"What if …" – the Disney+ series … is kind of 'meh' ?

[zorg 18801xp 0]

yes LOKI is his usual sarcastic self in the series in some of the shows their is several LOKI’s trying to out think the other a great comical show @limburger

[ced1106Participant 6224xp 1]

Marvel What If was published from the late 70’s to the 90’s and basically took momentous Marvel decisions (eg. Daredevil vs. Bullseye) and took them in their alternate direction. Or put Conan in the middle of New York. (: Not surprisingly, the 90’s were 30-some years ago, and the television series doesn’t have much to do or require knowledge of the original comics. The original comics did indeed have more deaths, and endings were often depressing (needlessly so, at least from a then kid’s opinion!). Writer and artist teams varied, although I remember Pat Mills, whose comics I never bought, writing too many of the stories. 😛

Despite the MCU movies having more continuity than other movies, as well as focusing on major story arcs, I don’t think it has as much material to draw from vs. the comics. Also, the MCU movies can have the impactful deaths comics cannot, so that any media that draws from its source material — like the What If tv series — has, imo, to be even better to be worth watching. (BTW, The zombies ep was indeed based on the Marvel comics but not the What If stories, afaik. Many years ago, maybe as as inside joke referring to the Marvel comics fans self-adapted name of ‘Marvel zombies’, Marvel released a surprise hit mini-series called… Marvel Zombies)

Anyway, here’s a list of What If issues, if you’re familiar with the Marvel comics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_What_If_issues

[marcusdennisParticipant 10xp 0]

very exciting

[odinsgrandsonParticipant 4288xp 0]

– The existence of the show might be at odds with Loki. It might not. The Watcher’s position does seem strange in a universe where there is a TVA preventing the multiverse from existing.

– The whole series suffers from having to whip through its plots in its short time slots. This is true of the comic series as well- most stories were finished in a single issue and sometimes a double issue.

– The changes range quite a bit, even when the concept seems dull. I like Peggy as a character but I didn’t like her episode because it felt like a truncated retelling of the first Captain America film with not a whole lot of differences.

– Star Lord T’Challa was interesting for being so much different, though it again suffered from not having the time to do more than allude to the way T’Challa changed everything. It feels more like a glance into an alternate reality than the story of how the realities branched.

There are rumors that they’d have turned it into an ongoing series if Chadwick Bosman had not died.

– I think the episodes do better and better with striking a balance between those two extremes as they go along. The biggest problem remains the truncated time slot. Especially- there are fights that should probably be epic showdowns that are over in a moment so that the show can get on with its story.

– Most episodes finish with “and there’s more.” This often looks like a disaster and it is a little unfortunate when it looks like a more interesting story than the one they told.

 

 

– The What If comics varied quite a lot. I feel like most of the best ones were the ones that told the story that the writers were prevented from doing by editorial mandate.

For example, there’s a What If The Phoenix Had Not Died/Rose Again. This two part story was the story arc that Chris Clairemont and John Byrne were planning to do after the Dark Phoenix Saga, but the editor told them that Phoenix had to die because she had committed too much genocide to not pay for it with her life. So we got to see the scrapped story arc in What If.

Marvel has adopted the idea of their “What If ” timelines into longer series as well. The most interesting ones are basically “What if Marvel Comics had kept our writers for certain books?” They called these alt timelines “Forever” instead- basically you can pick up right where Loise Simonson left X-Factor or where Chris Clairemont left New Mutants and the like. In a similar vein, X-Men ’92 is an alt timeline that uses the iconic ’90s X-Men team and gives them more stories.

[limburger 21690xp 1]

I think the compressed timeslot is really killed the series.

And the finale … was kind of stupid (it kind of resolves more than a few ‘endings’ of the stories).

What’s the point of telling a ‘what if’ … if you’re going to create yet another universe that magically combines them ?
Isn’t the point of “what if” to let the story speak for itself ?
Why this need to turn them into happy hollywood endings ?

The Watcher can exist in a universe that has the TVA.
Just because the TVA think they can manipulate the multiverse that doesn’t mean they are aware of ‘the watcher’ (or an entity like him) that exists outside of the entire multiverse.

The entire concept of a multi-verse was created purely to be able to sell an infinite number of reboots of existing heroes and to allow them to change aspects of them while keeping the original alive.  It allows them to combine characters that can’t possibly co-exist and by tweaking what makes them tick just enough to make it work.

The TVA merely exist as a vehicle to tell stories about Loki using the same actor from the movies. And as an added benefit they have a built-in escape clause should the actor need replacing.

Cynical ?
Hell yeah, but this is an industry … they’re not in it to tell stories, they want your money  (preferably all of it).

[odinsgrandsonParticipant 4288xp 0]

Where did the Marvel multiverse start?

The earliest I know of it is from the Captain Britain series by Alan Moore (which was largely about having to deal with problems that come from outside of your reality- very much akin to what they did in the final What If episode but without the team coming together stuff).

Even if it only exists to sell alternate comics, there are opportunities for storytelling that some writers take advantage of.

[limburger 21690xp 1]

there’s always opportunities to use things created for all the right reasons for both good and bad things.

Maybe I just don’t get the superhero genre. Or rather : I don’t understand why they can’t let [insert superhero] die after x episodes. Instead they insist on milking it … and the fans appear to enjoy it (unless those fans are like GW fans and simply get recycled every few years).

[zorg 18801xp 1]

its Disney a bit of a Micky Mouse outfit company ?!?

[odinsgrandsonParticipant 4288xp 0]

No, Disney is ironically not a Mickey Mouse outfit at all. What they do is keep their IP making money for decades and decades after it was first made (and they make sure to get IP laws changed in their favor so that they can keep them making money past the century mark).

Marvel’s multiverse is interesting because it works like they describe in Endgame. You can’t really change your past, but you can create an alternate timeline by trying. So it ends up splitting a lot, and they make all sorts of wonky random things happen. There are groups like the Captain Britain Corps that are all about crossing dimensions.

It ultimately means that nothing gets thrown away- the writers always have tons of material to work from. Just because the heroes prevented their timeline from ever becoming the Days of Future Past doesn’t prevent a character like Rachel Summers and Franklin Richards from time traveling to the present from the Days of Future Past future.

[torros 23816xp 1]

Lol

[limburger 21690xp 0]

@zorg I’d argue that Marvel (and DC) are like Disney : they will abuse copyright laws for profit

The original creators of 90% of the superheroes are dead. And therefor they should have been public domain decades ago if it hadn’t been for Disney.

@odinsgrandson IMHO that only makes the superhero comic genre even more meaningless.
The heroes always win, and if they don’t then an alt timeline is created until they do win …

It kind of reminds me of a short story I once read that humanity discovering that alternate universes were real and you could travel to them.
It ends with someone pickup a gun and killing himself, because what’s the point of living in a crappy universe when there is another you out there that is happy … (and a massive rise in suicides … )
(yes … it was a very depressing story and it practically convinces me that multi-verses can only ever be bad … )

[zorg 18801xp 0]

All big companies bend the rules to benefit their profit margins to be honest I think nowadays?

 

[odinsgrandsonParticipant 4288xp 1]

Disney does more than bend the rules. They literally write the Intellectual Property laws.

The complaints above are not all founded- if Stan Lee’s creations had been registered to him personally, they’d be good for another 70 years after his death. But it remains true that there are a lot of things that are in IP hell because Disney keeps extending the reach of how long they can hold onto their copyrights.

(trademarks are different as well, but if Disney hadn’t changed the laws, Steamboat Willie would be public domain by now).

[limburger 21690xp 1]

stan lee did not create everything marvel … it’s his name that is attached to a lot of it, but not everything was his idea.

Disney isn’t the only company that would have expanded the copyright laws beyond the reasonable.
Every company would have done the same, because they all fear the same thing : not being able to generate profit from re-hashing the same shite over and over again.

When stuff hits public domain you’d better deliver something good if you want to convince people that they need to pay for your version.

Anyways … this is way off-topic.

I hope there is no second season for ‘what if …’ because they’ve effectively wrecked their own concept with the way they forced a story arc onto the series. Simple stand-alone stories that with room to breath would have been better.
Instead we got crappy compressed stories that were needlessly tied into a ‘big finale’, because even anthology series need a season finale for some reason.

[zorg 18801xp 0]

You need to remember greed is the carrot that companies all dance to today if that makes some go to the wall so be it. less compilation = more profits for them look at all the factories shut an moved overseas to increase profits. copyrights are just the same thay will have people racking over contacts to see if they can get control of them.

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