the vynsane asylum

Thor 2 is the MCU "art film". I'm more liking it than not. Better than IM3 & Hulk for sure, I'll call it even with IM2.

Cap 2 - Some implausibility but I just love the interactions way too much for it to bug me ("Before we get started, does anyone want to get off?"). Might be my favourite MCU movie. Cap & The Secret Warriors discover Hydra is not only still alive, but in position to take over the world so they foil the plot. Enter the Winter Solider. Hydra has Loki's scepter to use as a power source for their weapons in development.

GOTG - Star Lord obtains and Infinity Stone along with a band of new friends that help him get it back after it's briefly lost to Ronan the Accuser. Xandar is saved & the Nova Core have care of the purple stone. More lightning in a bottle captured here by James Gunn than anything since the atrocious Michael Bay's incredible Pirates of the Caribbean.

Avengers 2 - Stark & Banner create Ultron in an effort to stop the need for the Avengers at all. Ironic. Wanda & Pietro return, and Ulysses Klaue & VIsion make their first appearances. Strucker & Pietro Maximoff bow out. Big story-wise it's a bit of a following the bouncing sceptre situation - the Avengers recover it from Strucker's stronghold, then Ultron steals it to help the absurdly hot Dr. Cho create the Vision body. It then becomes the yellow stone in the middle of Vision's forehead. Got it? Good (and no, I'm not 100 % sure I've got it).

Ant-Man up next - and I might bypass this as I don't have a copy & it's not on Netflix. I'll come back to it, I promise.... (fingers crossed behind back)

I finished up Phase 1 with The Avengers last night.
Fuck, that is an endlessly rewatchable flick. It feels big, even though things have gotten bigger and bigger in the MCU.

Its been fun rewatching the One-Shots. I really wish Marvel would do them again.
It started simple with The Consultant, reusing some of The Incredible Hulk footage with a few minutes of Agents Coulson and Sitwell.
Then it went all-new with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer, when Coulson got to show that he can kick ass.
Next was Item 47, an 11 minute One-Shot featuring Agents Sitwell and Blake. Apparently it acted as the pitch for Agents of SHIELD. I want to know what happened to the two civilians Sitwell recruited to SHIELD after what happens in The Winter Soldier.

Saw Black Panther yesterday. Overall, it was excellent. BP has had a lot of supporting characters over the years in the comics, to the point I’ve had difficulty keeping track of them and separating them. This movie did a good job of having many of them in the film, and streamlining them and their relation to T’Challa.

The Dora Milaje were fucking badass. Everybody has been raving about how empowered the women in this film were, and they weren’t wrong. Bald Michonne could be in her own spinoff movie.

Some minor quibbles I had with it.While I thought Mike B. Jordan did an excellent job as the villain Killmonger and was a mostly sympathetic character, his flip to maniacal Hitleresque despot in the third act was almost comical. I didn’t believe the jump from angry abandoned orphan to “Kill everybody who isn’t black!!”
Nobody was getting hurt in the final battle. All them spears and swords...I get that it’s PG-13, but it looked like a zero body count fight.

The rhinos were fucking stupid. Might be the dumbest thing in any MCU movie thus far. The premise and CGI both deserve a mulligan. I’m sure at the storyboard/brainstorming idea it sounded cool. But...no. Just no.

The stingers were weak sauce. Wakanda comes out of the closet? That’s not a stinger, that’s just the end of the movie. And Bucky is awake. Well no shit, we saw him in the Infinity War trailer.

And was that the same Korean nightclub James Bond showed up in, in Skyfall? I’m 90% sure it’s the same joint.

Even if it wasn't named, I'm 99% sure the Soul Stone is buried in the Vibranium mountain.

In its first 4 days Black Panther made more than Justice League did in its entire theatrical run.

Black Fucking Panther beat a movie starring Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.

Are we sure we're not in the Matrix?

As good as the movie is, I think releasing it at this time of the year has a lot do with its success. It has absolutely no competition and won’t for several weeks.

BP passed the $400M mark this weekend, becoming only the fourth movie ever to gross over $100M in its second weekend.
On Sunday, it passed by Guardians Vol2, and by Monday it will have passed Civil War and IM3 to become the third highest grossing Marvel movie ever.
Only the two Avengers movies will have made more. And it did all that in only 11 days.


Is it conceivable that this movie will end up making more money than Infinity War? Think about it. Avengers 3 will definitely have a HUGE opening weekend. But what if the movie, like The Last Jedi, doesn’t live up to the hype. What if it’s only a mediocre film given the impossibly high standards people will undoubtedly be piling on it? And it only has a couple weeks to itself before Deadpool and Han Solo show up. Infinity War could do roughly the same amount of business as Civil War and/or Age of Ultron and finish around $400-450M. Black Panther is on track to finish higher than that.

Think about that.

And BP is good, but its not THAT good.

Timing is everything.

Another fun BP fact. Obviously it is currently the highest grossing movie of 2018.
The fun fact is; it has grossed more than the 2nd thru 8th movies...combined.

They moved Avengers up a week. Comes out April 27th now.
Probably to separate it from Solo and to a lesser extent Deadpool.

I'm excited, and I'd wager Newsbot is too.

Begin phase 3.

Civil War - Wanda accidentally kills a few Wakandans in Nigeria during the arrest of Crossbones. Zemo frames Bucky for the Death of T'Chaka and other dignitaries at the signing of the Sokovia Accords (Super Hero Registration Act). Cap won't sign. Tony wants to sign. T'Challa wants to kill Bucky. Cap goes to bring Bucky in with Falcon. Allies fight with each other & Rhodey gets hurt. By the end, Cap escapes with Bucky & they free Falcon, Hawkeye & Wanda from prison - so there will need to be some fence mending come April 27th. 1st appearances of Spidey & Black Panther. And hot Aunt May. Nothing to do with the Infinity Stones.

And speaking of those - I had to refresh my memory to see exactly where things stand as of this point in the story as it's already hard to keep track and I have literally just rewatched these over the last few weeks:

Guardians Orb (puple) - with the Nova Corps

Aether (red) - with the Collector

Tesseract (blue) - in Asgard (used to rebuild Bifrost & not seen since?)

Sceptre (yellow) - Vision's forehead

Eye of Agamoto (green) - not quite there yet, but with Dr. Strange anyhow

(Orange) - not yet known about unless it's in Ragnarok & if that's the case I've done well avoiding spoilers. On we go.

Civil War is on Netflix and I feel like I watch it once a month because there’s nothing else on that’s more interesting/fun than rewatching CW.
I just watched it last weekend. I might’ve seen it more than Avengers 1 and 2 and I watch dem bitches A LOT.

Black Panther passed the $500m mark, becoming only the 10th movie to that domestically, so obviously its in the Top Ten highest grossing movies ever. Will probably finish in 7th place all time.


But all this has made Disney decide to change the name of Avengers:Infinity War. The new name will be

Black Panther 2:The Infinity Battle of Wakanda:Gimme some mo’ dat Black Panther(feat. The Avengers). Black Panther.