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Sunday, July 23rd, 2017 09:04 pm
I'm excited by Justice League, but not by Thor: Ragnarok. The word 'bloated' came up in a description of the MCU franchise in a review last year (or possibly this year, when comparing Wonder Woman with the current crop of superhero movies) and 'bloated' perfectly describes the trailer of Thor: Ragnarok.

Spiderman: Homecoming has good enough reviews that I might actually watch it (sometime), and I will be there to watch Black Panther with BELLS ON. But I might pass Thor: Ragnarok in much the same way that I passed on Thor: When Dark Elves Attack The Dark World. I eventually watched it and enjoyed it, but it wasn't All That. (Then again, I feel like the Thor franchise is one of the weakest ones in the MCU storyline.)

I haven't even looked at the trailer for Stargate: Origins, although if it's Catherine Langford's story, I will almost certainly give a looksee.
Sunday, July 23rd, 2017 11:09 pm (UTC)
Heh, I think most classic movie from the seventies or even eighties don't pass the Bechdel -- All the President's Men (one of my faves) certainly doesn't, altho I don't know how women were doing in the WaPo newsroom....but it was the mid-seventies, right? But they didn't even have Katharine Graham at all and it's my understanding she was the one who gave the ultimate okay, not Bradlee, and she could have shut the whole investigation down! She was like the ONLY female newspaper publisher for quite a while! No it didn't have to be her life story, but couldn't she be in a scene or two? ....But anyway. -- I think the Bechdel is a good societal indicator -- of what attitudes are prevalent in society, what's taken for granted, what's always left out, and so on. But like you say, not whether a movie is good.

I would have preferred to meet Thor in the middle of his time as "Dr. Donald Blake", fighting wars against medical science that he knows can be beaten (in Asgard) but which he can't win (on Earth) while flashing back to what he did to get cast out of Asgard. And then he meets an astrophysicist and her enthusiasm for the universe, and starts sparking that enthusiasm because it brings back a bit of the joy he had as a princely godling, before his sins come back to haunt him in Loki - brother and goad and ally and enemy.

STOP BREAKING MY HEART, MAN

That sounds a lot more like the comics, too, from what I know of them -- he does spend time as a doctor altho he meets Jane as a nurse (LOL), and I love those kinds of stories where someone's undercover in a "normal" life but happy there too and then their old life comes up and wham. -- Selvig also really needs some Loki closure, I am just saying.

the kind of comedy that I appreciate in the GotG movies is the situational/commentary comedy: Peter Quill: "Oh, like that would ever happen!" [next scene, that thing is so totally happening] Rocket: "STOP SAYING IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN!" And there's always time for that in movies. One line here and there does beautifully when correctly set up.

The comedy in GotG was awesome for me because it was so rooted in the characters -- Yondu bragging about not letting his crew eat Peter, how Groot helpfully goes and gets the battery out of the guard tower, Peter trying to be slick when he first meets Gamora and how she totally kicks his ass, Rocket being a jerk (if you listen you can hear him crack up on "And I need that guy's leg"), and more and better examples I can't think of right now. (Must take pills.) The lulzy dialogue in the Thor trailer could have been between any two guys, really. -- And I think that and the delayed-effect kind of punchline you're talking about both depend on really good writing, and....and. sigh.