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