f13.net

This is way too much fun. Meta for both Marvel and holiday specials, but not up its own ass about it.

--Dave

Written and directed by James Gunn. GoTG3 and then back to DC I guess, which is a shame as I still hold that GoTG was the film that got MCU out of the shitfest of taking itself too seriously.

At no point did I ever get the impression that that MCU took itself too seriously.

Soundtrack once again is amazing. He got the Old ‘97s to do Christmas songs.

Idk. A bunch of the not so great movies rub up against this issue. Thor 2, cap2, im2, most of the 2s come to think of it, also the Kung Fu one last year, eternals, captain marvel.

Cap 2 (i.e. Winter Soldier) kinda needed to be that way though and is one of (if not the) best movies in that whole Phase.

Yeah, Cap 2 did a good job of branching out from the Marvel genre of the time and showing that they could start, for lack of a better analogy, do their MCU paint by numbers using the same palette in a different colouring book (making it a thriller). I don't think any of the other MCU films at the time had really attempted anything different like that.

I've never understood the cap2 love.

Or why people call it a thriller with a straight face.

I think the degree to which that film was just a by the numbers marvel film, but this time completely deadpan, was the point we stopped regularly going to the cinema for MCU stuff. (Though admittedly the elevator bit was still pretty great)

Lots of people agree with you all, but the first captain America movie was much better. As was civil war (apart from the really silly airport scene).

Winter soldier is mediocre to me.

But the mcu never took itself seriously. That's what made the Netflix stuff and the entire dc universe such trash.

I mean as a whole, the MCU started off with Iron Man which had serious bits, but by no means did it take itself too seriously. Like the only phase 1 movie that maybe took itself too seriously was Incredible Hulk.

Even Cap 2 which you mention allows for a good amount of levity with a lot of the interplay between Cap and Black Widow and also Cap and Falcon. Also you clearly didn't watch the same Shang-Chi that I did if you thought it took itself too seriously. It had Awkwafina and Fake Mandarin as its supporting cast. It had a cage match between Wong and Abomination.

Oddly enough, Akwafina was one of the better parts of Shang-Chi IMO. As for Winter Soldier, still rate this as one of my favorite MCU movies. I don't understand how anyone could think First Avenger was better than Winter Soldier.

Ha! Thanks for calling that out - I haven't watched yet and didn't realize they were in it.

I like First Avenger a lot, but I think Cap as we know him in the MCU isn't really established until Winter Soldier. Obviously there's some a lot of foundation there in First Avenger, but then feel like Whedon didn't entirely know what to do with him in Avengers (doesn't help that they gave him kind of a shitty costume too).

For me Shang chi fell apart when they got to the Michelle Yeoh village and tried to do idk what. If the final act was more like the rest of the film I'd agree. And like it more.

It's SO dumb but the fact that Draxx cousin was killed by a fucking Gobot made me laugh harder than anything else has in the MCU.

I completely disagree. I kept wanting to fast forward through the musical parts.

I liked where they were going with the idea, but this thing was a mess.

I said, out loud, "gobots are canon now."

I did not laugh.

I just started laughing again when i read "gobots are canon now".