ThaOGDreamWeaver

I thought it was a bit more of a crossover... (Spoiler below...) Now on to some wild speculation and/or actual spoilery leaks, upon which we may hang more wildly inaccurate posturing. The episode titles for S2 (or S1pt2, or whatever) are said to be:

After a very long pandemic-induced wait and worries about cancellation,the back 9 episodes of What If...? drop for Christmas. ...and yes, Tony is wearing a Santa outfit. Because there's a Christmas episode. I like this series because it gives writers absolutely free rein to play with everything in the Marvel toybox, invent some new toys, and even break some of it. As well as the promised Haudenosaunee NA-dubbed episode - which I've been looking forward to as a Thor-meets-Prey kinda deal, we get T'Challa's dad, Hank Pym and the OG Wasp teaming up, what looks like Sakaar-based Wacky Races, and a few more surprising things I can't identify. But there are far better nerds than me here who may be able to...

*Glares at Marvel PR team* STOP WITH THE DAMN SPOILERS IN EPKS, AND BAN ANY SITES THAT SPOILER ENDINGS / POST-CREDS. Then again, it's hard when there's a whole industry of auto-generated article bots grabbing every little detail and rumour and trying to blow it up into a screaming headline article. Also, ya gotta remember that the entire cast were on strike until one day before release weekend: and the Big Bad Mouse were pretty unlikely to get a promo waiver from SAG-AFTRA. So it also hurts a movie when you can't have your actors out there beating the drum on late-nights, using their social presences, or doing those lucrative-and-surprisingly-effective-if-bloody-embarrassing promo deals with car dealerships / fast food joints / biscuits / sanitary products / whatever. I've only seen one tie-in advertised and that was for a security company: it's gotta be a really hard sell when you can't get an actual actor to punt your product. This would have a similar impact to The Flash last year - but for a very different reason, where its lead would have had to be rolled onto any talk show set strapped to a trolley Lecter-style (not that Jimmy Fallon hasn't had worse psychotics on...) Wondering if Marvels will see an uptick second weekend on word-of-mouth, and if the Marvel PR machine can get back into gear? EDIT: if there's been one fun thing out of this strike, it's the amount of proper Hollywood folks doing the kind of gaijin ads they only used to do for Japan (see: Lost In Translation) in UK markets to keep the ol' cashflow up. We've had Samuel L Jackson shilling crumpets, Gillian Anderson punting mattresses, Owen Wilson and Helena Bonham Carter frothing over sofas, and Benadryl Thunderbox trying to sound even slightly enthusiastic about a dodgy fantasy mobile game... and failing badly. Any more you guys have seen? I think Melissa McCarthy's Booking.com one might have been international...

I'm not sure whether I'm an outlier on this. But as I do have D+ - and the release-to-streaming windows are so short now - I don't feel it's essential to block out 2/3 hours to catch it in the cinema with filthy mouthbreathing humans, when I can watch it in my own home with my own sensibly priced, diet-friendly snacks at a time that suits me. However - and this is my worry for the future of flicks in general - that's pretty much my attitude to every flick these days, not just the MCU. Even the whole Barbenheimer thing breezed by me: the last flick I saw in cinemas was GOTG3, and that's because my partner particularly liked that series. The whole rash of new, odd little movies that are popping up in cinemas due to the strike delaying the big-bucks content are interesting and encouraging, but again, not essential - pretty sure they'll be on the 'flix or Prime right after next Cannes deal week. And no, I'm not seeing the Tay movie either, though that's been a phenomenal success: give it a few weeks and I'll be able to indulge privately, with no risk to any goth cred or my eardrums. The rest of the time, between erratic work hours, taking care of niecelets and generally surviving the 2020s as best I can... I've not fallen out of love with the movies, but I can't make the time for them right now.

Spoilery mini-thoughts: More spoilery stuff at the link below. Pretty good Q&A from Esquire - including where Eric thinks everything landed, a surprising fact about how they designed that period midwestern McDonalds (which was an old roadside Indian restaurant in the middle of nowhere 100 miles around London - so yes, probably an ex-Little Chef as well), and a series of evasive but nonetheless interesting answers about Jonathan Majors and the future of the MCU. Mainly because the Majors cases are still active, and also he'd like to eat lunch in that town again and/or not get assassinated by K.E.V.I.N's spoiler-hunting killdroids. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a45433773/loki-showrunner-season-2-finale-interview/

Munitions Mastery gets a bad press, but it fits a lot of my Blaster concepts, and I find everything except Sleep Grenade useful. Surveillance is really handy not just as a debuff, but as a target designator for teams (when you want to encourage a bit of the ol' Scrapperlock, anyway), Body Armour's good for parking your +Def IOs for no -END if your Secondary hasn't allowed for it and you don't want the Fighting pool, Cryo is a handy Hold, and LRM is a very decent ranged nuke. I don't like Sleep Grenade - it's relatively weak compared to the resistances enemies have at that level. And I have much more fun ways of annoying whole heaps of enemies in the rest of my arsenal.

Given that some of the Karen Page storylines are supposed to be in Born Again, not to mention Jon Bernthal returning as Punisher... hmm. Good luck with that idea. ...but "family friendly" can be relative. You can let the audience picture things that are happening without actually showing them - and they'll usually imagine something much worse. Then hit them with occasional bits of proper gruesome when they least expect it. (See Netflix's Fall Of The House Of Usher for a good recent illustration of how this works, although they didn't exactly skimp on the nasty. Kinda wish they had for the final death, which also shows when showing stuff doesn't work nearly as well as anything the audience could imagine.)

Note from the writer via Cinemablend - and many, many auto-generated 'splainer articles...

I am kinda sad that while the ending did tie everything together in a neat little bow (or bough?)... ...it's so neat, and these characters have the right endings - tragic, noble, purposeful, and enduring - that this is where the book closes for them. If this has an effect on the MCU as a whole, it may be that...

Immobilise, Mag 4.0, with 10% chance of Sleep (Mag 2), and permanent Slow until the Panic Diet power is toggled during the January Gym Frenzy event. While we're at it... DW's Family Christmas Pudding Recipe Dates back well before Victorian times, though I've made edits and upgrades through the years since I was a kid. It's now relatively idiotproof if you've got a bit of time and patience. Quantities are a little flexible and spicing can be adjusted to taste: adding cinnamon, allspice, or vanilla sugar if you wish. But the important bit is... if you want to have it ready for Christmas, you ideally need to start in November - as early as possible - so the flavours have time to mellow, mingle and mature. So get on it. For 1 large/2 small puds: 4oz / 110g plain flour 6oz / 170g muscovado sugar 2oz / 55g dried breadcrumbs (out of a packet is fine, just not the golden ones for fish fry) 5oz / 140g suet 1lb / 450g mixed dried fruit of your choice (sultanas, raisins, currants - a premixed bag is fine for this) 1oz / 25g finely ground almonds or almond flour Fresh nutmeg to grate, to taste (for this recipe, you should use about 1/4 to 1/3 of a nut) A quarter teaspoon of salt - no more, no less One small tart apple (or half a decent sized Bramley) One small lemon One small egg 50ml booze of your choice (Spiced or dark rum, unpeated whisky, honey liqueur, brandy or calvados/applejack are all good. NOT GIN.) Up to about 150ml of cream stout beer - Murphy's, Mackay's, Guinness, or similar (see below) Additional booze for "feeding" How to: Place the sugar and flour, a bit at a time, in CLOSED-TOP blender - unless you fancy a festive smoke bomb. Grind to a fine grey-brown powder. (This is optional but helps the mixdown process go better). Place a quarter of each dry ingredient - sugar/flour mix, breadcrumbs, fruit, almonds, and salt, into a BIG glass or crockery bowl - as in the biggest you have. Mix thoroughly. Grate a bit of nutmeg over the top, mix again. Repeat the process with the remaining dry goods, mixing right down to the bottom each time. Check how much nutmeg you've used and top up as needed, mixing again. Peel, core, and grate the apple. Mix through thoroughly, a handful at a time. Clean hands are best for this job. Juice the lemon, and mix with the egg, booze, and about 50ml / two shots of beer. Gradually pour into the dry mix in a thin stream, stirring all the time, and making sure any dry bits are well mixed in. Again, you might want to get your hands in for the best results. The mix should wind up as a sticky pudding batter, no dry bits, but not runny. Add more beer as needed to get your desired consistency. Each family member who's been involved in making it should give a final stir to the pud - clockwise, three times - and make a wish. Pile into heavy-duty glass/Pyrex/china bowls and pack down. Cover tightly with buttered greaseproof paper, then cover that with a double layer of foil, and tie down tightly with string (proper butcher's-type string, not plastic string, Bridget.) Place in a saucepan or steamer and boil/steam for 3-4 hours. Check the water level regularly, and DO NOT LET THEM BOIL DRY. Allow to cool and store in a dark, cool place. These can be made well ahead of time, and will even keep year to year. About once a month, "feed" the pud by stabbing it with a cocktail stick or skewer, then sprinkling with a shot of your chosen booze. On the day: either boil/steam for about an hour before serving, or remove from the bowl, break into large chunks and nuke in the microwave till piping hot (about 4-5 min, but use your judgement). Serve with custard or other sauces of your choice.

So, premiere has happened and the final trailer is out... and they keep teasing some kind of major Universe reboot event in the trailers and promo material, with a potential crossover to the Loki finale. Not-quite-spoiler: that it ain't, at least in the ways some people have speculated. It is, however, generally a fun if slightly confusing ride - including lots of planet-hopping, a very random musical number, an obvious if unpredictable McGuffin (Kamala's Negaband and its twin), etc. And they're quite literally herding cats at one point, so yes, that's a metaphor for the script: but Goose is also a key ally, and she's brought friends. For those of you who really can't wait for the post-credits, of which there are two...

Highest value: COH, especially since Homecoming: also the original Elite, Star Trek Online (pre ARC takeover, but haven't been back for all the reinvestment of the modern Paramount-friendly era), OG PS1 Gran Turismo, PUBG Mobile, Counterstrike, Dance Dance Revolution (PS3, and any arcade if the cabinet's still in good shape and I'm drunk enough), most of the Tomb Raiders, the Thief series, KOTOR, and SWG (before the dark times... before the NGE.) Lowest value: Elite: Dangerous. Badly needs optimisation and stripping down the graphics, and came close to exploding my work laptop. See also EvE, which was a massive time/money-sink until I worked out that any kind of serious competitive play would cost more of my time, fitness, money and sanity than I was prepared to give up for casual gaming. (Dis)Honorable mention...: say what you like about WoW, and especially about Activision Blizzard, it's still a good, accessible, very playable game with a tonne of content and hidden Easter Eggs, and can still be fun to play... ...if you don't do any raids or multiplayer events, and ignore any comments about your odd playstyle/non-minmaxed toon/sexuality/sense of humour(assuming they have one, which they don't seem to like much.) Exceptionally toxic community even by EvE standards.

Cool story, bro. Needs more pirates. And linguini.

My Dad was "...basically Vultan." "Who?" "From Flash Gordon. Brian Blessed, TALKS LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME." "Nah..." Then when they met him, they kinda got the idea. Until he lost the beard for a while, which was... just wrong. So I know how you feel.

Having read up on The Pretender, kinda sounds like a darkside version of Joe 90... not that a show about reprogramming a kid didn't have some dark moments. And yes, that would be quite a cool one for Joe Cornish to take on as his next kid-friendly action project. (In case this is region-locked: this is the Joe 90 opening titles and groovy 60s music...)

I'm betting on seeing Manimal and/or Greatest American Hero reboots at some point. Sadly, I think real life has overtaken Automan by some way... any other terrible stuff they could dig out from the vaults?

Fresh off a rose-tinted megahit and a top-10 single, Ryan Gosling keeps the Kenergy-fuelled himbo ride going partnered up with Emily Blunt... ...there's not a huge amount in common with the original Saturday teatime favourite - though I suspect ol'bag-of-hammers-face himself Lee Majors will show up, and maybe Heather Thomas as well. And yes, looks hugely derivative, but nonetheless a whole bunch of popcorn-munchable fun, not least murdering Tom Cruise an unnamed but ultradynamic permaposing action star who shall remain nameless, and parodying Blunt's own Edge Of Tomorrow. See you there?

All the Marvel D+ side projects seem to be a lot better than the flicks at the moment - and I get the feeling that there's less "weight" put on them, either to be massively commercial or fit into a particular mould or timeline, so the writers and directors have more room to play with the material. I'm really not sure where they're taking this one from the pretty darn grimdark trailer, but if D'Onofrio signed off on it and looks to be enjoying it, could be interesting...

The Velvet Underground - Oh, Sweet Nuthin' (2015 Remaster)

It was a pretty odd little backstory bottle episode, which felt like trying to pull things back together after that mid-season cliff-hanger (well, cliff fall off and explode). OB/AD was his entertaining usual self, but finally seeing what all the jetski mania was about was a little bit of a letdown (possibly intentional). Sylvie's bit was the only part that seemed to all hang together, until that fell apart. Good needle drop in that scene... even though it's a weird continuity moment as it's the last song on Side 2...

Some: seems there's been a lot of assorted game lore over the years, and not all internally consistent. But the core ideas about the murderous William Afton, his creations, and the kids that possess them are in there. And yes, Nic did a DTV called Willy's Wonderland. There are obvious debts to FNAF's general vibe: but the animatronics' backstory gives them no tragic or redeeming qualities, just murderous glee. And the equally corrupt townsfolk picked the wrong drifter to sacrifice... ...yes, it's more than a bit silly, but if you want to see Nic Cage kicking ass in spectacularly over-the-top fashion, give it a spin.

Penultimate episode... some let-downs in the writing compared to the rest of the series, but sets up the final battle ep properly...

Sooo, that happened. Not sure I can add much to m'learned coll's assessment, other than...

It is apparently one of K.E.V.I.N's greatest loves... and thing is, when someone with that much power has too much affection for a property, it tends to put the brakes on making said properties into good movies. You have 120 minutes or so to pack in everything a potentially fresh audience needs to know and care about from months or years of back issues, form it into a proper sequence of events, and somehow make an entertaining picture. Having a robotic ultrafanboy kibitzing over your shoulder isn't great. Multiverse Of Madness had quite a few things going for it: a superb cast, a script with a recognisable dramatic arc in it, and the imagination of the mighty Sam Raimi - even if he ripped off one bit from Roger Corman. Quantumania... isn't as unwatchable as some folks might say, but is clearly attempting to kick off Kang's villain arc. It throws a lot of heavy concepts at you in a short space of time, along with a bunch of gloopy and possibly unfinished CGI. And it doesn't "stick the landing" as a complete movie, because there's no landing to stick. Loki... is an oddball little piece and clearly the one they were allowed the most creative freedom on, and yet makes the most sense - not least because we've had two series to get to know everybody and what's going on. If they ditched the Kang Dynasty flick and instead finished it up in Loki, with Mobius, OB and Loki wrapping up the timeline in a neat bow instead - possibly rewriting history with OB as the originator of the TVA, not Kang - I would not be sad in the slightest.