ThaOGDreamWeaver

Episode 3: yeah, we gotcha Die Hard jokes, cameos from everybody (including “Chuckles the Elf”, if you’ve got subtitles on), and a boatload of solid wisecracks. But like every good kid’s Christmas book, have your pause button on standby to look at the background (and watch through the credits), especially in the armoury and the Avengers Werk Room. And I wonder who they’d need that yellow reel for…?

Lemmy / Tony Iommi / Dave Grohl - Run Run Rudolph

Zack Snyder returns following Justice League, and going on his cult status, Netflix clearly gave him $150m, free rein and no notes to execute his vision unfettered. This isn’t always a good thing. We’re basically talking a two part Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai In Space - though with none of the ludicrous fun of Battle Beyond The Stars. Instead, we get liberal borrowing from Star Wars, John Ford cowboy movies, Starship Troopers, John Woo sloooowwwmooooo forrrr draaaammatticc emmmmphassisss… but most notably WH40K (did he nick a manual from Cavill’s trailer?) Reviews are… not good. I stuck with it for about the first hour, predicted the main story beats easily, liked the production design and Tony Hopkins (on Alec Guinness gravitas duties as a burned-out battle droid)… and turned over to a comedy special. I’ll probably come back to it later. But whadda youse guys think?

Rolling into the new episodes and just wanting to say… …holy hellfire, anyone else want to see Gillan in a full series of CSI: Xandar, or a proper hard-boiled spy/detective flick? Plus all the Blade Runner stuff and new music? Yes. Yes, we like this a lot. Complete break to do a whole other kind of story with familiar characters. Slightly less sure about Ep2. You kind of know where it’s going from the moment Hope comes to work with Dad, but worth it for the gags, the possibility of Bucky going full Batman in a later series, and the Avengers ‘88 Walkdown Of Badassery. Complete with Peggy, Hank, Howard, and that very fine ginger member upfront…

If Max and Leo had tried that stuff in LA… [thinks] …yeah, they’d be heading a studio in no time. Here’s a fun thing. Whatever Internet Ranty People say, it is highly unlikely that WB/D itself will “lose money” on this movie. Because they didn’t make it. A specific, limited shell company, set up to make this specific movie did. Which WB/D and various investors can then loan money to for the flick, and get repaid… with interest. If the flick folds, they’re creditors and can write off the bad debts. They can charge as much or as little as they like for marketing and other “overheads” like studio execs’ time. They can charge distro fees to the sub company, and pay the shell corp for streaming rights - which they then get back - appearing as profit lines for both the parent and child company. And if - Gods forbid - a flick insists on making an above the line profit, you can merge that company with a loss-making one to hide them. Recent example: the LOTR and Hobbit movies, which made six billion bucks… according to one particular formula, have never made dime one in above the line profit - and neither has any of the spinoff merch. So Pete Jackson and the lead actors had to sue for their shares and image rights shares… which New Line can write off as another business loss.🤷🏻‍♀️

Yup. Thursday preview take was $4.5m and expected opening is $35m to $40m. Which might be a mind-melting mound of money to you and me: but it’s only two thirds of what the 2018 original clocked, and $6m less than The Marvels did. (Then again, Christmas is odd.) They’re banking on much stronger non-US openings - Momoa has a strong Chinese following - and it should breakeven* off the worldwide take. *while still making a loss to present to the IRS, cast and writers for tax and residuals, and profitable for investors and the studio, with all three states being simultaneously true and provable. Quantum accountancy tricks like rolling breaks, production shells, and these days streaming licensing fees - which WBD can pay to itself - have a lot to answer for as to why Hollyweird is why it is.

[/emote: DW reads spoiler] [/emote: DW blinks a bit, stares over glasses] [/emote: takes off glasses and reads again] [/pow_exec Psychic Wail] ...thewhatIsaywhatthehellmahaynow? It's supposed to be a fun splashy super-romp, that's... why would you do that? More to the point, what exec in their right mind would greenlight that for a tentpole movie? Yeesh. Anyhow, yes, multiple studio reshoots around a movie can be disruptive if the original story and vision is not strong, or you've got meddlesome execs, or both. They're also expensive, difficult to schedule - you've got to call talent and crew back off other jobs - and you're usually working against a preset marketing deadline, insurance terms, financing bonds, etc. Given the well-known WB/D finance issues, I'm kinda surprised this one didn't get consigned to Davy Jones' celluloid locker along with Batgirl. But I guess they decided to salvage what they could from the wreck.

Welp, that embargo just dropped. So far, 36% Rotten. Even the better ones suggest that someone was trying for a Very Serious Movie about Serious Stuff, while still trying to capture the spirit of the first one. Nah. Empire Strikes Back, this ain't. Look, the great thing about the first one is that both the movie and star knew exactly what they were doing - a big, goofy, slightly messy spectacle that knew that a guy who talks to fish is a weird story beat. It had a sense of its own ridiculousness and played to it. And that energy made up for a lot of the weaker stuff, like an adorable puppy that's run in from the beach and is shaking all over your car's upholstery. So if the end of the DCEU turns out to be a damp squib, that gives Gunn & co a clear run at their new vision. Wish them luck. They're gonna need it.

The original was a fun popcorn flick, especially watching Momoa having a blast, some really imaginative visuals and production, and a battle sequence that felt like it came from a different, better movie. (Kind of expected to see Peter Jackson hanging around in a wetsuit waving a cricket bat at the extras.) But beyond that, there was a lot that didn’t float. Ignoring the tittle-tattle around Amber Heard, the fact that Jason had much better chemistry with Nicole (his mom) was noticeable. Yet again, we have a villain problem: Yahya does what he can with Kane/Manta, but that outfit would have been rejected as too ridiculous by Power Rangers. Pat Wilson’s Orm pales by comparison with Hiddlestone’s jealous relative. And then there’s the script… This time around, we’ve got the same cast, a well-worn main thread about being bored of the job and having it taken off you, a hideously clunky shoehorned climate subplot (even by my goodie-goodie little Guardian-reading Social Justice Rogue standards… look, if you’re gonna run with that stuff, do it properly), and two Curse Of Forbidden Power McGuffins for the price of one. In short, while I might catch this on whatever streaming service survives the 2024/2025 shakeout... ...EDIT: which seems to be already happening... BBC News: Paramount and Warner-Discovery in early merger talks https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67782869 ...I’m not enthralled enough to slap down a tenner for it, and I want my wine and fast forward button on standby.

…”haven’t I seen you before somewhere?”

Meco - Star Wars Theme (Purrfection Remix)

Side note: I would watch a Mullet Cinematic Universe. Though this list is clearly missing Momoa and early Hemsworth. https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a543060/13-hair-raising-movie-mullets-hugh-jackman-kurt-russell-david-bowie/

That he is (though most convincing as Timely: still didn't have Big Villain Energy for me.) And many actors have got away with worse over the decades. But even with a successful appeal, t he material released during the trial is going to mean a long road of publicity rehab. While I normally concur with m'learned coll' TW, the whole multiverse thing was clunkily executed on screen in Quantumania - and not really used except as a shiny creative toy in DS:MoM. It works better in the comics, and across multiple episodes of Loki and What If, where you've got that room to play with new ideas: and you're not unpacking a difficult concept into a 120-minute rollercoaster ride. So while, yes, even DOOM himself might wind up being a variant, just because they Kang, doesn't mean that they should.

Small update. Not entirely sure which topic this goes in, but... Jonathan Majors Dropped By Marvel After Conviction https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/jonathan-majors-trial-verdict-1235759607/ I'm not gonna comment on the criminal trial for obvious reasons: read the whole article to the end, make your own mind up. However, in Whollyodd terms: Majors is now off the Marvel roster... ...and has had another indie picture shelved by Fox Searchlight. Mike Waldron (Loki, Doc Strange:MOM, Rick and Morty) has been brought in to do a rework of the upcoming film, now snappily titled "Avengers 5". Oddly, I think this is could be a blessing in disguise for Marvel. Loki's World Tree finale is a fine plot way of bringing harmony to the Multiverse - without the whole dang Kang shebang. Which, frankly, wasn't working out to begin with. Quantumania was a poorly-plotted porridge of an intro/explainer film. Majors didn't really grab folks as a villain (and that's by Marvel standards, who have always had an antagonist problem). The overarching Kang Dynasty Avengers-Assemble-But-This-Time-Across-Time-And-Space was done better last time. Is it time to break Doc Doom out of the toybox? Do Marvel hit pause on the movies for a bit and build out some other stories? Would you like to see them branch out The Batman style into wildly different, perhaps smaller movies? Like a Kingpin solo movie, or what happened to Cap after he broke the laws of time for Peggy (a 1950s Cold War period spy couple piece, perhaps?)

Sounds terrifying. I don't think I could beat that, as I haven't got the core strength to dual wield vacuum cleaners.

...or did it? If Loki's magic created a World Tree to weave together all of time and space, its existence would extend far back into the past, as well as into the future to the end of time. The Asgardians may have discovered their technomagic allowed them to traverse it, though they might not be quite sure why... they'd never know it was Asgardian magic. I wonder if Odin the All-Seeing knew what his adoptive son (or a variant) would eventually become?

There's making deals with the Devil, and then there's making deals with Amazon. Yeesh. But Bezos-abub has clearly given Vivienne "Vivziepop" Medrano the bucks she needs to bring her viral project Hazbin Hotel to full-on life. With sex, booze, swearing, drugs, magick and showtunes. (So pretty much a decent night out in my twenties.) For those of you who never saw the pilot (or spinoff Helluva Boss), we meet Charlie, the rather adorable Princess Of Hell, who decides to tackle the city of Dis's overpopulation problem before Heaven does it... violently and permanently. To do that, she founds a halfway house for salvageable sinners - if she can redeem enough, maybe those above will call off the destruction. Almost nobody believes she can do it. Until she runs into Alastor, the charming, stylish, and incredibly-powerful-and-dangerous-even-by-Hell-standards Radio Demon. Exactly what Alastor is up to, we don't as yet know, but goodness will have nothing to do with it... Even as a viral pilot, the show acquired a legion of dedicated fans - and inspired some amazing original music too. If this thing doesn't worm its way into your brain like some kind of foul eldritch ear-burrowing direworm, you're probably dead already. Really hope they can work it in somewhere...

Final teaser is up: ...neeeever liked Justin Hammer as an antagonist, maybe he'll be funnier in cartoon form. Other than that, we see Peg being shown Loki's World Tree (so, yup, it's all connected... and the baubles look like a fairly rough after-edit), medieval Ant-Man, and some other tiny treats.

Bit of a surprise package for next Christmas lined up: an animated LOTR movie about Helm Hammerhand (who gave his name to Helm's Deep.) No hobbits, lotsa horses, and Brian Cox playing a king. Again. Because he is one. What do we think?

FEUERSCHWANZ - Gimme Gimme Gimme

Neutron flow? Neutron flow? Bah. Easy. I could flip that with two chopsticks, a coil of wire and old copy of Guitar Tech Monthly. But if he messed with the polarity of Klystron Generator... now that's REAL drama.

And as a lifelong Labyrinth fan, I'm pleased the Christmas episode has an abducted baby, a horde of comedy goblins, and musical numbers...

Oh gods, that bit in The Star Beast. Evil Overlord Rule 85: I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. "Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse." Instead it will be more along the lines of "Push the button"... Addendum 85(a)(i): I will also not read an entire Haynes Evil Pointy Spaceship Service And Maintenance Manual (Model Years 2023-4008) out loud in an overdramatic voice.

Randomly rabbitholed back into the lore and had a thought...