Marvel Live Action

[Avaitor]

Yeah, I was slightly underwhelmed by the show on the whole, too, and I also rate Fraction and Aja's run highly. A big problem is that Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye just isn't that strong of a presence. As loathe as I am to give Whedon credit in 2021, he did at least try to give him a little more weight in Age of Ultron, but Renner just isn't up for it. And yes, I wasn't a fan of what they did with Kingpin, either.

That said, I thought Kate was terrific, and I really liked her time with Yelena. I'd gladly watch a season of just the two of them. The supporting cast was also decent, and there were some really cool fight scenes, especially that car chase in episode 3, I think?

I'd probably still rank it in the middle of the Disney+ shows. My current ranking looks like:

5- The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
4- What If?
3- Hawkeye
2- Loki
1- WandaVision

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, Fisk's appearance was off. The show pushed him too far to the end of the series to give him any weight in the overall story. Reminded me of when he showed up in Daredevil season 2. His inclusion doesn't add much beyond going "We didn't forget you, Marvel Netflix fans!"

Which got ironic, since I've heard the same episode pissed off Agents of SHIELD fans for introducing a contradicting version of Mockingbird.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Dude, Moon Knight is awesome. Don't really have to say much more than that right now. It's only the first episode but it's unironically really, really good, and feels more like an actual movie than a show so far.

After the disappointment of Hawkeye this is pretty refreshing to see.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, I didn't know the guy handling the Umbrella Academy show was working on this, but I really noticed it in this episode.

And it's fun seeing Oscar Isaac play an Egypt-themed Marvel character again.

[Dr. Insomniac]

We're finally getting season 4 of Daredevil. Wish they got the season 3 showrunner though, heard he already wrote an outline for 4 before Netflix fired him.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Watched the first episode of Ms. Marvel and for whatever reason the most pressing question that comes to my head is how do the Guardians have a pronounced fan-base on Earth with fairly accurate cosplayers? Like, they were only on Earth for one battle and a funeral, and I doubt their exploits are actually known to anyone on the planet. Really weird stretch in world-building there.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Catching up on Ms. Marvel, and I'm really growing to miss when these MCU shows used to have longer seasons. Sure, Jessica Jones absolutely did not need to be 13 episodes a season, Luke Cage's first season clearly didn't know what to do after killing Cottonmouth, and Punisher was struggling to pad its plot out to fill the quota, but at least they had more than enough space to tell the story they wanted to tell. Ms. Marvel feels like another case where it could've benefited so much more if it was given 2 or 3 more episodes to even out the pacing instead of shoving everything into 6.

I can understand why Agents of SHIELD fans miss their show so much now. A 22-episode half-serialized, half-standalone series would feel almost refreshing compared to all the miniseries. Yeah, there's filler, but I almost want filler so we can have Kamala, Clint and Kate, or Steven/Marc go on some fun side-adventures unconnected to the main plot.

[Avaitor]

Yeah, I think Ms. Marvel would really benefit if it was more like Buffy and had a mix of story and monster of the week stories. And the thing is, zoomers do like that kind of storytelling. Even after everything Whedon's done, I still see teens and twentysomethings getting into Buffy, and I'm sure they'd like a modern equivalent of it.

Otherwise, the show has been fine, but aside from the promise in the beginning and the flashback material from this week, it's just been another Marvel show. Easily digestible, but not as good as it could be. I'm also starting to miss when they had longer seasons, or at least tried to make every episode distinguishable. Sticking to six episodes and largely turning each show into a large movie isn't it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

What I've noticed about the shows pretty consistently is that they tend to start out fairly strong and then lose their momentum in the middle and limp to the end of the story. The first two-thirds of WandaVision were great, but it didn't know how to conclude it's story. The first two episodes of Loki were everything I hoped for, but it felt like it droned on for the rest of the series trying to find it's plot. The first two episodes of Moon Knight were enjoyably surreal, but it became a basic action/adventure story til the end (though with the notable exception of episode 5 which did somewhat return to that surreal storytelling).

These shows suffer from the same problem as the current movies but in a different way. They aren't bad and have good story and character ideas in there, but in this case a lot of those ideas are exhausted early on and it's like the writers have little to no idea what to do for the rest of the season so they have to pad things out.

The Star Wars shows outside of The Mandalorian suffer from basically the same problem except that those don't even have strong opening acts. Both BF and OK were snooze-fests from the start to the end, with the most entertaining bits being unintentionally funny. The Mandalorian, while not amazing, has been the best Disney Plus show to me so far, and I don't think it's a coincidence that it's the only one that actually feels like a show and not an extended movie chopped up into bite-size episodes. It's perfectly fine to have some stand-alone episodes to focus on and build character rather than a hyper-focused singular narrative.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I still say all the shows have the point where it all clicks in the penultimate episode, but the shows seemingly didn't know that was the penultimate episode, so they rush everything in the one after. Like imagine if in Daredevil's first season, we got the first 5 episodes and then the 6th episode was just the next 8 but edited down into one. That's what it feels like. Especially in Hawkeye's case. That absolutely felt like the last episode should've been the second half of a season, instead of keeping all of Fisk in just one part.

And yeah, they do end up feeling like long movies instead of TV shows, which is a problem with a ton of streaming shows as of late. I'm sure you can edit all of Obi-Wan into a 2-hour movie and lose nothing.

[Avaitor]

Hell, Obi-Won was supposed to be a movie. A trilogy, in fact, and from what I hear, it probably should have stayed that way.

I agree that Mandaloarian is probably the best Disney+ show to date, as it won me over even as a SW agnostic. Part of me thinks that may be the difference with Feige and Kennedy, but it may really just be that Disney trusts Favreau to do whatever he wants after Iron Man and Jungle Book, and he liked the idea of making a largely episodic series.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Spoiler

Knew they'd make Kamala a Mutant.

[close]

[Avaitor]

So let me get this straight... 18 episodes of Daredevil?

I'm happy to return to the characters, but these shows struggle to keep things entertaining with just 6, so excuse me if I'm skeptical on this so far.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I'm glad it's not just 6, because I know what will happen if it was just 6. 2 decent episodes, 2 messy unsure of themselves episodes, a penultimate episode that's pretty good but then suddenly reveals Bullseye or Frank or somebody else is back, and then a finale that desperately struggles to wrap it all up in under an hour while simultaneously shoving in a dozen sequel teases. But yeah, 10 or so would have been a fine number. 18 is stretching it a little.

[Avaitor]

The Netflix shows struggled to fill up 13 episodes, but Defenders was about half that length and somehow felt even more tired. Eighteen sounds exhausting... unless this is cut into parts or something.