T w e n t y S i d e d
One of the silver linings of the pandemic has been an overall reduction in the number of seasonal illnesses I’ve had to contend with. Thanks to the additional hygiene, staying indoors, and the mask-wearing, most run-of-the-mill infections never really stood a chance. I’ve enjoyed a nice long stretch of time without a cold or flu popping up to ruin my day.
Well, the streak had to end eventually. I managed to catch something and spent most of last week with chills, coughing swamp water out of my lungs. I’m on the mend now, but I wasn’t in a position to record a Diecast at the time.
Here are a few things that would have been featured on the show if I’d done one:
Microsoft-Mandated Mojang Migration
I finally got around to migrating my Mojang account so I can play Minecraft again. I’ve been putting this off for weeks because I suspected it would be a nightmare. Maybe the system would request an email confirmation that never arrives. And then after ten minutes of trial-and-error, ten different confirmations arrive at the same time, but then the system won’t recognize any of them. And then finally when I get through that I discover I can’t migrate because my existing password is too long to fit in the new system, and then it won’t let me reset the password during migration, etc. etc. Microsoft’s Games for Windows LIVE was diabolical at coming up with these long chains of connected problems, and I expected this process was going to be another dose of that bitter old medicine.
But no. It was fine. It took two minutes. All done.
Sorry to those of you who were looking forward to a tale of woe. I don’t know what happened. I’m just as disappointed as you are. I was looking forward to having something to complain about, but sometimes when you ask for lemons, life gives you lemonade.
Final Fantasy XII
Man, this was a stroke of luck. When I invited the Rocketeer to post his FF12 series to my blog, I was just looking to put some fun content on the site. I didn’t realize how much I was about to need that extra content. I have surgery coming up, and the end of the Final Fantasy XII series should make sure that new stuff is still being posted to the site during my recovery.
Back when I announced my health problems at the end of March, lots of people kindly told me, “Take all the time you need Shamus! We’ll be here when you get back. Take care of yourself!” I appreciated the gesture, but I also knew that this wasn’t strictly true.
I doubt it will shock anyone to hear that blogs aren’t as popular as they used to be. Most gaming discourse has moved to YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, and other social-networky type places. Those places aren’t really likely to send traffic my way, so these days I’m very reliant on people’s existing reading habits to keep the site going. If this place went dark for several months, I’m sure many of you would pop back the moment I returned. But I also know that some people wouldn’t. Twenty Sided would fall off of people’s reading lists and the community would drift apart.
After the hiatus, I’d face the difficult task of trying to get the site rolling again from a cold start, and that’s going to be a lot harder now in 2022 than it was in 2006. I don’t know if I’d be able to hit critical mass again.
But thanks to Rocko, I don’t have to worry about that. We’ve got two months of content lined up now, which is about double what I think I’ll need. This means I’ll rest easier in the coming weeks, without the anxiety that comes from having the same post stuck at the top of the page for weeks on end.
Future Avengers
I was looking at the list of upcoming Marvel films and I noticed there aren’t any Avengers titles in the works. On one hand, this is probably a good sign. The MCU ran for four years before they did their first big team-up movie, and it makes sense to take the same approach here. The audience needs time to get to know these new characters before we’ll get excited to see them meet. *raises eyebrows, looks pointedly at DC Comics*
Having said that, Endgame was 3 years ago and I don’t think Marvel has any Avengers in the works at all. I guess the pandemic probably stole a lot of Disney’s momentum, so maybe they’re going to need more than 4 years to put this next team together.
I’m sure it’ll happen eventually. But I wonder who’s going to be on the team?
Sam Wilson’s Captain America: Obviously the new cap is on the team. I loved Sam Wilson in Marvel Phase 3, but I hated what they did to the character in the Disney+ series. A Captain America who refuses to oppose murderous terrorists because he likes their politics? A shy mope who doesn’t want the shield until the government gives it to someone else? An impotent, sanctimonious loser that lectures politicians without offering any solutions of his own? That’s not a superhero, that’s a Redditor. But! the Disney+ series was designed so that you didn’t need to watch it. I’m guessing you can just pretend the whole thing never happened. The Cap we we see in the opening Chapter of Avengers 5 will probably be the old Sam Wilson.
Spider-Man is obviously on the team. He’s probably the MVP as far as Disney is concerned.
Shang Chi has already been announced as an “Avenger” by Marvel, so I guess we know he’s going to end up on the team. I liked Shang well enough. My only real gripe is that I think his costume is horrible. The “dragon scale armor” looks like cheap red plastic, and isn’t particularly flattering. It sort of works against the fantastical backdrop we see in Act III of his movie, but if you drop that costume into a modern city then your superhero is going to look like a DIY cosplayer. I know Marvel loves to tinker with costumes between movies, and I have to imagine they’ll take another swing at this one. Without Tony Stark 3D printing suits for everyone, I wonder where the new costumes will come from?
Captain Marvel lives in space, so I wouldn’t bet on her joining the team. Like Superman in the Justice League, she’s so powerful that she makes the story hard to write. Any fight that she can’t win instantly is probably a fight that would kill Captain America instantly.
War Machine is an interesting character to consider. If War Machine is still in business, then that suggests that the world has figured out how to make Iron Man suits without Tony Stark. But then, wouldn’t that suggest that we’re about to be flooded with knockoff suits? Or maybe the writers are going to claim that Col. Rhodes is wearing the last operational suit and nobody can make more?
Ant-Man is probably on the team. Hey, remember the Sokovia Accords? Government oversight for the Avengers? I guess those went out the window when Thanos showed up, letting guys like Ant-Man off the hook to engage in freelance superheroism.
Moon Knight is still running on Disney+. I like the show well enough, I guess. But then, I’m a huge fan of Oscar Isaac and I think he’s carrying the show for me. His power levels fall into the Goldilocks zone for a super-team position. He’s strong enough that we’re not going to wonder why we brought him along (Hawkeye) and he’s not so powerful that he wins without trying. (Captain Marvel) On the other hand, his split personality gag is interesting in his show, but would require way too much screen time to explain in an Avengers movie that’s trying to introduce a new ensemble cast.
Scarlet Witch and Doctor Strange and Thor are all engaged in Cosmic Business these days, and they are worried about stuff larger than the Earth. They are probably too busy and powerful to hang around Avengers HQ, waiting for the next army of punchable minions to invade. I get the impression that the Thor mantle is going to pass from Thor Odinson to Jane Foster. If that’s what the writers do, then we would end up with a new Thor that’s from Earth. Jane Foster is just a regular person, not a cosmic being. If she were granted the powers of Thor, then I imagine she’d want to return to Earth and try to put them to good use. So Thor Classic is off the team, but this new Thor would be in a hurry to join.
I have no idea where Marvel is going with Hulk. He’s appeared in a post-credits scene recently so we know the actor is sticking around. We also know that She-Hulk is going to be a mini-series at some point, and current Hulk is going to have a supporting role in that. Maybe they’ll handle Hulk just like Thor: The actor will pass the mantle to a new performer before retiring.
Civilization VI
I'm a very casual fan of the series, but I gave Civilization VI a look to see what was up with this nuclear war simulator.
Quakecon 2012 Annotated
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Silent Hill 2 Plot Analysis
A long-form analysis on one of the greatest horror games ever made.
How I Plan To Rule This Dumb Industry
Here is how I'd conquer the game-publishing business. (Hint: NOT by copying EA, 2K, Activision, Take-Two, or Ubisoft.)
What is Vulkan?
There's a new graphics API in town. What does that mean, and why do we need it?
So you can just wish for stuff, and you get it? And instead of wishing for a million dollars, all you wished for was a more convenient Windows experience?!?!
I swear man, every time I think I have you figured out, you find new ways to surprise me!
Also, get well soon :)
I blame Mojang for this lapse in standard MS practices.
As the person who brought up the question on the Diecast, I’m glad for your sake Shamus that you had an easier time of it than I did!
War Machine: one of the upcoming D+ series is Armor Wars and War Machine has a big part in that from what I’ve seen.
IIRC the concept for that is something like “In Iron Man 2, Tony Stark said that most countries were 5-10 years away from a functioning Iron Man suit*. That was over 10 years ago.”. So that might explain where the tech is coming from.
I think Hulk is still tied up with rights issues (Universal have rights for Hulk solo movies or something); not sure if they have a expiry date / rights reversion clause or if Disney would have to pony up to buy the rights back.
* Justin Hammer, maybe 20
/spittake
More serious take: I’d like to see Justin Hammer back. Sam Rockwell is loads of fun.
However,he actually bring a lot to the story. Yes, he looks dumb next to Tony Stark, but that’s Tony Stark, who is basically every nerd’s wish fulfillment self-insert character. Stark is always cool, always a bigger genius, and story builds off that to explore and challenge the character.
However! Hammer’s technology, while inferior to the Iron Man suit, was *really* dangerous. He did in fact create armored technology and it seems he was mostly missing the the Super Magic Programming. (To which point, remember that Tony Stark canonically invented fully autonomous AI that understands voice commands as a casual side project.)
So Hammer could make a pretty good villain. He’s been a longtime Iron Man for in the comics, and in some continuities has even made weapons much more dangerous than Stark.
I would love to get a second try with Sam Rockwell. I love the actor, I love the concept for the character, but I didn’t think he was particularly good in IM2. Not quite sure why. Maybe cos he had to spend too much time on screen with an idiot whining about his bird.
Probably because IM2 wasn’t that good of a movie. It’s serviceable but it’s mostly a holding pattern movie where nothing really happens and nothing really moves forward, especially compared to IM1 and 3
I have no idea what the series concept for Armor Wars is going to be, but as I recall, the analogous story in the comics was predicated on Tony’s tech specs being stolen and sold off – suddenly there were mercenaries, terrorists, would-be supervillains, and even soldiers of hostile countries all sporting power armor, and Iron Man went on a crusade to try to put the proverbial genie back in the bottle – both trying to recover/destroy the physical suits based on his designs, and recover the technical materials that made building them possible (I believe he went more than a little off the rails in this quest, though he was eventually semi-successful, as there were only a handful of bad-guys in power armor still active afterwards).
Whatever the show’s setup proves to be, though, I’m betting it’ll be a vehicle to introduce the MCU version of Ironheart (Riri Williams), who, in the comics, designed and built her own power armor suit modeled after Iron Man, and along the way acquired an AI patterned after Tony Stark’s mind (Tony was kind of dead at the time, but on checking just now, he apparently got better after a couple years, as per usual for comic books).
As for Hulk, yeah, he’s unavailable to Marvel for solo films unless they can/want to negotiate a similar arrangement with Universal that they have with Sony over Spider-Man. They did have that kind of deal for the Edward Norton Incredible Hulk movie – which is nominally an MCU film, though they recast Bruce Banner by the time the first Avengers rolled around (note that Thunderbolt Ross, who originally appeared as a Hulk antagonist, has reappeared periodically in later MCU movies) – but I believe it was either a one-off deal rather than an ongoing agreement, or the movie wasn’t successful enough for Marvel to find the prospect of profit-sharing with Universal worthwhile. It’s been implied publicly that Hulk is available for use in any movies where he doesn’t headline, hence why he’s not only appeared in all the Avengers films, but also the last Thor and in the recent stinger sequence of Shang Chi.
As far as the question of whether there’s an expiration date for the rights Universal holds (and Sony, for that matter), there’s been no public hint of it, though it’s possible one exists that is just very long. But given that Universal has made no attempt to produce a Hulk film in the 15 years since Norton portrayed Banner, It’d have to be quite lengthy.
My daughter has gone from playing Minecraft to playing The Sims, so I don’t know when or if I will be called upon to migrate her Mojang account. I’m not looking forward to it, not least because I’d have to create a Microsoft account for her. She’s never needed one before, and I don’t think she wants one. She didn’t even want her own Steam account, which is why Steam thinks I’ve been playing the Sims for weeks now.
As for the Avengers, I have always found them to be the least interesting part of the MCU. It’s hard to care about the big team-up when you’ve seen just a fraction of the movies required to know who all the characters are. Also, I kind of hated Infinity War and Endgame. I don’t think Marvel does big superhero fights well, which is a significant barrier to enjoyment when you aren’t invested in the characters and big superhero fights are the entire movie. I might be into a lower-stakes Avengers movie though. Infinity War and Endgame did at least make the original Avengers film look a lot better in retrospect.
I thought Feige said they were done with Avengers films for the time being?
I did hear that they want to bring X-Men into the fold, so it might make sense to make that their flagship team group for a while, especially since some of the members of that team ended up as or were Avengers as well in the comics (Beast first, but then Wolverine and Rogue, at least, later).
I kinda hope they don’t. I love both the regular MCU and X-men, but I kind of feel that the messages of the two universes are contradictory to each other. The MCU operates mostly off the premise that heroes are rare and special; when you have great power, you must use it to do great (and good) things. But the X-Menverse is different. Its message is that mutants are everywhere, and that at heart, they are people too, just like us. But if that’s true, and mutants have been around since forever, how come we never see any mutants popping up to help during any of the massive, world-ending events that have been rocking the MCU every 3-4 years? It just doesn’t make any logical sense.
The issue was caused by the fact that Fox wouldn’t let Marvel use any mutant characters or even use the WORD mutant, or else Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, at least, would have been called mutants as they were in the comics. So the general speculation is that one of the reality-rewriting events will bring mutants into the picture and then things can be put back on track. That in itself would be a good reason to focus on X-Men to have that show up and to deal with the consequences of that before diving back into Avengers, especially since some of the mutants could then end up in the new team.
What about Morbius? Everybody loves that one!
Also if two months of FFXII posts aren’t enough, I get the sense that Rocketeer could and would write about Final Fantasy literally forever.
People always tell me, “Rocketeer, you’re a genius.” But what not enough people realize is that I’m also a saint.
Have you been cannonized, our do we still need to fire you out of a cannon?
No, that’s the Mana series, not Final Fantasy.
He’s the Rocketeer, not the Cannoneer.
It’s a hard situation. I wish I had something to contribute to the site, but short of doing a similar travelogue for FFXIII (which would require me to play the damn thing again, ugh… uuuuugggggghhhhh!), I can’t think of anything. My blogging experience is minimal. Though I know there’s people here far more qualified to offer some content for the blog if you need it.
I take it you still haven’t watched No Way Home, huh?
In any case, my excitement for the MCU is near zero levels. I’m waiting for Doctor Strange 2, but that’s really it. Nothing else that’s been announced interests me in the slightest so far.
Hate to admit it, but kinda the same boat. Long time if small Doctor Strange fan, and it’s been really neat how much attention the movie/s have given the character.
But~ aside from him and the Guardians gang, none of the current line-up really interest me that much in Phase Four. Am morbidly curious about that Fantastic Four movie, if that poor, poor IP is FINALLY going to be done justice, but that’s about it.
I was wondering about this. The Avengers still remember Spider-Man, don’t they? They just wouldn’t remember his true identity?
It’s probably a bit more complicated than that, though. Having a member on the team whose identity they all don’t remember is bound to bring up some concerns about his legitimacy. Granted, it’s probably not that hard of a fix, but I doubt they’re all just going to welcome him back into the team just like that.
Then again, I thought the ending of Far From Home was going to be a ridiculously easy fix and it wasn’t in the slightest, so who knows.
Eh, it seems pretty clear everyone remembers Spider-Man in general (the Daily Bugle still calling him a menace), I see no reason he couldn’t be recruited/show up even if the others don’t know his secret identity. Even the first time it was basically “What who’s this guy?/Oh some kid Tony brought/Cool let’s go”, wasn’t it? And nothing’s stopping him from re-revealing himself.
I’m more caught up on the Stark legacy, as it were. Peter was supposed to have inherited control of a bunch of stuff, but that one device got blown up, and presumably said control either doesn’t include any money or he’s lost access to it because run-down crappy spider-man apartment. Thinking about it that’s probably the latter- if the stuff still exists, it doesn’t remember him either (and could get snagged by some villain or other hero later I suppose).
I fell off the MCU wagon big-time after Endgame. Nothing wrong with it, I still like the characters who stuck around, I’ve enjoyed almost every MCU film I’ve watched… But Endgame really did feel like a finale, and I sort of just don’t have the energy to get invested in another series of new heroes who’ll stick around for another 5-10 years, especially if I’m expected to not just watch a movie a year but also several TV shows. I know it was mostly a goodbye to Iron Man and Captain America, but it feels really weird putting out a film like Endgame – this big, never-before-seen type of event film paying off a decade of buildup – and then continuing the franchise. I mean, obviously they would, it’s a money printing machine, but it’s weird from the perspective of the audience.
Yeah, that’s absolutely how I feel, as well. I’m kinda interested in the new Doctor Strange, as well as the new Guardians.
But I was also kind of interested in the new Spider-Man movies, and I have yet to watch any of them. So I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to watching any of the new movies.
Literally the same here, both in terms of falling off after Endgame, and having yet to see the new Spiderman movies despite being kind-of interested.
I looked at what they were putting out in the next phase and phases, and had little interest in it. Most of the heroes that were left were ones that I didn’t care much for or didn’t care much for anymore — I didn’t care for Thor 3 or Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and wasn’t impressed by Captain Marvel or Doctor Strange, and didn’t care for the new Spider-man works — and so I ended up going from someone who would pretty much pick them up as soon as I could to someone who might pick one up if it sounded really interesting … and none of them did. Right now, it’s pretty much only when they bring X-Men into the franchise that I’d be interested in it, and I don’t hold out much hope for that.
I fell off a good while ago. Didn’t watch Infinity War until long after Endgame had come out, and still haven’t bothered watching Endgame. I’d watch a new Guardians movie, but that’s it.
Marvel fatigue is certainly a thing; I pick and choose which MCU projects I watch now, rather than dial in to all of them, but I get checking out of it entirely.
I’ll tell you, though, what’s got me is Harry Potter fatigue. My mom is still a huge Harry Potter franchise fan and is dragging me to the new movie this weekend after pretending she didn’t hear me tell her on two different occasions that I wasn’t interested in any more Harry Potter stuff. C’est la vie.
Heh. Harry Potter Fanfics have been one of my staple “time to read something” go-tos for years, and while I’m a bit tired I’ve still got room for some new novelty. But the “Fantastic Beasts” movies? My only interest would be to say I know what happened in them, which is not enough to counter the bad I’ve heard.
I skipped a ton of MCU stuff the first time, but I am considering watching Wandavision for context for Multiverse of Madness. Doctor Strange is kinda the new Tony Stark- sarcastic smartguy asshole with seemingly unlimited power in his domain that the other heroes rely on, who’s about to have his own comeuppance arc.
Just get yourself a summary of WandaVision. You don’t need to watch the whole thing. As a matter of fact, the only thing that really matters for MoM is the last episode.
I’d watch the intro songs for each episode at least. Best part of the show by far.
Oh, the Fantastic Beasts films. While I *get* why they exist, it makes me sad that they do.
See, Harry Potter’s a fun story. A fun, very simple story.
Loads of people want to be an effortlessly special kid, who’s rich, who goes to a nifty wizard school where he learns magic, who goes on adventures every year, who saves the school in a new and exciting way every term, who’s the star player in the school sports team and helps them always win, etc etc etc.
It’s wish fulfillment, mixed with a simple adventure story and a load of high-school tropes that a lot of people can relate to. Great!
But Fantastic Beasts? The film adaptation of a book that took the form of an in-character primer to magical creatures that Rowling wrote for charity? Well, I guess that’d make an okay spin-off film for the hardcore Potter fans…
…wait, this is the THIRD ONE?!
The part that annoyed me with the big Infinity War team up was that a lot of the superheroes have power sets that begin and end with “good at punching” and the ones with interesting, open ended abilities get sidelined or forget those powers to avoid coming up with brawls that might look fun.
…or their powers get reduced to “good at shooting energy blasts”.
To be fair, as cool as the Dumbledore v Voldemort (or insert other pair of reality-warpers) style clash sounds, those really don’t leave room for anyone else to participate, and in a serious fight if you can just blast a guy and have them down in a second, that’s usually gonna be the better option. A DnD wizard can do all sorts of non-damaging things in most editions, but at the end of the day everyone dies to and can deal hp damage, so a high powered energy blast is usually the most reliable and team-friendly option.
There’s also a certain level of resistance to AoEs- if a character can punch one dude and knock over a fistful of dudes, that’s heroic, but if they warp more than half the battlefield so it’s not even a fight, the level of unfairness starts reading as bad-guy. Particularly if they’re teamed up with people who punch good. Sure you could do like 3.x char-op says and cover the battlefield with overlapping disabling AoEs and send the punchers to go execute everything once it’s tied up, but that’s not heroic, and if you skip the executions/treat pinned enemies as dealt with, there really is no point to the other heroes. Unless of course there are sufficient “heavy” foes that resist magic/AoEs/etc and require punching specialists to defeat, but then people whine about the wizard not being able to do anything to them, and if it’s just random stragglers they look weak for not having cleared everything themselves.
‘Cause that’s the heart of the problem: people don’t actually want evenly matched teams. They want cosmically powerful mysterious old wizards/Superman/etc on the side of good alongside the more relatable heroes, but it’s a hell of a dance trying to have mixed tier teams without making obviously mixed tier enemies for them to fight, because the good guys are *also* supposed to be righteously justified fighting against nigh-overwhelming enemies with sheer determination, and those are two completely different stories. As disappointing as it was for Strange to spend the final battle of endgame holding back a river instead of doing something weird, he’d already done his big ultimate magic guy thing earlier, and something had to require his attention: stopping all the people they’ve brought to fight from being crushed is perfectly reasonable. (I dunno about what larger weird/interesting powers Scarlet Witch is really supposed to have, and Marvel barely even shows up so I don’t count her).
If anything, I’m more annoyed by Thanos’s presentation: what exactly *is* his supposed powerset, other than “cannot be defeated until the writer says so.”? He’s unstoppably bigger and stronger, until it’s time for someone to heroically 1v1 him. He knows more than you and prepared for everything, until he hasn’t. He has some number of uber mcguffins, each of which with their own undefined powers, which may or may not be constantly functioning in the background. If anything, all the weird and overpowered heroes should have been bearing down on him specifically to neutralize x/y/z at the end of Endgame, in an effectively scaled-up version of the team fight in the previous movie, but instead he’s just mysteriously less effective in every way so that some number of the characters can go punch random mooks (and/or because they already had that sort of focused team attack fail before and having it work the second time would be bad somehow?).
This was the main thing that made me indifferent to Infinity War, both before seeing it and while watching it. In GotG 1, I could assume Thanos already had an Infinity Stone, probably the Soul Stone, and that was going to be his power. Especially after he gave the Mind Stone away (twice!) But then it turns out no, he didn’t have any of them, Ronan could totally have kicked his ass if he’d tried. Then he gets a stone offscreen, apparently conquering Nova Prime to do so, and we never see how he did it. And then every fight after that is him relying on the Infinity Stones. Thanos himself comes off as toothless. Years and years of buildup, for a toothless old man.
Or they’re simply kept offscreen. I still can’t get over the airport fight in Civil War that Vision seemingly slept through.
One thought about the line “Any fight that [Captain Marvel] can’t win instantly is probably a fight that would kill Captain America instantly” is that it was objectively false in Infinity War and Endgame: Captain America stood his ground multiple times against infinity-stone-empowered Thanos, who was in turn able to stand his ground against Marvel.
One could argue, of course, that this is mostly thanks to Thanos’ twisted idea of personal honor causing him to “hold back” much of the time and purposefully fight at the level he judges his opponent to be, but that just supports my point: it’s not hard to come up with some reason why almost any villain would just not sweat it so much against a “mere human” while pulling out the stops against a cosmic space entity, with the practical result being a fight where the difficulty auto-adjusts depending on the PC’s level, so to speak.
Another solution would be an enemy who isn’t ridiculously overpowered the way Thanos was, but rather an “evil genius” or “puppetmaster” type made dangerous by social constraints, information warfare, or technology. Like… it would be amazing for e.g. the next Guardians movie to be a mystery/thriller, with characters who usually get by on violence or attitude forced to carefully investigate to suss out who their enemy even is. Could we ask for another Thor/Rocket team-up? Tell me they wouldn’t make for just the best buddy-cops-in-space movie.
One could argue a lot of things, but one really shouldn’t have to. It is not the viewer’s job to do the writer’s work for him. If a punch from Thanos ought to be enough to turn Captain America to goo, then the writer should not have Captain America fistfight Thanos. Captain America could easily contribute to the fight in some other way. It isn’t as though there aren’t literal decades worth of comics to draw examples from. Alternatively, the writer could actually establish in the script to establish that Thanos is the kind of guy who’d hold back like that. The important thing is that the writer should show some respect for moviegoers who aren’t diehard fans and aren’t willing to rationalize this stuff for him. He should pick some kind of consistent internal logic for his fight scenes and stick to it for the entire movie (and ideally the entire series).
This right here. When a viewer is starting to engage in fanon to explain a movie’s inconsistency then that’s a problem with the writing. It’s the writer’s job to explain these things and not the audience’s.
This was a major problem with Infinity War. Thanos can at any point turn people into noodles and their weapons into bubbles, but he forgets he can do that after the first time. This wouldn’t be a problem if the movie actually bothered to explain he has some sort of “twisted idea of personal honor”, but it never does that. His entire shtick is that he’s willing to sacrifice everything for his goal, even the one person in the entire universe he cares about so every time he doesn’t do everything in his power to further his goal it feels like the writer just doesn’t have the ability to justify it.
One of the really good things about the first Avengers movie; Black Widow isn’t strong enough to fight Loki, so she’s got a psychological battle with him, and then a subplot about dealing with Loki’s human minions and saving a personal friend.
For a team-up like this, you want your villain to have a lot of power gradients, so everyone can meaningfully engage at their own level. (The weird thing is that Infinity War did do that with all the minions, and Captain America fistfights Thanos anyway. Allegedly. I don’t remember that happening, actually.)
Cap didn’t really have much of a fight with Thanos in Infinity War, he had a symbolic moment of defiance and then got his lights punched out.
He only really fought Thanos in earnest in Endgame once he got his Mjolnir upgrade, which combined with the shield I thought was reasonable enough for him to at least be in the ring. He still doesn’t beat Thanos.
Supah Ewok is largely correct. Captain America does briefly fistfight Thanos in Infinity War, for all the good it does him. I don’t actually have a problem with that particular fight. The rematch in Endgame didn’t really work for me though. Even if we assume that holding Mjolnir gives Captain America the power of Thor, we’ve already seen that Thanos can effortlessly punch out Hulk so Captain America still should have been paste. You can probably rationalize it if you want to. I personally don’t.
So many of the things in Infinity War and Endgame seemed so fundamentally arbitrary to me that it was hard for me find any joy in those films.
The first Avengers movie did a really good job of making the team feel like they had exactly the power level you would expect for their abilities. Black Widow is at the bottom, struggling to fight a single alien, Cap and Hawkeye are one rung up able to fight several aliens at once, Thor and Iron Man fight them in droves and Hulk one-shots an alien mothership.
Then the next Avengers wanted to have a team fight so they flattened power levels until everyone could charge into a fistfight with each other.
Infinity War DOES establish, early on, that Thanos likes to engage in physical combat in the battle with Hulk, where the advisor tells the other warrior to back off with “Let him have his fun”. That would cover most of the cases except for some where he really shouldn’t have delayed or put his overall plan at risk, and even some of those would be covered by his being an arrogant villain who has unlimited power at his disposal as a backup (which I think he proved against the Guardians of the Galaxy, where the instant they looked like they were getting a real upper hand he used the stones).
Wrong Captain America. That was Steve Rogers, super soldier. The new cap is just a regular guy that wears wings.
Where will Disney go with the Captain America character? Let’s examine the trend and attempt to extrapolate.
Cap 1: Super-soldier with traditional political values.
Cap 2: Normie-soldier with progressive values in a winged mech suit.
Cap 3: Civilian with a best value air miles card in a wing-suit?
Cap 4: Politician in a value village fur-suit?
Cap 5: village elder with a picture of a chicken.
Recent Captain America comics have already gone there.
“Huuulk, I told you to BAKE the potatoes.”
“HULK SMAAAASH!”
“You didn’t even peel them first.”
“HULK LIKE THE SKINS!”
In theory it should be Smart Hulk, unless they set She-Hulk’s show before Endgame.
The post-credits scene in Shang-Chi shows a human Bruce Banner, so the whole Smart Hulk is probably, although not definitely, out.
Amusingly, within the past few years there was a She-Hulk comic storyline revolving around a villain doing a Youtube cooking series.
Marvel has had a lot of really mediocre comics in the past several years. A few good ones, but… a lot of mediocre ones.
Sam trying to emphasise with the bad guys to get them to surrender peacefully isn’t refusing to oppose, it’s being humane and smart about it, and trying to avoid collateral damage. As soon as the flag smashers exploded a building with civilians in it, Sam never considered not stopping them. He just wanted to try to do it the right way first, and was pretty close to achieving it too.
And yeah, he wasn’t pumped about getting the shield. Imagine if a peak human who is seen as the best person ever by most of the world tells you with no warning that you’re next in line, would you just go for it? Sam trying to pass the buck to someone that (as far as he thought) would be more competent is not bad writing, it’s perfectly natural for such a humble dude and such a colossal responsibility.
Yours is a very generous reading of the events depicted on that show. Sam Wilson wasn’t just a nobody that Steve figured he’d give the shield to just for kicks. He was a personal friend he trusted in and who he knew was capable both in combat and personality. Sam was already an Avenger and a fellow soldier. There’s no such thing as someone like him being scared of responsibility, let alone rejecting what’s basically a promotion, and certainly not after he accepted it (if he really wanted to reject it, he would have done it the moment Steve offered it to him).
Furthermore, being a personal friend of Steve he knew more than most people that what made Steve special weren’t his superpowers, and that the reason he was chosen by Steve was because he was a good man. Thinking that someone who was more physically capable deserved the shield more than him would be insulting Steve.
Sam’s failure to comply with your head-canon is truly unconscionable.
That was a little glib. Sorry. Let’s try this again.
Not all responsibilities are the same. It is perfectly normal to accept one type of responsibility and yet be reluctant to take on other or greater responsibilities. For example, the fact that I’m willing to babysit a child does not imply that I am willing to be that child’s parent. Being an Avenger may be similar to being Captain America in certain respects but it is not the same as being Captain America. There are a whole bunch of expectations related to being Captain America that Sam may not be able to fulfill (being that kind of symbol) and in some cases cannot fulfill (having super-strength). It is completely normal for Sam to be ambivalent about his new role. It would be weirder if he weren’t ambivalent at all. I’m not going to defend the show’s execution of the idea, but the idea itself is perfectly sound.
“Can’t I call myself, like, Lieutenant America, instead?”
Which (again) should have been the sort of concern he should have brought to his (again) FRIEND the moment he got the offer. “No, Steve, sorry, but I can’t accept this. It’s too much.” What was he worried about, hurting Steve’s feelings? Don’t you think those feelings would have been hurt even more when he rejected at his back? Remember, Steve is still alive out there. He’s the one person in the world for whom the role means the most. He’s the only one he has to impress, and he already did enough to get the shield from him. But now Steve is going to see the news, see the new Captain America and is going to think Sam is a major prick. Again, Steve didn’t just give the shield to anyone; he gave it to the person he thought deserved it the most, and Sam would have realized that. Even if he had doubts, he would have had to consider that Steve gave it to him for a reason.
Because see, Sam isn’t “ambivalent”. He outright rejects the role. It would have been fine if he had some doubts and talked to friends and co-workers about how to approach the situation. But no, at the first chance he just gives it away. That’s not being ambivalent, it’s being a coward and a bad friend.
At the risk of being glib again, a Marvel hero showing questionable judgement or making bad decisions is very on-brand. What you consider a bug I’m pretty sure Marvel considers a feature.
It’s issues like this that only confirm the thought I had during Endgame and after it that Steve should have died and Tony should have retired instead of it being the other way around. Tony’s entire arc was about retiring and focusing on a family, and retiring would have left him in a role where they could easily name drop him — he gave them some technology, for example — and even have him guest star if he wanted to while having a good reason why they wouldn’t run to him for every single problem (if you gave the team a scientific genius, then Tony would be within his rights to hang up on them if they hadn’t exhausted every option first). For this plot, Steve dying would allow them to use that series to have Falcon and Winter Soldier try to decide what to do with the legacy, and have the government convince them someone needs to take up the mantle, have both of them decide they don’t want it but allow it to be given to someone else, have that person do badly at it, and have them decide that one of them needs to do it to follow on from Cap’s direct example, and THEN have them decide that Falcon is the best candidate, which is close to what happened in the comics, except that was Cap taking it back afterwards.
The problem with how it was done is indeed in line with your complaints: Falcon shows little hesitation when given the shield, so having him give it up doesn’t work except as a reaction to a serious event, like a clear failure. I haven’t seen the series, but it doesn’t sound like that’s what they did.
I definitely think having Tony Stark die was the right call.
In my view, his whole arc is about being less selfish and having him make a selfless sacrifice at the end is a lot more poignant than him going home to his wife and child.
Their character endings are a callback to the original Avengers, where Steve tells Tony “you’re not the kind of guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you”, while Tony fires back “everything special about you came out of a bottle”. In the end, Tony makes the sacrifice play, and Steve Rogers is worthy of Thors Hammer.
I don’t think I’d change any of that just to try to make the transition to Captain Falcon America a little more smooth. And I especially wouldn’t want Tony Stark to be an on-and-off guest star, and to have to have every movie justify why this threat isn’t important enough to bring Iron Man out of retirement.
The issue with that is that Tony answered that question of Cap’s in that very movie, when he took the nuke into the dimension figuring that he’d probably die delivering it, and almost did. He indeed CAN make the sacrifice play. The theme, then, through the rest of the movies was that Tony had to be right and involved and felt he had to be the guy who fixes and saves the world, and after the snap he realizes that maybe he doesn’t have to be. While there WAS an undercurrent of his sacrificing that was of sacrificing his own time with his family that he desperately wanted for that, which in my mind was a bit weak. So Tony realizing that the world doesn’t need him to solve it — and that often his attempts to save it are what puts it in danger — allows him to step aside for the new group and be able to focus on his family, knowing that he doesn’t need to break out the armour himself and that the world doesn’t need Iron Man. So we don’t need to have every movie justify that, and that decision would also close the arc where Tony realizes that he’s not, in fact, actually Iron Man.
You can also easily have it be the case that his heart simply can’t take interacting with the suit anymore after he undoes the snap to easily get him out of the way but still potentially available as a tech advisor when needed.
As for Cap, “First Avenger” proved that what was important about him was not what came out of the bottle, as that was the whole point of that movie. So Cap not being able to lift the hammer in Age of Ultron didn’t make sense, and throughout all the movies it was clear that what made Cap Cap was who he was, not his abilities, so that didn’t need to be solved here, and wasn’t really resolved here since in order to avoid screwing up the timeline he had to go into retirement to be with Peggy, which isn’t what the heroic Cap would have done.
And there are PLENTY of other issues it would solve. For example, it would make Tony’s arc in Endgame about needing to preserve his family have a pay off (and the movie does not make it clear that that is what he’s sacrificing there, which they should have for the full emotional payoff, by having Thanos say that he’d preserve Tony’s family if he gives up the gauntlet). As it is, it still seems an unnecessary sacrifice that brings that arc to a close on a VERY downer note. It also doesn’t toss Sharon under the bus, having her completely ignored by Cap so that he can go back and be with Peggy. Also, we avoid the issues with time disruption. Moreover, it doesn’t seem like for Cap that specific relationship has been the ultimate end goal for him — again, Tony was the one who had an arc of coming to that realization — and so it almost seems out of character for him to give everything up to do that. And as noted it’s easier to phase Tony out of active service than it is for even an elderly Cap while allowing Tony as a character to be referenced, and as Dreadjaws noted whatever they do with Cap’s legacy gets hampered by the fact that Cap might still be alive to comment on and be asked about it. Again, it’s easier for Tony to be in standby mode and not talk about that, since he had decided during the snap that he wanted the family more. And so on.
From an arc view and for going forward, I still maintain that Cap dying works better than Tony dying, and it would have solved the issues with Cap’s legacy and ensured that all everyone had to work with was Cap’s example, not the man himself. And that would have to be enough.
Personally, I’d prefer killing both of them off, though I could see how that might make for an awkward ending (now you’ve gotta either have a double funeral, or two of them serially), so I could get behind Tony surviving but being put out of action. It’d be easy to justify him ending up in pretty much any seriously weakened state the writer wants to explain his being out of action going forward.
I can’t agree with this more. That show was a complete mess outside of Sam and Bucky’s growing friendship and Bucky’s backstory/subplot.
We know all that. Sam didn’t. That was the point of his arc during the show, to realize that he was more than the guy who “does what Cap does but slower”, but worthy of taking up the mantle.
Can I suggest that trying to get the forums back online would be helpful for keeping the community going even if the blog posts slow down or disappear for awhile? Granted, I’ve always wanted the forums to come back, so I can probably be accused of “current-event-happens-to-support-thing-I’ve-always-argued-for”, but I do think the forums were helpful for fostering community here.
A lot of the commenters here I know more from interactions on the forum, particularly the eternal “what is everyone playing” thread, which works better as a forum thread than a quarterly blogpost.
I know this isn’t the best time for Shamus to fight with spam, perhaps the work of getting the forums back running could be delegated to resident Genius Saint Rocketeer?
The real problem with the forums is that they were self-hosted. My recommendation would be a subreddit or similar. That can be set up in an afternoon, at which point there’s very little technical work required.
I think the actual real problem was the forums required more administration, moderation, and maintenance than Shamus was willing to put in. The only reason they got set up in the first place was a moderator volunteered, and when they didn’t have time to attend to the forums any more, the spammers took over. Reddit and Discord offer the free hosting, but not the moderation.
Another problem is that they were dying out even before the spammers took over. The active user count had dwindled to probably under 20 folks and the only thread with reliable activity was the one Retsam mentioned where people shared their thoughts on what they were currently playing.
Re-launching the forums will drive a spike of interest, but it’ll dwindle again without more active promotion. I don’t think Shamus ever thought of them unless he had to step in to fix a problem. Outside of the initial announcement, probably a minority of users ever realized they were there unless they saw the button at the top of the blog.
It is a bit thorny. The forums pretty much regulated themselves, which made them low maintenance, with no active mods (other than the guy who did the maintenance). If you promote them more, an asshat will find their way there eventually. Then you need a mod to deal with the asshats. Then you need someone to oversee the mods. Then you’re left holding the bag anyway when the big drama gates burst.
I don’t blame Shamus that that isn’t the way he wants to spend his time.
I’m not sure the forums were once busy and then were dying as much as they were just always fairly quiet, it had a few consistently active topics – basically books, anime, games – and sporadic discussions on various topics, as well as people running occasional blog-ish things like the Travellog and Pokemon runs and Fable analysis (I don’t think all of that was just Rocketeer), and the occasional programming discussion.
FWIW, as someone who discovered Discord during the pandemic that feels like it would be a lot more suited to a community like this than a subreddit. Reddit actually feels about as ephemeral to me (like it’s *technically* a forum but structured to behave as little like one as possible) while Discord tends to behave a bit more like a community hangout even if few people read old conversations they didn’t directly participate in.
Can’t do much about administration and maintenance, but I’m sure there’d be people (myself included) willing to help with the fairly-little moderation that the forums required. If moderation really is a major blocker, that seems like the most solvable of the problems to have.
A Discord would probably be the most “modern” solution to having an auxiliary community, would be less maintenance, probably a bit more moderation (Discord spam/fraud is huge right now, and real time communication more prone towards going off topic), but I don’t feel it fits the long-form bias of this community.
Pretty much my opinion, I’m in a bunch of Discords for various communities but only really interact with a few slow moving ones and even then typically only certain channels. I enjoyed the “what are we playing” thread but mostly because of its forum format that allowed for longform discussion and I feel that the occasional posts to that effect on the blog perform that function well enough if infrequently. Some of the other thread were interesting in their own right (no surprise but I like longform videogame analysis) but they were few and far between so I can see not wanting to deal with community moderation and maintenance just for that.
For what it’s worth, I like the infrequent nature of the “This week I played” series. It makes them feel more special, and they give people more time to have something worthwhile to say. And it also invites the entire community to participate at the same time.
If we could talk about this all the time, then I feel like discussions would get fragmented very quickly, and we wouldn’t get the “Open the floodgates!” experience these threads currently have :D
My recommendation would be a subreddit or similar.
Who do you think Shamus is, Disney+ Captain America or something?
> I get the impression that the Thor mantle is going to pass from Thor Odinson to Jane Foster.
Well, considering the Thor: Love and Thunder trailer that just got dropped, it seems to be the case. Though it’s not surprising as the comics already did that a few years ago, though I think at the time Thor Odinson was actually dead
Based on the issues of Squirrel Girl I read in which both Thor (a lady) and also The Asgardian Formerly Known As Thor (a dude) appear, it looks more like he just lost his powers temporarily. Though I suppose he could have lost his powers because he died for a while. Comics!
Well at least Nova, the Richard Rider version, is coming towards the end of phase 4. Which sets up Annihilation as an eventual phase 5 or 6 event.
I suspect that Marvel is using Phase 4 to test the waters for a new overall plot. Multiverse stuff with Wanda/Strange, cosmic stuff with Shang-Chi/Eternals, Kang the Conquerer with Loki/Ant-Man. They’ll go with whatever seems to be working out the best.
Anything I’ve ever read is that Kevin Feige didn’t really have a concrete plan for the first 10 years of the MCU, it was more that he provided a cohesive direction and management as the writers and directors made things, and then Feige would push along with whatever was working.
That makes sense as the stones were really the only thing linking most of the films which was a really weak link, and even they got ret-conned. It’s a lesson most of the other attempts at a shared universe have failed to learn.
Not a typo exactly, but I feel like the sentence
needs either “no idea where Marvel” or “is going for with” (but please not both).
I assumed “going” was a typo for “doing”, on the basis of Occam’s Razor.
I respectfully disagree with this. I don’t come here to read “content”; the Internet is full of content. I come here to read Shamus Young, whose words are not posted anywhere else. Without wanting to denigrate anyone, this Rocketeer person is no substitute; I bounced off three of their posts and have given up on them.
Health issues are health issues and I’ll obviously wait patiently for the actual blogger to come back; but to me at least, having a new post at the top of the page is not actually worth much if the byline isn’t Shamus Young.
Personally I’d appreciate the odd health update during the time Shamus isn’t producing content, but I appreciate you might not want to do that.
Alternatively, we could have the occasional Stolen Pixels repost. I know that I, personally missed most of them during their original run, and I know that many other people did, as well.
We wouldn’t even need Shamus’ current-day commentary – just leaving it with the original text (and specifying that it’s the original text from however many years ago) would be enough for me.
That’s a fair value judgement to make, I have enjoyed most of the content here, including from other authors (Mrbtongue, Rocketeer), with only the occasional series I bounce off of like Witcher 3.
If you’re open to ideas for other content to kind of fill things out, you could always do some kind of community based contest. Submit your best alternate captions to weird out of context moments in video games, or what have you.
Admittedly, I have no idea how much work something like that is to set up, but I have to imagine it could be somewhat automated. Auto generate a post with some number of user submissions for the community to vote on or whatever. And since you’d be commenting on it and such it’d still have the Shamus Young voice we come here for. Honestly reading you tear apart some crappy video game dialog I wrote would be hilarious to me.
But I’m not the one with a successful blog so, you know, maybe this is a terrible idea.
Also I do enjoy reading stuff by the other people who post here occasionally, but the Shamus of it is the main draw for sure.
That sounds like a good idea, I always enjoy reading the comments on here
Ouch.
This made me laugh pretty hard, though.
On Shang-Chi? I’m of the camp that more superheroes SHOULD look like more like cosplayers than over-detailed, over-tech-encrusted displays of extravagant design. As one example In short: Would you want Stephanie Brown’s introductory costume to be “How Did She Afford That Armor Suit?”, like Batman: Eternal, or would you want “She Used Her Purple Bedsheet Set in a VERY Clever Way”, like her original comic appearance.