Author Topic: What if?... ***Spoilers***  (Read 2168 times)

Offline perc2100

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Re: What if?... ***Spoilers***
« Reply #15 on: September 08, 2021, 06:32:01 PM »
And episode 4 brings us "Marvel Zombies:" a graphic novel I bought at an airport once, that freaked out my then-young kid, and I was never that into.  I wanted to like that comic soooo much, as my love for George Romero's "Dead" films dates back to me 'discovering' the sequels in the mid-1980's.  By the time I picked up Marvel Zombies TPB, I had fallen in love with SHAUN OF THE DEAD, Romero had made his triumphant return with LAND OF THE DEAD, and zombie entertainment still felt a little on the fringe side.  I was blown away at the concept of Marvel transposing zombies into their comics world, and I really wanted to like this.  I mean, this was well before "The Walking Dead" series made zombies a hot (read: profitable) commodity for Hollywood, and we got was seems like a gluttony of zombie properties.  So zombies were still a bit of a taboo in my mind as far as mainstream, and I was ready to love Marvel characters + zombies!

But I didn't.  I thought it was a curiosity, and nothing more: I actually don't remember anything about it story wise.

So I went into the latest "...What If?" episode w/trepidation, having forgotten until Disney+ started advertising the week's show was Marvel Zombies ep.

And you know?  It was pretty entertaining!

For one, it was the shortest ep. of the series so far.  Not by a ton, mind you: only a minute shorter than the previous shortest, but nearly five mins shorter than last week's Doctor Strange ep.  So the slightly shorter episode had a LOT going on, and made everything feel pretty well-paced.
Also, I had zero idea where it was going most of the time.  Previous episodes felt fairly guessable as far as what might be happening.  I wouldn't be able to guess every story or character beat, but I've had a decent idea of where things were headed.  This week, not so much.  Was kind of hyped to see Scarlet Witch as a 'big bad,' and especially after Vision harboring zombie Wanda.  It was also nice seeing so many of the Avengers together again, even if they were often meeting their doom.

Also, it had some humor: I mean, it was legit funny at times!  It was clear the writers consciously decided "maybe we should pepper the 'zombies murdering our heroes' bits with comedy moments," and they chose wisely.  The "so you wanna survive the zombie apocalypse" video from Spidey was great!  And "Scott's head in a jar" was a nice touch as well.  The comedy went a long way, IMO, to balancing out the darkness of zombie apocalypse.

Overall, this was a(nother) solid episode.  I think it's a little too intense for my 7 year old; or at least for him to watch in the evening - more of a "Saturday morning when he has all day to not get freaked out about it before bedtime" affair.

This series has reminded me how many of the ...What If? comics were fairly dark.  There were fun one, of course, but also plenty of dark ones: like, so many were "what if the bad guys totally won this one huge storyline?!"  Putting two fun eps to kick it off might've given many folks a wrong impression, and I'm curious to see what the eps end up being down the stretch

Offline perc2100

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Re: What if?... ***Spoilers***
« Reply #16 on: September 23, 2021, 09:09:46 AM »
Another couple of solid "What If..." eps (I was busy and didn't write anything about the Stark/Killmonger ep).

"What if...Killmonger rescued Tony?" episode was a fun alternate timeline that presented a "what if Killmonger was more resourceful" type of deal that took that universe into a pretty dark place.  I appreciated that it had the opposite of the Marvel Zombies episode for an ending.
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"What if...Thor was an only child" painted the picture of a very different, spoiled brat-esque Thor that used his thrown to mainly come down to earth to throw a wild party.  It was a nice juxtaposition of Loki's appearance in Europe for THE AVENGERS, only here Thor compels the earthlings to party with him.  But, fanboys and fangirls of Loki, our favorite trickster DOES make an appearance in his natural form of Frost Giant to potentially throw a wrench into Thor's plans.  Captain Marvel also shows up to convince Thor to leave, which ends in the type of knock-out/drag-down fight you'd expect.  There's a nice stylistic touch where we see France, UK, etc. from far above w/the names of the countries on them.
For folks that either don't know/don't remember that many of the "What If..." comics were essentially "what if instead of the heroes saved the day, something awful happened instead?!" or just think a lot of these episodes are too dark/gloomy, the most recent Thor-centric episode is a MUCH lighter story: on par with the T'Challa as Star Lord episode IMO.

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Re: What if?... ***Spoilers***
« Reply #17 on: Today at 12:47:33 PM »

Offline perc2100

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Re: What if?... ***Spoilers***
« Reply #17 on: October 08, 2021, 05:24:24 PM »
Well, what a delightful Season 1 Finale, huh?!  I never would've guessed a few weeks ago that the season would wrap-up with a tie-in/team-up of previous episodes!  While that kind of goes against the spirit of the mostly one-shot comics, I'll absolutely allow it, and had a blast with this episode.  I of course especially dug T'Challa Star-Lord's return, and more goofy party frat-boy esque having to mingle with Captain Peggy & Killmonger (among others).  It's really a bummer to learn that T'Challa Star-Lord, a clear fan-favorite of the season for many, was being talked about for a spinoff series until the untimely death of Chadwick Boseman.  I do appreciate the thought of Marvel/Disney not hiring a voice double, and hope that Marvel/Disney continue to honor the awesome actor by not cheaply keeping his character around (though the merits & morals of such would maybe be an interesting discussion for another thread maybe).

Making the multi-verse a more 'tangible' thing rather than a theoretical type of thing (meaning, instead of just inferring all of these different realities are happening across multi-verses, the series flat-out shows us multiple universes of reality), really sets the table for the future of MCU.  While most of me is pretty sure "What If..." will not factor in any way within the theatrical films, it almost certainly has laid a lot of ground work for getting 'normal/civilian' movie fans (folks like my parents, who know little/nothing about comics stuff but are entertained by all of the Marvel films) into the multiverse concept.  "Loki" set the table for Kang the Conqueror and the different threads of reality through infinite universes, and "What If..." played out different scenarios within unique-but-similar universes that most movie fans would be familiar with.  Marvel was wise to use their films as the jumping off point (minus the "Marvel Zombies" episode - which didn't really fit into the MCU at any point we know of but at least 1) played with the "zombies are in the mass-popular world" theme and 2) jumped onto a popular comics run) to play around in this multiverse pool, and I kind of hope they get even weirder and more outside-the-box in Season 2.

I was also amused that even animated MCU had to wrap-up the season w/an end credits scene  ;D

Really good season; there is still a plethora of fertile ground in the MCU for the series to explore in Season 2, which is already in development.  I read an interview w/the creatives of the series who flat-out said there won't be any Disney+ "What If..." eps Season 2 because developments of all of the series were still 'secret' enough to not be fair game for Season 2 (I'm really over simplifying it there).  But films like SHANG CHI & other Phase 4 films are fair game, so we'll see where they go next.  By my personal opinion/count, Marvel is three for four with their Disney+ series, with their one 'miss' being more of a "solid-not-great" series rather than a true failure.  Kevin Feige taking the reigns of these series has seemed to payoff well, and I look forward to continued series.