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re: Band aids, multiverses
A VERY WORMY WALK TO WORK, WORMS EVERYWHERE UGH UGH UGH. Also goddamn do I need to start wearing something with a hood even though winter coat season is behind me, the wind was cold and hard enough that I got a wicked earache that's only just abating now. Still! Ready to settle in for a long, lazy Saturday. I even have last night's Rampage waiting for me on the other side so I have something to look forward to again! Maybe I'll take a bath first, if I'm confident enough that I won't pass out during (I am VERY tired (it was fuckin' worth it, though (all that will be behind a cut, naturally))).
7. Do you pull your band aids off slowly or rip them off quickly?
I've never understood ripping them off quickly! It doesn't hurt at all if you do it slowly! How sticky are your band aids if it does? Are you really that hard up for thirty seconds?? IT'S MADNESS.
Hey, speaking of Madness, TO THE DOCTOR STRANGE SPOILER ZONE:
WELL THAT WAS A LOT. Doctor Strange (along with Cloak & Dagger) was always one of the very few non-mutant Marvel characters that I actually cared about growing up, so I was a little hesitant about his second movie after six years getting bogged down in the multiversal 'member berries that are clearly the big overarching plot of Phase Four, but it ended up doing a great job of just using them to double and triple down on the big bonkers magic CGI weirdness that made me love the character and his bullshit in the first place (not that it was CGI in the comics, obvs, but we've finally reached a level where throwing enough money at something means you CAN make it as ridiculous as imaginations dictate, which was the big sticking point in properly adapting shit like superhero comics for so long, since budgets aren't a concern in a page of artwork), so I was very satisfied! Let's do a good old-fashioned breakdown by character so I can get all my thoughts out after barfing most of the immediate ones up into Discord at one in the morning last night. I've got a whole Saturday to kill, might as well go real tl;dr on this shit.
Doctor Strange: He's kinda stepped into the Iron Man role of the MCU in terms of connecting movies, and while Tony did it by being interesting and involved, he just does it by being useful, which I don't necessarily hate in terms of differentiating eras? It does make him carrying a movie a tricky prospect, but I thought this did a good job in never letting him be the least interesting person in the room (this sounds damning with faint praise, but I don't mean it that way, they made him interesting for the first time since his first movie, it's a good thing!). He got an arc (WE GET IT HE'S NOT HAPPY YOU CAN STOP ASKING NOW), even if it's a little hollow and ultimately unresolved, and I just really dug how they slowly revealed the whole bit where it's like 'literally every single Doctor Strange fuckin' sucks, all of them, just the worst dude, NOT U THOUGH UR THE SPECIAL GOOD STRANGE oh okay maybe not entirely though never mind'. There's meat on them there bones! Can't wait to see what Clea brings out of him.
The Scarlet Witch: Ahahaha people are gonna be so pissed she went Full Supervillain and I just... I don't care? SHE WAS SO COOL AND BADASS AND SCARY, IT OWNED. She's a great damn supervillain! And they make it super clear immediately that's it's all down to the Darkhold anyway, so it's not like it undoes her whole beautiful grief acceptance arc in WandaVision, she just fucked up pretty bad afterward and got corrupted, these things happen! I think my only real issue with how she was handled is that I wish her motivations had been more about everyone she's lost, instead of just the twins; why not look for a world where she's got Viz and Pietro, too, you know? Gives it all a bit of a 'bitches be crazy about babies AMIRITE' vibe, but that can probably be chalked up to the Darkhold, too; she started fucking with it to find out if they even could still be out there somewhere, it makes sense that her corruption would end up fixating her on them. Still bad optics! You just know it's gonna infuriate all the people who still insist on misunderstanding the Black Widow Age of Ultron monster line all these years later. Did you SEE her all bloody and horrifically murdering all those people in her bare feet, though??? And her MAKEUP???? GODDAMN THAT'S SOME GOOD VILLAIN. And then in the end, the only person whose absolution she needed to cut through the corruption and turn her back on the right track was herself. It sucks that nobody else even tried! It's supposed to! She was right about Strange being a hypocrite! But just as no perfect girl that he loves in every universe can ever truly make Stephen happy because he's gotta do it for himself, nobody can forgive Wanda but Wanda, and THAT'S what it took for her to save the day across the multiverse in the end (after killing... so many people, she really could not survive this movie and go back to being a good guy, unfortunately). Bring her back, High Evolutionary!
Mordo: Little bummed that we waited six years to get zero follow up on his heel turn, but this version was neat, too, I guess. Liked Strange alluding to their prior relationship, at least. But seriously, what's our Mordo's deal, what's he been getting up to!! (I will naturally refuse to refer to the MCU as 616 because that way lies even more Madness, those are non-canon numbers established by that one random universe only.)
Wong: Still rules.
America Chavez: I really don't care for the character in the comics, she actively annoyed me much of the time before I finally bounced on current Marvel entirely, but I liked her here! Looking forward to her being less of a damsel now that she's getting her shit together. Wanted to see more of her just bouncing around universes. The effect for her powers is cool as fuck. I have no notes! Good job, newbie! Stephen did MUCH better with her than he did with Peter, by the by. Character growth!
Christine Palmer: This movie really going all in on her being The One felt so weird until that mid-credits sequence clarified things. We're wrapping up the half-assed romance to make room for the real one! Hooray! Doctor Strange was the first Marvel movie to start moving away from the idea that every single movie NEEDS a random love interest, so Christine has always existed in this nebulous kind of in-between space, like she was there because they felt she HAD to be, but they didn't have all that much for her otherwise? She was the ex, which is a step up from wedging in an actual romance subplot for no good reason, but we've moved on from even needing that, so. I'm sure we'll see her again at some point, but hopefully we'll have actual reasons to do so now!
Nic West: Unlike this guy, lol. Okay but seriously, how amazing must Michael Stuhlbarg's agent be for him to get billing this high for one shoehorned-in scene at the beginning?? What kind of contract did he sign for that first movie!!!
Billy and Teddy: Man, those kids are annoying. Please get reincarnated cooler when it's Young Avengers time, boys.
Black Bolt: JUSTICE FOR ANSON MOUNT. And then an exploded head (gah), but STILL. JUSTICE FIRST. THE DOOR IS OPEN FOR A PROPER RETURN NOW. I always liked Inhumans (the characters), or at least I did until Marvel started pushing them as Mutants 2.0 and they got insufferable, but had Inhumans (the show) not sucked eggs, we would not have gotten the perfection that is Christopher Pike, so this is really the best possible outcome for everyone involved. Well. Maybe not for Black Bolt 838. DO-OVER. I do think, of all the big surprises, this was the one that got the biggest reaction out of me, it's WILD that this happened to come out the same day as both the Picard finale and the Strange New Worlds premiere.
Captain Carter: BIG PEG BIG PEG BIG PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEG. GOD SHE LOOKED SO GOOD. NO NOTES. At least she got to die hot.
Captain Marvel: When you task your agent with getting you in a Marvel movie and a Bond movie, and they get you both, but after playing 007, just being a dead pilot in the MCU maybe doesn't feel as impressive anymore, so you get to be Captain fucking Marvel for a movie as well. The sheer power of this woman.
I'mma say it. Both Captains are upgrades from the ones we got in MCU Prime.
Charles Xavier: THE WAVY CARTOON PSYCHIC LINES FUCKING SLAYED ME. Man, I wish I hadn't seen the TV spot that spoiled the wheelchair, though at least it did pre-emptively soothe my concerns about refusals to let the FoX-Men fucking go already oh my god it's been over twenty years PLEASE JUST START FRESH. Ahem. This? Was a goddamn delight.
Reed Richards: AFTER ALL THE FUCKING HYPE AND ENDLESS SPECULATION, THAT'S HOW THEY INTRODUCE HIM?? SHE FUCKING SHREDDED HIM, OH MY GOD, AMAZING.
Clea: FUCK YES. Obviously there are so many different ways for them to spin this, and god only knows WHEN we'll get to see it start to play out, but LET'S FUCKING GO. Do my girl right, Charlize!!
The Pizzaball Guy: Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce <3 Damn, I want to try one of those pizzaballs.
Sam Raimi: Not a character, true, but definitely one of the more... visible? Marvel directors we've had in a while? His fingerprints were ALL over every frame of this thing, for (mostly) better and for worse. I'm not sure the blend of big damn superheroics and horror moments totally worked for me? The scary/gory bits all would have benefited with more atmosphere that there just wasn't room for with everything else going on and a Danny Elfman score on top of it. Definitely filing the Derrickson version of this movie away with Edgar Wright's Ant-Man on the What Could Have Been shelf, but Raimi was probably the perfect choice for the mashup that Marvel clearly wanted instead. Impressed that it didn't wind up feeling anywhere near as bloated as some other recent entries, he packed tons of stuff into just over two hours, you love to see it! Kinda cool that he ended up directing movies for the only major characters Lee and Ditko created together.
In summary: Good movie, want to watch again. We go on red.
Okay, time to figure out what I'm ordering for lunch.
7. Do you pull your band aids off slowly or rip them off quickly?
I've never understood ripping them off quickly! It doesn't hurt at all if you do it slowly! How sticky are your band aids if it does? Are you really that hard up for thirty seconds?? IT'S MADNESS.
Hey, speaking of Madness, TO THE DOCTOR STRANGE SPOILER ZONE:
WELL THAT WAS A LOT. Doctor Strange (along with Cloak & Dagger) was always one of the very few non-mutant Marvel characters that I actually cared about growing up, so I was a little hesitant about his second movie after six years getting bogged down in the multiversal 'member berries that are clearly the big overarching plot of Phase Four, but it ended up doing a great job of just using them to double and triple down on the big bonkers magic CGI weirdness that made me love the character and his bullshit in the first place (not that it was CGI in the comics, obvs, but we've finally reached a level where throwing enough money at something means you CAN make it as ridiculous as imaginations dictate, which was the big sticking point in properly adapting shit like superhero comics for so long, since budgets aren't a concern in a page of artwork), so I was very satisfied! Let's do a good old-fashioned breakdown by character so I can get all my thoughts out after barfing most of the immediate ones up into Discord at one in the morning last night. I've got a whole Saturday to kill, might as well go real tl;dr on this shit.
Doctor Strange: He's kinda stepped into the Iron Man role of the MCU in terms of connecting movies, and while Tony did it by being interesting and involved, he just does it by being useful, which I don't necessarily hate in terms of differentiating eras? It does make him carrying a movie a tricky prospect, but I thought this did a good job in never letting him be the least interesting person in the room (this sounds damning with faint praise, but I don't mean it that way, they made him interesting for the first time since his first movie, it's a good thing!). He got an arc (WE GET IT HE'S NOT HAPPY YOU CAN STOP ASKING NOW), even if it's a little hollow and ultimately unresolved, and I just really dug how they slowly revealed the whole bit where it's like 'literally every single Doctor Strange fuckin' sucks, all of them, just the worst dude, NOT U THOUGH UR THE SPECIAL GOOD STRANGE oh okay maybe not entirely though never mind'. There's meat on them there bones! Can't wait to see what Clea brings out of him.
The Scarlet Witch: Ahahaha people are gonna be so pissed she went Full Supervillain and I just... I don't care? SHE WAS SO COOL AND BADASS AND SCARY, IT OWNED. She's a great damn supervillain! And they make it super clear immediately that's it's all down to the Darkhold anyway, so it's not like it undoes her whole beautiful grief acceptance arc in WandaVision, she just fucked up pretty bad afterward and got corrupted, these things happen! I think my only real issue with how she was handled is that I wish her motivations had been more about everyone she's lost, instead of just the twins; why not look for a world where she's got Viz and Pietro, too, you know? Gives it all a bit of a 'bitches be crazy about babies AMIRITE' vibe, but that can probably be chalked up to the Darkhold, too; she started fucking with it to find out if they even could still be out there somewhere, it makes sense that her corruption would end up fixating her on them. Still bad optics! You just know it's gonna infuriate all the people who still insist on misunderstanding the Black Widow Age of Ultron monster line all these years later. Did you SEE her all bloody and horrifically murdering all those people in her bare feet, though??? And her MAKEUP???? GODDAMN THAT'S SOME GOOD VILLAIN. And then in the end, the only person whose absolution she needed to cut through the corruption and turn her back on the right track was herself. It sucks that nobody else even tried! It's supposed to! She was right about Strange being a hypocrite! But just as no perfect girl that he loves in every universe can ever truly make Stephen happy because he's gotta do it for himself, nobody can forgive Wanda but Wanda, and THAT'S what it took for her to save the day across the multiverse in the end (after killing... so many people, she really could not survive this movie and go back to being a good guy, unfortunately). Bring her back, High Evolutionary!
Mordo: Little bummed that we waited six years to get zero follow up on his heel turn, but this version was neat, too, I guess. Liked Strange alluding to their prior relationship, at least. But seriously, what's our Mordo's deal, what's he been getting up to!! (I will naturally refuse to refer to the MCU as 616 because that way lies even more Madness, those are non-canon numbers established by that one random universe only.)
Wong: Still rules.
America Chavez: I really don't care for the character in the comics, she actively annoyed me much of the time before I finally bounced on current Marvel entirely, but I liked her here! Looking forward to her being less of a damsel now that she's getting her shit together. Wanted to see more of her just bouncing around universes. The effect for her powers is cool as fuck. I have no notes! Good job, newbie! Stephen did MUCH better with her than he did with Peter, by the by. Character growth!
Christine Palmer: This movie really going all in on her being The One felt so weird until that mid-credits sequence clarified things. We're wrapping up the half-assed romance to make room for the real one! Hooray! Doctor Strange was the first Marvel movie to start moving away from the idea that every single movie NEEDS a random love interest, so Christine has always existed in this nebulous kind of in-between space, like she was there because they felt she HAD to be, but they didn't have all that much for her otherwise? She was the ex, which is a step up from wedging in an actual romance subplot for no good reason, but we've moved on from even needing that, so. I'm sure we'll see her again at some point, but hopefully we'll have actual reasons to do so now!
Nic West: Unlike this guy, lol. Okay but seriously, how amazing must Michael Stuhlbarg's agent be for him to get billing this high for one shoehorned-in scene at the beginning?? What kind of contract did he sign for that first movie!!!
Billy and Teddy: Man, those kids are annoying. Please get reincarnated cooler when it's Young Avengers time, boys.
Black Bolt: JUSTICE FOR ANSON MOUNT. And then an exploded head (gah), but STILL. JUSTICE FIRST. THE DOOR IS OPEN FOR A PROPER RETURN NOW. I always liked Inhumans (the characters), or at least I did until Marvel started pushing them as Mutants 2.0 and they got insufferable, but had Inhumans (the show) not sucked eggs, we would not have gotten the perfection that is Christopher Pike, so this is really the best possible outcome for everyone involved. Well. Maybe not for Black Bolt 838. DO-OVER. I do think, of all the big surprises, this was the one that got the biggest reaction out of me, it's WILD that this happened to come out the same day as both the Picard finale and the Strange New Worlds premiere.
Captain Carter: BIG PEG BIG PEG BIG PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEG. GOD SHE LOOKED SO GOOD. NO NOTES. At least she got to die hot.
Captain Marvel: When you task your agent with getting you in a Marvel movie and a Bond movie, and they get you both, but after playing 007, just being a dead pilot in the MCU maybe doesn't feel as impressive anymore, so you get to be Captain fucking Marvel for a movie as well. The sheer power of this woman.
I'mma say it. Both Captains are upgrades from the ones we got in MCU Prime.
Charles Xavier: THE WAVY CARTOON PSYCHIC LINES FUCKING SLAYED ME. Man, I wish I hadn't seen the TV spot that spoiled the wheelchair, though at least it did pre-emptively soothe my concerns about refusals to let the FoX-Men fucking go already oh my god it's been over twenty years PLEASE JUST START FRESH. Ahem. This? Was a goddamn delight.
Reed Richards: AFTER ALL THE FUCKING HYPE AND ENDLESS SPECULATION, THAT'S HOW THEY INTRODUCE HIM?? SHE FUCKING SHREDDED HIM, OH MY GOD, AMAZING.
Clea: FUCK YES. Obviously there are so many different ways for them to spin this, and god only knows WHEN we'll get to see it start to play out, but LET'S FUCKING GO. Do my girl right, Charlize!!
The Pizzaball Guy: Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce <3 Damn, I want to try one of those pizzaballs.
Sam Raimi: Not a character, true, but definitely one of the more... visible? Marvel directors we've had in a while? His fingerprints were ALL over every frame of this thing, for (mostly) better and for worse. I'm not sure the blend of big damn superheroics and horror moments totally worked for me? The scary/gory bits all would have benefited with more atmosphere that there just wasn't room for with everything else going on and a Danny Elfman score on top of it. Definitely filing the Derrickson version of this movie away with Edgar Wright's Ant-Man on the What Could Have Been shelf, but Raimi was probably the perfect choice for the mashup that Marvel clearly wanted instead. Impressed that it didn't wind up feeling anywhere near as bloated as some other recent entries, he packed tons of stuff into just over two hours, you love to see it! Kinda cool that he ended up directing movies for the only major characters Lee and Ditko created together.
In summary: Good movie, want to watch again. We go on red.
Okay, time to figure out what I'm ordering for lunch.
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