Running MCU thread

Seems good

 

Interesting numbers - It seems like offering it as a premium rental increased sales, instead of cannibalizing them. Two Chinese movies are tops in global box office, I believe, with Fast 9 third with $541M overall - $400M from international markets.

 

I could see Disney buying a few theaters in each town and letting subscribers watch movies in person for $5 a person and charging non subscribers full price.

 

I saw "Black Widow" in the theater today and we also got the "Old" trailer, and I can see why your kid was a little spooked. Eight-year-old me probably would have been freaking out too. Also saw teasers for "Shang-Chi" (the next MCU flick), "Snake Eyes" and "Jungle Cruise" among a few others I don't even remember at the moment.

 

How much time do we give until we openly discuss the Loki finale?

 

It hasn't even dropped yet!

I say wait until at least Monday, if not a full week. Some people won't watch until the weekend. I'm guessing I will see it tomorrow or Thursday. We just caught up on Episode 5 tonight, with Black Widow set for tomorrow, then the finale.

 

I won't openly discuss it, but I did watch the finale of Loki today. It was weird. Parts of it were a bit slow. It fit some of my theories, but not others. I won't say anything else for fear of spoiling stuff.

 

This was finally the episode where the big bad seemed to be introduced… sort of.

 

I think there’s a law against that. Or maybe there was. Studios couldn’t own theaters.

 

A friend of mine and I debated the issue of premium access last night. She doesn't think it is right. If you have the service, you shouldn't have to pay extra for some of the content. She thinks it should be like Netflix. I get the other side of it, that it is a way for people with the service to see the movie if they don't want to go to the theater and don't want to wait, though really, she's probably right.

That said, I bought premium access for the first time today so my daughter and I could watch Black Widow. She didn't want to go to the theater and I didn't care either way. I just wanted to see the movie.

I thought it was good, somewhere in the middle of the pack of MCU movies. It was almost like it was going for a Bond movie feel, but it was more Roger Moore than Sean Connery or Daniel Craig.

And yes, there is a post-credits scene.

 

Netflix makes movies to release on their own platform. Disney and other studios make movies to release on a bazillion platforms, including their own.

Disney has released a few over the past year straight to Disney+ but if not for the pandemic none of their movies would have been there first anyway. So it's kind of a cool bonus to get the chance to see it right away at home. For the price, which is basically two people going to a show and maybe not even that with food, you get it for as long as it's on Disney+ and access to it months before it would have been there anyway. It's not a bad deal, we've done it for a couple of others.

Black Widow the first movie back in the theater for my wife and me. It was kind of weird being there and it was full too.

I liked it a lot, although agree probably middle of the pack. The opening credits are almost worth the price of admission. I didn't mind the timing, knowing what happened a few years later. It was kind of an interesting element to me.

 

I see both sides of the premium access thing, but I lean toward your take on it.

I imagine they tweaked the post-credit scene once they realize it was going to come out over a year later than expected. It also feels like they cut a scene from the end that might have explained a few things, but that could have been that way even when they were ready to release it last year. (I don't want to write any more about that because it's a big early for spoilers.)