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themattress · 5 years

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My Top 11 Most Wasted Potential MCU Characters (Infinity Saga)

11. Vision - He got some good mileage and there’s somehow more to come from him in the WandaVision show, but I never felt Vision worked as well as he could have. A lot of his development, as well as the development of his and Wanda’s relationship, was kept entirely off-screen, and he really didn’t do much between his birth and his death except kill Ultron.

10. Karl Mordo - Usually, scenes during or after the credits in movies have some connection to a future installment of the Infinity Saga. The one major exception is the one in Doctor Strange where Mordo becomes a supervillain. There is no follow-up or resolution to that until well after the Infinity Saga has finished. So why include the scene at all? Couldn’t it wait?

9. Michelle - Zendaya’s character in Homecoming was hyped in promotion, only to play a completely insignificant, throwaway role and mainly just be the source of jokes. Like with Flash, I get what they were going for: have this version of MJ not start out as a love interest and be inconspicuous until the reveal that she even is a version of MJ, but I still wish she had more of a presence in the film. It doesn’t have to be too much, but more than what we got.

8. Hela - She’s Odin’s firstborn daughter, thus Thor and Loki’s sister, and yet this familial connection doesn’t end up mattering in any way whatsoever. Worse still, it actually ends up sending some extremely unfortunate implications. Hela is a power-hungry villain just like Loki, but he can be redeemed and forgiven while she can’t? Odin is guilty of all the same crimes Hela is guilty of, shaped her into what she is, and then locked her away and covered up her existence when she no longer had any use for her, and yet he can be forgiven and still revered by Thor, while Hela is deemed “the worst”? What was Taika Waititi thinking here!?

7. Ulysses Klaue - Hey, Marvel, sometimes it’s OK to just...not kill your villains. Klaue made an ideal arch-enemy for T’Challa and his Wakandan forces, with Andy Serkis clearly having a lot of fun in the role, but instead he gets killed off. Maybe they weren’t expecting Black Panther to be as successful as it was and thus thought it wouldn’t get a sequel, but now as a consequence that sequel is going to have a disappointing lack of Klaue’s villainous antics.

6. Maya Hansen - She got pointlessly fridged to give Tony man-pain. That is not cool.

5. Jane Foster - Poor Natalie Portman. First she gets taken out of The Avengers, then the director she was excited to work with on The Dark World (Patty Jenkins) is replaced by a man who is infinitely inferior and gives her a thankless, flattened role that naturally draws out a dull performance from her, and then misplaced (and misogynistic) fan backlash for this causes her character of Jane Foster to be insultingly written out with a throwaway joke. The Russos at least gave her another appearance in Endgame that re-acknowledged her importance to Thor, but even then it could have been a lot more. Oh well, at least she got a book deal.

4. Betty Ross - Even Jane has it better than Betty, who was not written very interestingly despite Liv Tyler giving an admirable, likable performance in the role, and has subsequently never been seen or even mentioned again. It’s insulting that her douchebag father can return and yet not her, especially since she had a better relationship with Bruce than Natasha did.

3. Lady Sif & The Warriors 3 - What happened here? Lady Sif and the Warriors 3 were Thor and Loki’s best friends in the original Thor, and they had very appealing chemistry with them and helped the story keep a focus on Asgard even while Thor was banished to Earth. But The Dark World sidelined them hard in favor of Loki, Heimdall, and the Earth characters. And then the Warriors 3 got one scene in Ragnarok where they were all unceremoniously killed by Hela. As for Sif, she made two cameo appearances on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D’s first two seasons and then just vanished into thin air, her role replaced by the inferior Valkyrie. Would anyone guess they were major characters in the comics based on their MCU portrayals?

2. Samuel Sterns - So says the Leader? Not in the MCU! What a waste of Tim Blake Nelson!

1. Sharon Carter - In the comics, this is THE love interest for Captain America. She was actually introduced first, and then her WWII-era aunt Peggy Carter was introduced afterwards through flashbacks. But in the MCU, Peggy is introduced first, and thus Sharon becomes doomed to be stuck in her shadow. The role she should have played in The Winter Soldier was given to Natasha which left her as a bit player, she and her relationship with Steve was barely developed in Civil War, and she never showed up again while Steve time-traveled his way into a relationship with Peggy instead of moving on with Sharon. What really gets me is that the same people responsible for bringing Sharon into the MCU are the same people who made this decision! So what was even the point of her, then? Sharon Carter deserved better.

#Marvel #Infinity Saga #Opinion

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briangroth27 · 7 years

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Doctor Strange Review

I enjoyed Doctor Strange, but also felt it was average, ranking somewhere in the middle of Marvel Studios’ pack. I know next to nothing about Dr. Strange, having only seen him in guest appearances in various Marvel cartoons and an animated film a while back, so I went in with no expectations. I walked out thinking the movie was a fun adventure, but wanting more from Strange’s character development, less formula in the plot, and more weirdness in general. Light spoilers... There's a lot of familiarity to Dr. Stephen Strange, brilliant and arrogant jerk who's humbled (a little) into becoming a hero, so his origin and character arc felt routine and played out even with magic as a new window dressing. Strange’s dogged determination to know how everything works in this new field was one of his redeeming qualities, though, and one that set him a bit apart from the very similar Tony Stark. Strange was definitely a lot colder than I thought he'd be, however that point was brushed over in the movie and clashed with his later refusal to kill (see below for more). Benedict Cumberbatch was good with a variation on his "I'm smarter than everyone else and I know it" sensibility from Sherlock mixed with something of a toned-down Stark, but even considering he does have a learning curve, I still came away with the impression that everything came too easily for him. Even after setting up a long, arduous training process/montage by referring to how long it took him to become a brilliant surgeon and including a few moments where his skills fail him, it seems in a few months he's mastered sorcery others haven't in lifetimes. For example, he's able to operate a time device perfectly after one attempt and no further practice. He makes some mistakes and gets injured (and almost dies at one point), but outside of the kaleidoscope-city sequence, his mistakes don't have big consequences (and even that one didn't make an impact on me). To the movie’s credit, he also gets out of things through sheer luck sometimes. It might be the fact that this is part of a huge franchise, but I never felt like he might actually be in danger or that his powers could screw up the world in any irreparable way thanks to his inexperience. In hindsight, he's less perfect than my initial impression, but he's still hailed as something of a prodigy and it would've been better if he had to work harder or at least rely on others more. Chiwetel Ejiofor was well-cast as Mordo and I liked his arc; it’s possibly the best one in the movie. Tilda Swinton was good as the Ancient One, but ultimately I didn't feel a connection to her character (and wish they’d kept the character’s original Asian ethnicity from the comics). Rachel McAdams’ Christine Palmer was written as a generic love interest without much of her own drive, so McAdams was wasted here. I enjoyed Benjamin Bratt’s small role as Jonathan Pangborn and the mundane magic he employed; it brought a nice variety to the magic usage in the world. Mads Mikkelsen was fine as Kaecilius, but barely felt like a presence (the same fate that’s befallen other minor Marvel villains). He and his cronies aren't all that three-dimensional either, but at least their attempt to grant everyone eternal life is an original motive. The biggest bad, on the other hand, was underwhelming both in terms of his plan—your typical “invade and take the Earth”—and his power output.

However, the visuals are outstanding! The chase/fight you've seen in the trailers with the twisty city and the one in the climax are both very cool and inventive, and definitely worth seeing on the big screen if you can still find it in theaters. I also loved that the climax is resolved without the usual superhero business. The imagery in Strange's first trip through the multiverse was very cool, but the rest of the movie only really touched on one other dimension and a Danger Room-esque pocket world, so the promise of impossibilities and infinite potential felt a little squandered here. Likewise, the mystical boot camp Strange goes to felt routine, like it was using pop culture shorthand for everything so that we’d accept it more easily instead of developing their own rules and really defying expectations. Luke Cage, for example, took the time to fully immerse the audience in the world of Cage’s Harlem, and even though Strange has a much shorter runtime, having Strange (and us) really feel out of his element would’ve been an improvement. I would’ve much preferred that the magical aspects of the film, the dimensions he visits, and the enemies he faces be far stranger—why should beings from other dimensions want anything similar to what plain old human enemies do, after all?

Michael Giacchino’s score is whimsically great and a welcome departure from the usual Marvel Studios scores, which tend to sound kinda similar. Some of the humor lands, like things his cape does and Stephen’s reactions to mysticism, while other bits don't at all, like what finally makes Wong (Benedict Wong) laugh. I think they had more hits than misses, though.

I realize this review sounds fairly negative, but I didn’t dislike the movie. Even with the MCU origin story formula showing (and wearing thin) more and more, I enjoyed myself. There’s no denying that this is a fun and inventive film; I’m more tired of origin story tropes than I am of Marvel films or superheroes in general. I’d be up for a sequel that more fully explores the multiverse and goes way weirder than this one dared to! Dive into magic and other realms with the same abandon that Guardians of the Galaxy had for space adventures! Major Spoilers The scene just before Strange’s car accident made him so much colder than any Marvel hero thus far, completely eliminating my sympathy for him, even if the writers didn't intend to paint him that darkly. I just don't see how to reconcile Strange refusing to take an “impossible” medical case because it could "screw up his perfect record" with his later argument that being a doctor means he won't kill. He also refused to take a case because it was beneath him/boring, which IMO goes beyond any semantics of killing vs. not trying (like Batman Begins tried to pull) and establishes a pattern of his self-aggrandizement that’s never resolved over the course of the movie, even if he does accept sacrificing himself to stop Dormammu.

I absolutely respect, love, and was surprised that the climax is solved with Strange's cunning rather than punching. Similarly, the reverse-time fight was awesome! That might be the most inventive superhero fight in a movie in a long time. That Dormammu is played by Cumberbatch—he’s a dark reflection of whomever he is speaking to at the moment, according to the director—is a nice touch.

One of the few things I knew about Strange from Spider-man cartoons was that Mordo was a villain, so I wasn't surprised by his turn, but I do think he had the best arc of the film and I'd be interested to see his anti-sorcerer quest continue.

I'm thoroughly confused by the post-credits scene with Thor. Why is Loki helping him look for Odin?? Loki was posing as Odin at the end of The Dark World...

I hope exploring the nine realms in Thor Ragnarok will help bring out the weirdness in Strange’s world!

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