𝗥𝗲𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗢𝗳𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 ⏻ 📖 Dune 📺 PJO

SEASON REVIEW:

I think if you’re a WandaVision / Wanda Maximoff fan and walking into this show already attached to certain characters, you should love #VisionQuest. It has a lot of that show’s vibe but in its own distinct way and provides a great service to the Maximoff family at large. I personally don’t have that same attachment to those characters with the exception of the one who was dead (at the time), so my experience was a bit more hot and cold as I came in purely as someone looking forward to some great television.

While Paul Bettany is undoubtedly an engaging actor and delivers one of the best performances in MCU history imo in the penultimate episode, I’ve never particularly found Vision to be all that interesting of a character to carry his own show by himself. His arc of self discovery and exploring grief does have its poignant moments especially in the penultimate, but having it stretched out to 8 episodes when that’s the only thing about this character that’s remotely interesting doesn’t help Vision all that much imo. Similarly, James Spader is an absolute delight and I love how much fun he’s having in the role, but I don’t quite love how Ultron is handled here either considering he’s probably my favorite MCU villain ever before this show. Retconning the character being the result of Tony Stark’s accumulative grief and fears thus causing him to be a dark reflection of Stark… to now him just being naturally evil because he’s an imprint of his corrupt Avatar is kinda baffling and takes away so much of the character’s nuance imo.

For me, it doesn’t really get much better for the support characters either. With the exception of JoCasta who I found to be atleast a smidgeon interesting in her internal conflict of being completely aware that she’s an artificial ghost of a dead woman, all the rest of the AIs fell extremely flat for me. FRIDAY and EDITH (the only support AIs that I can assume we’re supposed to care about) feel very one note yet constantly demands an emotional response from the viewer in a way that never really feels earned. I’m just now meeting FRIDAY for the first time ever and before she’s even stabilized herself as an actual character, the writers are asking me to empathize with her traumas in Endgame. It’s like if you turned Cap’s shield or Mjolnir into actual people and then immediately expected me to care about their emotional state during their movies. The drama in this, and really most of this show, feels extremely yet unironically artificial.

The only characters I desperately wanted more of were probably Tommy and Lisa as they seemed to have the most potential both internally and narratively. The premise of being an orphan with memories implanted into your mind that are both yours and technically not yet something to desperately latch onto all the same is very compelling and capable of leading a show on its own, yet that seems to be the one plot that is absent for most of the show. Tommy becomes more of a device than someone grappling with his own issues relatively fast, as his main functions throughout the story are either him rescuing Vision from being kidnapped or vice versa. Over and over and over again. From beginning to end, and it gets kinda stale.

Despite all of that however, a compliment that I can absolutely give this show is its brilliant use of visual storytelling. This show just looks stunning and it’s typically done with a well defined purpose of evoking multifaceted ideas and emotions earnestly, most commonly that of isolation. This is a show that undoubtedly has a lot on its mind, and I can respect Marvel a lot for that.

I just personally wish that these fascinating ideas were attached to characters that I could gravitate towards more.

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Aside from the funny obvious bit of Jeremy’s meemaw not liking lgbt and demons meaning this sequel isn’t gonna happen regardless, this is honestly just such a shitty thing to say and a horrible show of character on Lawrence’s part.

Like, brother, you were trying to make a sequel to a movie that came out TWO DECADES AGO. A movie with a horrid critics score and a divided audience score, and offered less than a 100M profit.

Yeah, the new studio wasn’t going to stop everything they were doing in the midst of building a new universe just to get your American Constantine movie off the ground😭.

If you laugh, you’re going to hell….

Yeah I can’t do it y’all. Sorry.

I had an entire thread wrote up, but it just felt so disingenuous especially as more news came out that just made me more bitter about the whole ordeal. So I deleted it.

I still think Man of Tomorrow can be an amazing movie and a great last hoorah for Gunn’s extremely short lived era at DC, but it likely won’t reach the potential it could’ve had. If the future of the DCU is being dismantled after this, Latcham is likely gonna butcher a lot of MoT in the editing bay to remove any loose threads or just anything else that doesn’t match his or more truthfully Ellison’s “taste”.

While actors may stick around, there likely won’t be a DC Universe. The studio’s best hope is if Jeremy Latcham can actually assemble a team of filmmakers to create standalone movies about these larger characters like he supposedly plans to do, and even that’s not a guaranteed as I seriously doubt that there’s a ton of filmmakers lining up to make movies for Ellison’s new company considering both the toxic work environment he’s already created and the extensive budget cuts they’d have to work with considering all the lawsuits. That isn’t really ideal for any creative team and may push them to seek other production houses (similar to Nolan abandoning WB).

The best BEST case scenario: Skydance just sells DC to help pay off Ellison’s massive debt.