Marvel Shared Film Universe: MCU Theatrical & TV (discussion, crossovers, etc.)

[goflyblind]

Well I did go to the bathroom around the time they entered that place so maybe I missed something.

you missed thor's butt.

[goflyblind]

deadpool 3 announcement/teaser/whatever (september 2024):

[LucasM]

I didn't think the guards that turned to gold dust when killed were gods, were they?
But really for me at that point everyone on screen were being such horrible people I really didn't care who killed who.

I 100% agree with you on the, "everyone on screen... being such horrible people!"

The reason I said the 12 Thor killed were gods is because the (admittedly with inadequate exposition) implication was that only gods had gold blood, since the only time we saw gold blood prior to that scene was when the first god that Gorr killed had his throat punctured and it sprayed out, just as it did in the fight in the city.  And in that scene with Zeus I don't recall seeing any obvious servants (the females with him I presumed to be concubines or groupies) - though there may have been, and I was just so revolted by the foreground action that I missed them.

Basically, I think they were lesser gods, just as the Greek/Roman pantheons had castes, with lesser gods doing less important stuff.  In this case, presumably serving as the guards that were wholesale slaughtered by the "heroes".


Another much more minor beef with the film, but I feel a legitimate one: Sif would god-damn well KNOW that she'd have to die in battle to get into Valhalla!  No fucking WAY she would be ignorant of that.  Her wanting to be left on the battlefield to die, and her missing arm, were I think both supposed to be a laugh likely inserted by the emotionally immature director - but it was done at the expense of the only female supporting character who was shown to be smart and strong enough to hang with Thor and the Warriors Three from long before the first film.

[Edward J Grug III]

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/marvel-blade-director-exits-bassam-tariq-1235386317/

[The Lurker]

[goflyblind]

[LucasM]

REALLY enjoyed Werewolf By Night tonight. 

spoiler for all sorts'a things from the show
At first I was put off by the B&W (with the single red highlight), but then it grew on me - as it was clear it was partly a tribute to the classic Universal films.  I mean: they even put the cut-outs in the upper right corner about every 13 minutes signaling an obviously-non-existent reel change!

I always remember Man-Thing as being extremely unintelligent, but in this, he is rational, 'speaks' (though not comprehensible to humans), and even jokes around.  So a tag line could have been: "this isn't your comics' Man-Thing".

Speaking of jokes, I didn't find what few amusements that were placed around and about in this special to be as distracting as they sometimes have been in some of the more recent theatrical releases.

I liked that some aspects had a very 'Ploogian' style to them, since Ploog was his original artist.

Thankfully they kept is Pg-13 or R or whatever it was, so the condition of those fighting could be shown, as it would have been quite weak if it was G rated.

Overall, I found it quite enjoyable.  Though I would have liked more actual werewolf, the amount of transformed wolf was appropriate to the story.

[The Lurker]

[Pastor of Muppets]

Can't wait!  I heard they're going to introduce Kang the Conqueror, who will also be the villain in the next Avengers movie.

[The Lurker]

[LucasM]

Anybody else think that - when the Silver Surfer shows up, and then finally breaks free of Earth to try to go back to his home planet - that the music they play should be Elvis Presley singing...

"Returrrn to Zenn-La ... address unknown..."?


Just me? 

[ . . . or is the word "sender" . . . ?]

[The Lurker]

[LucasM]

I did something to answer a question that I've wondered about for a while now.  It has irritated me that the Disney+ MCU shows have been touted (in the Assembled shows, as well as elsewhere) as being "six hours" or "three films worth" of story.  Six "hours" possibly if they were on broadcast TV and had commercials to fill the remaining time (or if they were being seen by a psychiatrist ), but each episode of the six-episode series is between 40-50 minutes long, including credits.

So I figured out how long the Disney+ MCU shows actually are.  [Partly doing this to get a better feel for the latest I could start to re-watch one in order to watch it straight-through in an evening.]

I did this time check for both Loki and Moon Knight, to have a sample size of more than one.

I added up the full run-times of each show.  I figured out how long both the end credits, and the 'Previously' segments lasted.  I subtracted the six incidents of credits and the five incidents of Previouslies from the full show's run-time.

Each Disney+ MCU show has - of PURE story - only four hours and 12 minutes.  And clearly only TWO films worth of story, not three as they espouse.  [To be clear: I think the stories are ideal at this length - tight, no filler - I'm just irritated they are being promoted as a full 50% longer than they actually are.]

Exact story length for the two I checked:
Loki  4 hr 13m
Moon Knight  4 hr 12m
That is SO close that I suspect the 4h12m is true across series.

[Edward J Grug III]

Moon Knight and Loki are both 6 episodes, but WandaVision and She-Hulk are both 9 episodes.

IMDB lists the full runtime of WandaVision as 5hr 50mins, which is pretty close to that 6 hours that people were referring to (although that's without removing the credits etc)

[LucasM]

Moon Knight and Loki are both 6 episodes, but WandaVision and She-Hulk are both 9 episodes.

IMDB lists the full runtime of WandaVision as 5hr 50mins, which is pretty close to that 6 hours that people were referring to (although that's without removing the credits etc)

With these, I was sharing what I personally added up, from the actual run-times of each episode, which I checked.

Yes, WandaVision and She-Hulk are nine episodes, but they are shorter episodes, and so the credits are a much larger percentage of the total runtime.  i.e. They'd have longer total run-time, but with nine times the credit length and eight times the 'Previously' length subtracted, so likely around the same 4 hours 12 minutes.

To double check IMdB on that, I just added up WandaVision individual episode times.*  It actually comes to 5 hours and 17 minutes including credits and Previously segments (the total alone gives a whole episode-length shorter than what IMdB reports).  With each credit segment 4 minutes and 16 seconds (total: 38m 15s), subtracting that and the Previously time (~8 minutes), for story alone it is about 4 1/2 hours.

In Hiddleston's intro to Assembled, the Making of Loki, he is rattling off numbers.  He says, "whittle it down to 280 minutes and 17 seconds of programming."  [Just looked and that was confirmed on WikiPedia.]  280 minutes (4.6 hours) actually was a hair less than what I tallied for the show (4.75 hours).  [Possibly for the number they presented in the Assembled episode they excluded the 'Previously' times?]  Subtract the credit/Previously times for six episodes (35.8 minutes), and it would actually be around four hours even.  Since I actually did the math, and know what I included and excluded, I trust my tallies more than that, with the extra 12 minutes.

Clearly, IMdB is wrong on the time it has for the WandaVision series.  Basically, it is the difference between taking their word for it, and looking at the actual, individual numbers and working with those.  With both grad level Statistics and Advanced Statistics under my belt teaching me to look at the raw data, I did the latter.

So I stand by my conclusion, that MCU D+ series are roughly 4 1/4 hours long (expanding slightly from 4h 12m, since WV was a bit longer than Loki or Moon Knight, so She-Hulk may have been also, raising the average for all series, though there are more 6-episode than 9-episode series, so not bumping it much).

[And this once again reminded me that Google is my friend.  I could have saved myself a fair amount of number crunching by simply Googling "Loki runtime" and "WandaVision runtime" and get the result.  When I did for WandaVision, multiple results said 4 hours 30 minutes, which is what I found after calculations excluding 'Previously' lengths and credits lengths.]

Something I just thought of: it is possible that the runtimes that IMdB report include the MANY minutes of credits for foreign language version cast (that appears to be what happened with WikiPedia's reported times for WandaVision episodes).  That could explain why individual episode runtimes are actually reported at about 4-5 minutes longer than the actual episodes are (with Previously and 'standard' credits  still included).  That would add very roughly 2/3-3/4 of an hour to the total runtime for a nine-episode series, or about half an hour to a six-episode one.

For that, keep in mind that Disney+'s reported run-times on their pages for shows gives the runtime including those lengthy foreign-language credits as part of the runtime.  If IMdB collected runtimes from those, they'd be including a full 10 minutes per episode of non-story (between Previously/credits/international voice credits).  So: yeah, it is 'time padding', whether intentional or not.


* WandaVision episode run-times:
26:33
33:41
29.56
32:32
38:10
34:43
34:41
43:21
46:51


EDIT:  Binge-watched She-Hulk again yesterday.  Started less than 10 minutes after 1pm, and ended around 5:20.  So it appears She-Hulk is of the roughly-four-and-a-quarter-hours length for pure story, rather than the 4 1/2 of WandaVision.