Marvel Phase 1 Revisited – Comparative Opinions S.2 E.4

Welcome to the Comparative Opinions podcast! This week hosts Holly and David dive into their re-watch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If you watch one movie a week this year, you can watch them all in time for Infinity War. With the first part watched, here are our thoughts looking back at these films!

Comparative Opinions is a weekly half-hour-ish podcast hosted on ComparativeGeeks.com. Subscribe for new episodes every Sunday, or for our weekly news podcast, Week in Geek.

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Music is by Scott Gratton: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Scott_Gratton/Intros_and_Outros

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Origin Stories in the Marvel Universe, Moving Forward

Since we all seem to be covering a few comic book themed posts this week, I figured I’d jump in with some thoughts on how I think they handled two new characters in Civil War, and what I think that means for the MCU moving forward. I’m going to do my best to keep this vague and try not to spoil anything too much, just in case you haven’t had a chance to see the movie yet.

We know, just from the trailers, that Captain America: Civil War has the honor of introducing two much anticipated characters to the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Black Panther and Spider-Man. The latter of the two has been the most talked about, considering the negotiations that had to take place for Disney to take over the character of Spider-Man from Sony. After trying to start two separate franchises based on Spider-Man and not succeeding, a lot of people, myself included, were excited to see what was going to be done with the character by the MCU. Black Panther is not as well-known by the general public (audiences who go to see the Marvel movies without reading the comics), and so his introduction to the MCU is, in a way, starting from scratch.

The Nine Alignments of Captain America!

Yesterday’s alignment grid was for the Thor movies – today it’s the Captain America movies. Maybe at some point we’ll be able to figure out One Alignment Grid to Rule Them All, when it comes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe… for now, the Captain America movies come pretty close to including most of the main characters! Civil War will especially make that the case!

Sorry this is a bit later, busy day! Should have tomorrow’s up sooner. We’ll give you a guess as to what it’s going to be…

Captain America: The Winter Soldier – A LitFlix

Cover from Captain America #11 by Ed Brubaker

Okay, I’m over a month late on getting out a Captain America: The Winter Soldier LitFlix, and for that I am sorry. I can blame the A to Z Challenge and all the things we put off writing about in April, but that’s not it entirely. I think the problem is, there’s just too much to say about this film.

I was also left with a question: what was it about this movie that made me love it so much?

After seeing it another two times, I think the answer is quite simply that it is a good movie. It works internally with itself. It works as a sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger. And it works within the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, the characters and events fitting in with the larger happenings in other films. It did the things it needed to, and did them well.

My goal however is not to present you with a review – though I will provide you with a list of solid reviews to the film. My goal is to compare this film to the comics it is based on, in the full fashion of our LitFlix. So needless to say, all sorts of spoilers to follow!

L is for Lucy

So we generally reserve our character studies – like we’ve been doing for the A to Z Challenge – for looking at established characters. However, my original plan for today was to cover Lightning from Lightning Returns – a topic we’ve written about a lot. And I’ve talked a lot about video game characters lately too. So instead I thought I would do a speculative piece about a character – and why I find this character interesting before ever seeing the movie.

That character is Lucy, of the new eponymous film Lucy by Luc Besson. Lucy is going to be played by Scarlett Johansson. So, I am fascinated by this film based on both of these factors. Haven’t heard about Lucy yet? The trailer just came out, so check it out!