MCU News & Notes

Reviews of Thor 4 were surprisingly tepid and the audience score seems to back that up. How is the film doing? It's struggling--I never thought it would make Doctor Strange 2 money, but I wonder if it will even make The Batman money (770; through July 19th it's at 511). Combining the wooden acting of Natalie Portman and Tessa Thompson doesn't help, but it seems like what hurt it most is the childish humour throughout (Batman & Robin is the comparison I've heard) and making Thor even dumber. What does this mean for the future of the Thor franchise? It's as unclear as Phase Five. I see no hope for it on the horizon, but things are changing internally at Disney and it's hard to imagine it getting worse.

Ms. Marvel opened horrendously according to Nielsen, placing tenth with its first episode (249), well behind fellow Disney offering Kenobi (682) and miles behind Stranger Things (4226). I've heard it's better than prior MCU outings, but given that all the D+ shows have been bad, that's damning with faint praise (it's second episode didn't make the charts). One wonders if we'll ever get something truly engaging on streaming from the MCU at this point (I imagine some are hopeful for Dardevil, but given he's being shoehorned into an Echo show no one wants, I suspect he'll get the Hawkeye treatment and lose much of the goodwill he brings from Netflix)--until there are major changes with who is in charge creatively, it's difficult to imagine.

Sutton refloated the old Small Screen rumour about replacing Amber Heard in Aquaman 2 with Emilia Clarke. I don't understand the desire to use Clarke, who has failed at everything outside of Game of Thrones, but that doesn't mean someone at WB isn't in her corner (perhaps as Sutton suggests, it's her supposed chemistry with Jason Momoa from 11 years ago). I think, assuming WB wants Mera to be a significant character, there's plenty of better options to use.

The WB leaked a story that the Snyder Cut movement's social media presence included bots and dummy accounts to the tune of 13% (which doesn't seem significant to me). This was put out to, presumably, convince Discovery not to bring Snyder back and I certainly agree with that (even if my reasons might differ). The group agitating for Snyder seems to have shrunk after the cut was released (no doubt hurt by comments from Snyder about the fans, the shenanigan's of Ray Fisher (cf and cf), and actions of Amber Heard and Ezra Miller--the latter still on the loose). Is it enough to reconsider Jody's Alex Jones-esque theory about what was behind all this? Maybe Snyder is that petty, but maybe not.

I haven't talked about Amazon's Lord of the Rings series since March, but with the advertising campaign in full swing it's worth re-visiting the upcoming train wreck. Amazon seems to understand it's failed to appeal to the core audience of the books or Jackson films, so they are using all the buzz words meant to engage casuals instead (including a Last Jedi meme in the teaser--killing the past). I was baffled when I discovered the show is based on, not the full Silmarillon or unfinished tales, but The Appendixes from LOTR (!). This makes it virtually an original story--with the showrunners and executives involved showing no comprehension of the IP whatsoever. There's a very transparent attempt to imitate elements of Game of Thrones in shots we've seen (undoubtedly to appease Jeff Bezos, who wanted a show as successful as it was), but the two IP are tonally different (GOT owes a lot to historical fiction and Michael Moorcock, with the latter being antipodal to LOTR). For such an expensive show, the sets and customs look like the cheap fair we got from The Wheel of Time. Can it succeed? Popular taste is hard to predict (the success of Jurassic Park proves that), but for the sake of the IP I hope not.

This article was written by Peter Levi

Marvel News & Notes

Top Gun soared past Doctor Strange 2 (the latter still leads in foreign gross, but it will never hit a billion, which was surely the expectation for the very expensive tentpole film). Jurassic World Domination, which I've seen and is terrible, will probably beat The Batman (having done better in foreign markets). Lightyear might be the biggest bomb of the year--I have no idea what Pixar or Disney were thinking, although like most failures it held up better domestically. Will the renewal of Bob Chapek at Disney result in the MCU halting down the path to irrelevance? It's difficult to say, but if so the results are likely 2-3 years away (apparently not soon enough to save The Fantastic Four, but the X-Men aren't yet locked in).

Speaking of Chapek, there's speculation that Ms. Marvel was buried behind Kenobi due to corporate politics (the inference cf, with Chapek behind it's reshoots and his opponents fronting the former). Whether that's true or not, it has made almost no impact (ratings are some time away, but expected to be low). Kenobi, on the other hand, has been typically divisive in the increasingly small Star Wars fanbase.

Sony's casting continues to trend away from the MCU's, with Madame Web apparently adding Emma Roberts as Spider-Gwen (despite her age, 31). This is one casting where race-swapping wasn't an option, but picking an established actress like Roberts veers from the Disney trend.

Before I read anything about it I assumed the sequel to Willow would suck (because modern adaptations almost always do), but I had no idea that Erin Kellyman (Falcon and the Winter Soldier et al) was in a key role--you'd think they'd want someone with acting talent, but apparently not.

This is ancillary, but at least one Amazon executive involved in The Wheel of Time disaster has now exited. It's far too late to rescue the IP, whose second season was filmed before the reaction to the first, nor is she the principal reason for its issues, but it's at least a step in the right direction. I don't expect Amazon to go through the house cleaning WB is currently in the midst of and Disney has started--at least, not yet.

I've been surprised that many of my younger friends (30 and under) are unfamiliar with the term Mary Sue. I had no idea it had fallen out of use and there doesn't seem to be any new term to replace it. I wonder if this is because so many leads in popular novels and entertainment are Mary Sues, ergo they don't understand the issue. Speaking of those reading efforts, I've wondered if I should write about my frustrating attempts to find good, new authors in the fantasy field--it seems out of the purview of this blog, but I may go through it in a separate article.

The industry has finally turned on Ezra Miller, capped by a Rolling Stone article (about the state of a woman and her children on the Miller ranch) and then Variety taking their buried story (surely at the behest of WB) in 2020 about the assault of an Icelandic woman along with the newer story of a German woman with whom there was a 'friends with benefits' arrangement for a time. Miller still hasn't be fired, nor The Flash put on hold, but it does seem inevitable at this point.

This article was written by Peter Levi