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themeatlife · 1 year

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Marvel Pitstop: A Look Back at the MCU’s Phase Four - Television

A continued look at the MCU Phase Four. Unlike previous phases, this latest phase has television series included. There seems to be an over-saturation of content with these television series popping up between the feature film releases. I think that part of the reason for talk of middling quality of releases in the discourse is probably because of the sheer amount of content in a short amount of time to varying success as far as storytelling and quality.

Here’s a look at the television offerings.

TELEVISION

It is a bit of a mixed ride with the television series Marvel featured on Disney+. The highs were certainly very high, while the valleys were at least entertaining but left a bit wanting.

WandaVision - Released January-March 2021 the Meat Life Rating - 8/10

Very interesting concept. Much of the episodes in the series a small New Jersey town are trapped in sitcom life, going through the different sitcom decades set forth by Wanda’s powers but ultimately influenced by Agatha Harkness. The series deals with Wanda’s struggle with losing her love Vision in the events of Avengers: Infinity War. The series felt was strong. Upon initial watch, I thought the finale was weak compared to the rest of the series. On the rewatch, though, I felt like the finale held up pretty well.

Best Performance - Kathryn Hahn as Agatha Harkness This was a tough call because I always enjoy Randall Park in anything, it was cool to see Kat Dennings back in the MCU, we see Teyonah Parris as a grown up Monica Rambeau, and we see strong performances from the leads Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany. Also the surprise appearance of Evan Peters as the sitcom version of Pietro was also good. But in most scenes she’s in Hahn steals the show.

Best Episode - “Previously On” Throughout the episode Agatha forces Wanda through her past to find out how she was able to harness her powers. We see the history of trauma and loss that Wanda goes through over the years and how her family would watch old sitcoms in their house in Sokovia.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier - Released March-April 2021 the Meat Life Rating - 8/10

This is probably my favorite MCU series so far and is a more conventional approach to television series and the Marvel storytelling. The series is the journey Sam Wilson takes as he grapples with whether or not to take on the mantle of Captain America, dealing with race and what it is to be a Black man in America. While Sam grapples with this, a soldier named John Walker takes on the mantle, given the shield by the US government...and to disastrous results. We also see Bucky dealing with his Winter Soldier past. Both of these occurring while the duo learns to work as a team together to topple the Flag Smashers, an anti-national group looking break up international efforts to reestablish pre-Blip conditions. The Flag Smasher storyline might have been very different, with rumors of a virus or bioweapon storyline edited out due to COVID-19. You can see remnants of this when the Flag Smashers are stealing vaccines and the Smashers leader Karli Morgenthau mourns the death of her mentor due to “an illness,” later identified as tuberculosis.

Best Performance - Carl Lumbly as Isaiah Bradley Daniel Bruhl’s Zemo was great and even had meme-able moments, Danny Ramirez’s Torres had moments, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s surprise cameo was great. Some of the other guest stars were good and the leads Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan’s chemistry was palpable. But Carl Lumbly as Isaiah Bradley was the best performance. You could really feel the pain in his voice and the performance really added depth to the Falcon storyline as he grappled with whether to take the Captain America mantle.

Best Episode - “The Whole World Is Watching” In my opinion, the first five episodes are all really close, particularly 2-Star Spangled Man, 3-Power Broker, and 5-Truth. But the fourth episode The Whole World Is Watching is the best. The episode has the best buildup, a look at John Walker’s struggle to live up to the Captain America mantle, the charm of Zemo, the teamwork of Sam and Bucky, and the badass Dora Milaje fight in the apartment. And it has a clear juxtaposition with the redeeming un-brainwashing of Bucky in a flashback at the beginning of the episode and then the shocking killing of a Flag Smasher by Cap Walker with the Captain America shield after a fight with the Flag Smashers leads to the death of Walker’s partner Lemar Hoskins.

Loki - Released June-July 2021 the Meat Life Rating - 8.5/10

In much the same vein as the approach taken with WandaVision, Loki is different. Different in a great way. Falcon may be my favorite show, but Loki as far as quality is probably the best MCU Disney+ series. Following the events of Avengers: Endgame where 2012 Loki steals the Tesseract and disappears, we follow Loki after he is captured by the Time Variance Authority. The TVA is responsible for keeping the Sacred Timeline in tact and eliminate time variants that disrupt it. TVA agent Mobius recruits Loki to hunt down a dangerous variant - a female Loki variant named Sylvie. Loki, in tandem with Spider-Man: No Way Home, serve as MCU primer for multiversal storytelling.

Best Performance - Jonathan Majors as He Who Remains The chemistry between Owen Wilson’s Mobius and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is great and is rivaled only by the chemistry between Hiddleston and Sophia Di Martino’s Sylvie. Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ravonna Renslayer and Wunmi Mosaku as B-15 are strong performances as well. But in the season finale (Loki announced it was renewed for a second season at the end of the first season), Majors stole the show. He Who Remains is a variant of Kang the Conquerer who we will see in the next Ant-Man/Wasp movie. Even with only screen time in the finale, Majors’ performance and execution drive not just the series into another direction, but possibly change the course of the entire MCU.

Best Episode - “For All Time. Always.” All the episodes are solid and of similar quality, so this was a hard decision. But I think the season finale “For All Time. Always.” changes the direction of the MCU on the level Captain America: The Winter Soldier did. It opens up the concept of the multiverse when Sylvie decides to kill He Who Remains, wrecking the end of the Sacred Timeline and stopping the control over time variants. We have yet to truly see how this may impact the rest of the MCU. There were other things that disrupt things and open up the multiverse, so we may see the culmination of all these things in one of the upcoming releases.

What If...? - Released August-October 2021 the Meat Life Rating - 6.5/10

A cool concept: what if your favorite Marvel hero’s journey was different? What would that look like? While there were several episodes that were spectacular, a lot of the episodes, while entertaining, just felt like something was missing. I’m not too into animation, I didn’t really get into the Star Wars Clone Wars or Star Wars Rebels animated series, so maybe that’s why I wasn’t too into this (although nowadays with all the CGI in things, the “live action” films are also heavily animated). It also felt incomplete, for example with a Thanos-like Gamora featured on the promo art but only appearing in the finale (her episode was scrapped because of production issues due to COVID).

Best Performance - Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa Man, what a loss the entertainment world endured with the untimely passing of Chadwick Boseman in the summer of 2020. Boseman’s voice acting in What If was the last project he worked on before his death and was featured through out the series - four out of the nine episodes, in fact. He even had his own episode - “What If...T’Challa Became a Star Lord,” which was tons of fun.

Best Episode - “What If...Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?” Although I felt this show was the weakest of the Marvel Disney+ releases, there were a few strong episodes. “What If...T’Challa Became a Star Lord?,” “What If...Zombies!,” and “What If...Thor Were an Only Child?” were all wildly fun. But the strongest episode was the darkest. In the Doctor Strange episode, the death of Dr Christine Palmer leads Strange down a dark path to gain more power in an attempt to go back in time to save her life.

Hawkeye - Released November-December 2021 the Meat Life Rating - 7/10

Based heavily on the Matt Fraction comic run, Hawkeye is a fun, holiday-themed look at the aftermath of Clint Barton’s reign as Ronin in the post-Endgame world as well as mentoring a new Hawkeye in Kate Bishop. We get Echo and the Tracksuit Mafia run by Kingpin as the main villains as well as a look at Yelena Belova looking to avenge Natasha Romanov’s death as she believes Barton responsible. There are some serious moments in Barton dealing with the Ronin spree as well as Bishop looking at her development and at her mother Eleanor Bishop’s possible involvement in criminal activity. There are some weak areas (the Larpers were a bit of an odd addition) but this is largely a good.

Best Performance - Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova/Black Widow There are many strong performances. Jeremy Renner is good, Hailee Steinfeld is great. The surprise appearance of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin was great as well. But Pugh steals the show with her charm and line execution. Her banter with Steinfeld as well as her fight with Renner in the finale were excellent performances. She kept grabbing up the screen with her performance.

Best Episode - “Echoes” We see the origin story of Echo and the relationship she has with Kazi, the head of the Tracksuits. There is a great break out fight scene in the toy store headquarters of the Tracksuits as well as the subsequent car chase scene. The continuous shot during the car chase from inside the car is top-notch. And the episode ends on a cliffhanger inside the Bishop apartment as Kate tries to break into her mother’s company’s system.

Moon Knight - Released March-May 2022 the Meat Life Rating - 6/10

The 2022 Disney+ show releases are a bit of a letdown. Moon Knight had some very high highs, but I think this show and many of the Marvel shows suffer from is a rushed plot. I feel like this could have benefitted greatly from another few episodes to flesh things out, maybe 10 episodes rather than six. Moon Knight the show follows a man Marc Spector as he reckons with other personalities/alter egos within himself. Marc’s biggest conflict within himself is with personality Steven Grant. Marc also embodies Moon Knight to do the bidding of Khonshu the Egyptian god of Moon and the night sky and battles Egyptian goddess Ammit. It was a revealing look at a character with DID or Dissociative Identity Disorder and what those people may deal with. It was also nice to see representation of Egyptian characters by Egyptian actors and directors. But those storylines seem to fall apart or appear rushed. Also, some of the action sequences were plagued by CGI issues (many times you can tell the difference between a person in costume and a CGI rendering of a person in a costume) and subpar fight choreography (not on the same level as some other Marvel projects).

Best Performance - Oscar Isaac as Marc Spector, Steven Grant, Moon Knight, and Jake Lockley For all the issues with the series, Oscar Isaac was acting his ass off. Isaac jumping back and forth from Marc and Steven was spectacular. Ethan Hawke was a decent villain as Arthur Harrow, a David Koresh-like cult leader who professes the wishes of Ammit. May Calamawy was also solid as Layla El-Faouly, Marc Spector’s ex who helps Marc/Steven navigate to fight against Harrow/Ammit. But Isaac kills it. The British accent may be off a bit (they even joke about it in the series) but outside of that, some great work from Oscar.

Best Episode - “Asylum” In the tradition of the other Marvel Disney+ series, the fifth episode is the strongest. Asylum is kind of the Christmas Carol type episode, in the same vein of WandaVision episode Previously On. We see Marc after Marc/Steven dies and has to resolve the issues in their life before they can cross over to the after life. We get Marc as a child and the origins of how the Steven personality came about. A rough but touching episode that stretches Oscar Isaac’s acting muscles. A great episode of television in general from a very middling series.

Ms Marvel - Released June-July 2022 the Meat Life Rating - 6/10

Ms Marvel follows Pakistani-American teen and Captain Marvel superfan Kamala Khan as she discovers hidden superpowers and her family history. While discovering this, she has to stop the Clandestines, a people exiled on Earth trying to get back to the Noor dimension which may lead to the end of Earth. This is another series that would have benefited from a few more episodes, or perhaps separating the story out into another season. I think, as with a lot of minority stories told in American entertainment, they were afraid this would be their only shot to get all of this done (the creators behind this - writers, producers, directors, are all of South Asian decent and were probably afraid this was their only chance to tell the story). This feels like two different seasons smashed into one - the first part a teen comedy, the second an immigrant family backstory. A lot of the plot feels rushed or compressed for time and could have benefited from letting the story breathe and stretch out. The series suffers from too much going on all at once and doesn’t hit in the way say Everything Everywhere All At Once does.

Best Performance - Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan/Ms Marvel There are some strong performances from the supporting cast, particularly Matt Lintz as Kamala’s BFF Bruno, Yasmeen Fletcher as overachiever close friend of Kamala in Nakia, Zenobia Shroff and Mohan Kapur as Kamala’s parents, and Saagar Shaikh as Kamala’s brother Aamir. But Vellani is so charming in her performance as Kamala Khan. The naive teen discovering herself through her family’s history and her powers was really relatable and the best part of the series.

Best Episode - “Generation Why” The first episode is the strongest. You see Kamala’s life as a regular teen in Jersey. You also see her strong family life and her Pakistani/Muslim background. Kamala’s strong artistic imagination is on display. And the main conflict is the relationships she has with her friends and the contrast with the views of her family, the push and pull between American culture and Pakistani tradition. It really encompasses the child of immigrants story very well, it is the biggest part of the story of Ms Marvel I relate to.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law - Released August-October 2022 the Meat Life Rating - 5.5/10

I want to preface this by saying that there were some moments that were really enjoyable. But, I have to say by MCU standards, this has very diminished returns. I know that the teams working the CGI industry-wide are shortstaffed and overworked from all the projects out, but the CGI of the She Hulk is rough. The She Hulk effects in action scenes are decent, but the She Hulk scenes in regular interaction with actual people is very stiff and fake looking. It’s hard going from the Endgame Hulk and the quality of that to the low quality of the She Hulk. And that takes you out of it. The show takes a more conventional trial-per-epidose approach and is very Ally McBeal in its vibe. They took some swings and I’m glad they approached this show differently from the other MCU content (like the sex jokes were a welcomed change), but for the most part this series struck out for me.

Best Performance - Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky/Abomination Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters/She Hulk actually isn’t bad. Benedict Wong is cooking in Phase Four altogether and is pretty solid straight man in this. Mark Ruffalo is always great as Bruce Banner/Hulk. It was nice to see Charlie Cox return as the MCU version of Matt Murdock/Daredevil, although I don’t know how I feel about that version yet. But Tim Roth is hilarious in this. Great performance and steals scenes. I almost wish he was in this more.

Best Episode - Ribbit and Rip It Outside of the pilot episode A Normal Amount of Rage, I think Ribbit and Rip It is probably the most complete episode. This is the episode She Hulk teams up with Daredevil to track down LeapFrog, who is fraudulently suing superhero suit designer Luke Jacobson. Great chemistry between Maslany and Cox.

Originally I was going to go over the upcoming Marvel slate. But the last couple years has seen that slate and timeline change multiple times. So I’ll just conclude by saying that all these film and television projects might have benefited from some time between project releases. It feels the MCU oversaturated and that the quality of the content has been down. But if you kind of compare Phase Four with Phase One, they are very similar in how they are trying to feel out what works, what doesn’t, and where to go from there. I will say that the movies were much stronger overall than the TV shows, particularly in 2022.

Let’s see what the MCU in 2023 and beyond will bring us.

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