No&#8230; most huge comic crossover events tend to start amazingly, then seem to have a hard time finding a way to finish, but it still struck a chord with me and has stuck with me since my comic-collecting days&#8230; so when Marvel teased at the end of Avengers that we were getting Thanos, I was in.\u00a0 I felt &#8220;there&#8217;s no WAY they would do Thanos and NOT do Infinity Gauntlet!&#8221; and I was pleased to be correct on that count.<\/p>\n<p>One of the most amazing things in my opinion that the MCU gets right is casting.\u00a0 I have not found one instance of casting.. hero or villain.. that I&#8217;ve been against.\u00a0 Now, have I thought some were &#8216;meh&#8217;?\u00a0 Sure, but in those instances it&#8217;s more of a &#8220;I don&#8217;t hate it&#8221; and much less of a &#8220;They missed the boat..So and so would have been MUCH better!&#8221; (looking at Corey Stoll as Yellowjacket here and to a larger extent Anthony Mackie as Falcon).\u00a0 Those examples aside (I&#8217;ll get into the Mackie thing later), from hero to villain to supporting role, the casting in MCU movies and shows has been amazingly spot on.<\/p>\n<p>Another thing I absolutely love about the MCU as a whole, is how they set precedent for future endeavors.\u00a0 &#8220;Ok, we got you to understand The Convergence and The Nine Realms?\u00a0 Good, here&#8217;s The Quantum realm and Dr. Strange&#8221;\u00a0 &#8220;You good with multiple suits of Iron Man armor flying around on their own?\u00a0 Awesome, here&#8217;s Ultron and his army&#8221; just to use two examples.\u00a0 It&#8217;s brilliant storytelling in my opinion, and makes it easier for those who *aren&#8217;t* huge comic fans to digest what they&#8217;ve been seeing on the screen.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Now, a &#8220;meh&#8221; thing for me&#8230; neither good nor bad&#8230; is that, much like the comics, you don&#8217;t HAVE to watch\/read *every* movie\/issue in order to understand what&#8217;s going on.\u00a0 Can it help?\u00a0 Sure, do you have to to understand the story?\u00a0 Not at all.\u00a0 That can be both good and bad.\u00a0 It&#8217;s good in a way that you don&#8217;t feel forced to sit through a movie you may not really be interested in, but bad in the respect that, it&#8217;s all about making money on the bottom line, so one would think there WOULD be some driving force behind making someone want to see all of them.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Now, for two of my peeves.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll call it &#8220;loyalty to the source material&#8221;.\u00a0 Civil War was a great comic series (not Infinity Gauntlet great, and fell off with a much weaker finish, but still a great concept).\u00a0 The movie we got, while entertaining and giving us some great fan service in scenes, was not the story told in the comics.\u00a0 Now, I get it.\u00a0 It couldn&#8217;t be.\u00a0 Civil War comic run was a huge crossover event in and of itself.\u00a0 There&#8217;s no way to effectively condense that down into one movie&#8230;and I also know the MCU shouldn&#8217;t be a slave to the source material in a way that doesn&#8217;t allow for moving the MCU plot along.\u00a0 That being said, to me, there&#8217;s something about a movie using source material so loosely that it almost retcons and makes the original source material irrelevant.\u00a0 This isn&#8217;t just an MCU flaw, this is a movie flaw in general, but it&#8217;s one the MCU and Marvel doesn&#8217;t do better on.\u00a0 Is there a way for them to?\u00a0 I&#8217;m not sure, but it stands out to me nonetheless.<\/p>\n<p>And finally, let&#8217;s talk about the Netflix shows.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, I enjoyed them.\u00a0 Daredevil was spot on.\u00a0 Jessica Jones wasn&#8217;t my kind of show, but I found value in watching it.\u00a0 Luke Cage season 2 was far better than season 1.\u00a0 Iron Fist &#8230;well&#8230; was necessary for The Defenders to work (which, to me, it did) and Punisher was amazing.<\/p>\n<p>None of them (to date) have ever been &#8216;shouted up&#8217; to the greater MCU movieverse, and there&#8217;s an easy way they could have been in Infinity War.<\/p>\n<p>The Snap.<\/p>\n<p>When Thanos snaps, there could have been a montage scene (much like they had in the comic) of scenes from around the world of people disappearing.\u00a0 Imagine, Thanos snaps, and we cut to Hell&#8217;s Kitchen and see Matt talking to Foggy and Foggy dusts&#8230; Jessica and Trish both dust mid conversation&#8230;Luke watching people in Harlem suddenly dust away&#8230; it could have taken them&#8230; 2-3 minutes of movie time to intersperse something like that, and it would have paid the TV shows respect for carrying on the MCU torch in other media.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s it for me for now, Hatton&#8217;s up next week!<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; PCR<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hey all, PCR here.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s no secret that I&#8217;m a fan of the MCU.\u00a0 Going all the way back to our Year 1 celebration we&#8217;ve talked about it, hypothesized about it, fawned over it and reviewed aspects of it.\u00a0 Today, I&#8217;m going to dive a bit deeper into the &#8220;why&#8221; I enjoy it so much, and some things they do that I&#8217;m not fond of.<\/p>\n<p>First, the Infinity Gauntlet comic crossover is, by far, my favorite comic crossover.\u00a0 End of story.\u00a0 Was it perfect?\u00a0 No&#8230; most huge comic crossover events tend to start amazingly, then seem to have a hard time finding a way to finish, but it still struck a chord with me and has stuck with me since my comic-collecting days&#8230; so when Marvel teased at the end of Avengers that we were getting Thanos, I was in.\u00a0 I felt &#8220;there&#8217;s no WAY they would do Thanos and NOT do Infinity Gauntlet!&#8221; and I was pleased to be correct on that count.<\/p>\n<p>One of the most amazing things in my opinion that the MCU gets right is casting.\u00a0 I have not found one instance of casting.. hero or villain.. that I&#8217;ve been against.\u00a0 Now, have I thought some were &#8216;meh&#8217;?\u00a0 Sure, but in those instances it&#8217;s more of a &#8220;I don&#8217;t hate it&#8221; and much less of a &#8220;They missed the boat..So and so would have been MUCH better!&#8221; (looking at Corey Stoll as Yellowjacket here and to a larger extent Anthony Mackie as Falcon).\u00a0 Those examples aside (I&#8217;ll get into the Mackie thing later), from hero to villain to supporting role, the casting in MCU movies and shows has been amazingly spot on.<\/p>\n<p>Another thing I absolutely love about the MCU as a whole, is how they set precedent for future endeavors.\u00a0 &#8220;Ok, we got you to understand The Convergence and The Nine Realms?\u00a0 Good, here&#8217;s The Quantum realm and Dr. Strange&#8221;\u00a0 &#8220;You good with multiple suits of Iron Man armor flying around on their own?\u00a0 Awesome, here&#8217;s Ultron and his army&#8221; just to use two examples.\u00a0 It&#8217;s brilliant storytelling in my opinion, and makes it easier for those who *aren&#8217;t* huge comic fans to digest what they&#8217;ve been seeing on the screen.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Now, a &#8220;meh&#8221; thing for me&#8230; neither good nor bad&#8230; is that, much like the comics, you don&#8217;t HAVE to watch\/read *every* movie\/issue in order to understand what&#8217;s going on.\u00a0 Can it help?\u00a0 Sure, do you have to to understand the story?\u00a0 Not at all.\u00a0 That can be both good and bad.\u00a0 It&#8217;s good in a way that you don&#8217;t feel forced to sit through a movie you may not really be interested in, but bad in the respect that, it&#8217;s all about making money on the bottom line, so one would think there WOULD be some driving force behind making someone want to see all of them.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Now, for two of my peeves.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll call it &#8220;loyalty to the source material&#8221;.\u00a0 Civil War was a great comic series (not Infinity Gauntlet great, and fell off with a much weaker finish, but still a great concept).\u00a0 The movie we got, while entertaining and giving us some great fan service in scenes, was not the story told in the comics.\u00a0 Now, I get it.\u00a0 It couldn&#8217;t be.\u00a0 Civil War comic run was a huge crossover event in and of itself.\u00a0 There&#8217;s no way to effectively condense that down into one movie&#8230;and I also know the MCU shouldn&#8217;t be a slave to the source material in a way that doesn&#8217;t allow for moving the MCU plot along.\u00a0 That being said, to me, there&#8217;s something about a movie using source material so loosely that it almost retcons and makes the original source material irrelevant.\u00a0 This isn&#8217;t just an MCU flaw, this is a movie flaw in general, but it&#8217;s one the MCU and Marvel doesn&#8217;t do better on.\u00a0 Is there a way for them to?\u00a0 I&#8217;m not sure, but it stands out to me nonetheless.<\/p>\n<p>And finally, let&#8217;s talk about the Netflix shows.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, I enjoyed them.\u00a0 Daredevil was spot on.\u00a0 Jessica Jones wasn&#8217;t my kind of show, but I found value in watching it.\u00a0 Luke Cage season 2 was far better than season 1.\u00a0 Iron Fist &#8230;well&#8230; was necessary for The Defenders to work (which, to me, it did) and Punisher was amazing.<\/p>\n<p>None of them (to date) have ever been &#8216;shouted up&#8217; to the greater MCU movieverse, and there&#8217;s an easy way they could have been in Infinity War.<\/p>\n<p>The Snap.<\/p>\n<p>When Thanos snaps, there could have been a montage scene (much like they had in the comic) of scenes from around the world of people disappearing.\u00a0 Imagine, Thanos snaps, and we cut to Hell&#8217;s Kitchen and see Matt talking to Foggy and Foggy dusts&#8230; Jessica and Trish both dust mid conversation&#8230;Luke watching people in Harlem suddenly dust away&#8230; it could have taken them&#8230; 2-3 minutes of movie time to intersperse something like that, and it would have paid the TV shows respect for carrying on the MCU torch in other media.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s it for me for now, Hatton&#8217;s up next week!<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; PCR<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2585,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[216,221,30,208],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2899,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2898\/revisions\/2899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}