I had no idea they were doing a revival of this classic series. Thanks for the heads-up. 
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Just saw the first episode of Marvel’s “What If…?”.
For those who don’t know what it is, it’s an animated series based on the concept created for the “What if” series of comics, where the stories explored what would happen given some initially small change to the regular timeline.
The change in the first episode leads to Agent Carter getting the super soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers.
The animation looks really good IMO, and I was really happy with the first episode.
Hayley Atwell’s (Agent Carter from the movies) voice acting isn’t 100%, but it’s good enough to get the job done, and the dude they got to do the voice of Steve Rogers does a really good job sounding like Chris Evans.
There’s some fun action and, I think, a lot of heart to it… though you can only get so emotionally invested in a 30 minute episode format.
I’m really happy with it all in all. Looks like this could be a great anthology series. With
Jeffrey Wright as “The Watcher” bookending the episodes it almost has a Twilight Zone vibe.
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Agreed, great premiere episode for What If?!
The animation is a pretty nice artstyle, and the character models look a lot like their movie counterparts. There’s a nice “one-take” shot that was pretty impressive.
I think that the pacing is super fast. Like they crammed a one hour movie into a 30 minute time slot. I was fine with the dialogue for the most part but a lot of scenes needed some time to breathe before and after their events. Didn’t feel like there was much downtime within scenes either.
We went from Howard getting the Tesseract to Red Skull getting the Tesseract in like the span of 15 minutes. I get how he came to acquire it, but it threw me for a loop for a sec.
Honestly I’m mostly impressed with the length of this episode (and probably future episodes). 30 minutes.
I did not expect Marvel Studios would give it that much time to tell a story, especially as their first experiment in complete animation. Seems like a lot of good animated shows these days have a shorter form of storytelling, so I expected that from this one.
I’ll gladly take more though!
As for the performances, I found Carter and Howard to fit in well with what I remember from the films, but yeah Sebastian Stan seems to be over-emoting and it doesn’t sound like how he did in The First Avenger or any of his recent experiences. I get it though, it’s probably his first voice acting gig. He needs to strike that balance of believability.
Yeah he played a nice Chris Evans sound-a-like, mostly. That would be Josh Keaton, famously known to play Spider-Man in the great animated series The Spectacular Spider-Man.
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I just burned through “This is Pop,” it’s a docuseries about pop music. It’s wonderful. First episode is called the Boys II Men effect and is all about how in the early 90s BIIM crossed into pop charts and then 4 years later the world was FLOODED with boy bands. The 2nd episode is all about the Swedish producers who have written every billboard hot 100 hit for the last 25 years. It goes from strength to strength until one episode towards the end.
It’s totally worth your time and I hope they do another season.
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Carter yes, Howard, definitely no in my opinion. It’s weird, because it’s still Dominic Cooper, but he’s doing this deep voice, sort of old timey news anchor thing that he didn’t do in “Captain America: The First Avenger”.
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watched the premiere of what if aswell. I was pretty excited for this show as i love animation.
and marvel did a great job with this premiere, i feel a lot of the story and emotion hinges on you already knowing all these characters and what happens in the first cap movie, which makes a lotta scenes fall flat on their own. for example the train scene, in the first movie here is where bucky ‘dies’ so they have a callback to that in this episode, but the callback is so brief that it doesnt even register as a moment. and when steve is fake killed it doesnt hold any weight either as hes back in less then 5 minutes due to the short run time of the episode
the scenes also have 0 time to breathe which hurts the overall episode. voice-cast was solid, hayley atwell was the best one by far, and josh keaton did a great job as chris evans. the rest of the voice cast was lacking and i was often taken out of the experience by their shoddy voicework.
animation was really good, there were a few scenes where i wished they had some more wide-shots or establishing shots to give a sense of perspective and where the characters are as i felt like some fights had a lotta motion but without feeling the characters were actually moving around the battlefield. some of the explosions, though excellently animated felt like they sometimes came a bit too quick and were put on the wrong layer.
overall a great pilot, though i think this series will only really thrive with the more unique episodes.
6/10
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Well I REALLY loved this week’s What If episode.
- This episode was hilarious. So much fan-service twists. The running gag of Korath’s fanboyism of Star Lord, the constant justification from Thanos that “it’s not genocide, it’s efficient”, the actual fully-voiced use of Howard the Duck… man this episode had a lot. Even had a lot of MCU actors come in for one or two lines, and foe the main cast the voice acting had a lot better direction in this, IMO.
- I loved how it seemed to touch upon themes from so many of the movies. The found-family aspect of the Guardians films, the aspects of slavery and hate from Black Panther, the style of heist movies that was featured a bit in Guardians 1… I also liked how they incorporated some of the music from Black Panther.
- This episode took the plot and went craaaazy, rather than follow an alternate version of a movie’s events. The pacing was a bit better in that respect, probably because they were less confined to specific scenes they had to cover. Still felt quite fast though. Needs to be 45mins at the least.
- As Chadwick’s final role, this is really bittersweet. I think he did a good job in this voice acting gig, and this version of T’Challa he represented was really interesting. He helped bring peace to multiple worlds, gained plenty of fame (and gave us that awesome Korath scene). And he even talked Thanos down from genocide… wow, is that really what it would have all taken in Infinity War? Just shove em both in a room and they’d figure it out? :lol:
This definitely has me hyped for future episode, if they try to make bonkers stories like this.
I also like how Twilight-Zone this series feels, with bookending narration from The Watcher.
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Documentary fits into the TV format, right?
So this person makes a documentary about Bob Ross, Bob comes out mostly unscathed in the film. The controversy revolves around his name/brand after his death. This is what the director has to say:
“Whenever I tell friends or colleagues that I’m making a doc about Bob Ross, because they know my work and they know it’s usually pretty dark, they say, ‘Oh, my God, you’re going to ruin Bob Ross for me.’ I assure them that on the contrary, I think you’ll leave the movie perhaps loving him even more,” says director Joshua Rofé Vanity Fair Article
Netflix: What If we made a trailer that makes it look like Bob Ross did something unforgivable?
Wow. Just wow. Way to make a storm out of a teacup.
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2 reviews of 2 what if episodes
What if episode 2: excellent episode, great twist on the movie its what if-fing, fun action and comedy. 7/10
What if episode 3: god im dissapointed by this episode. If it finished when loki entered earth killed all of shield there. And on then kill nat where bruce is killed, i wouldve been more satisfied. Cause the ending where it is revealed that hank pym commited all these murders, and fury manages to convince loki to stop him felt very lazy, out of character and was full of bad writing imo. The further fact that only at the end when loki takes over earth in a less violent manner does fury call captain marvel. all in all very dissapointed in this episode with a decent to great first half and godawful second half 3/10. Im only giving it a 3 cause incredible hulk scenes with ruffalo instead of norton was fucking amazing and i wish they make a full animated retelling of incredible hulk that way with ruffalo. He deserves it. Also also if a 3 seems low, a 5/10 is average for me, like completely middle of the road.
A couple days ago I saw the Season 5 finale of Supernatural (aka the real, original ending to the show, as the showrunner left afterwards.)
Damn nice episode to what could have been the real end to the series. It’s a lot more emotional and has a sense of “everything led up to this climactic moment” rather than the actual series finale.
It’s Sam giving into Lucifer, unable to fight back, with Dean having to race against the clock to stop Michael from getting into a massive fight, all the while important characters like Castiel and Bobby are rendered useless by the devil’s power.
The culmination of everything into this fist fight between Dean and Devil-Sam was great, brutal, and emotional, as Dean tries to get through to his brother, and we’re shown a big montage of clips from previous seasons… ohh… it tugs at my heart-strings…
And Dean finally manages to settle down in the end, living that apple-pie life he’s been so afraid of… (then there’s a cliffhanger where Sam mysteriously reappears but ehh)
And I think I’m gonna stop there. This felt much more emotionally resonant and earned as an end point to the show than what I saw in the actual series’ end… Finally, I got through the main arc of Supernatural.
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My wife and I started watching Bad Blood on netflicks. It’s not the best gangster show I have seen. Certainly it’s not the same quality as Peaky Blinders, but it’s entertaining. Only two seasons now for a total of 14 episodes but they are an hour long each and it’s entertaining enough. Lots of stylistic nods to older gangster flicks (Paul Sorvino plays the retired boss and is always tending to him tomatoes, little things like that). Kim Coates is the lead and he gives a pretty solid performance. The main bosses mistress is played by Maxim Roy who I have never seen before but she puts in an excellent performance as well. Overall the acting, including smaller characters, is better than the writing. We’re enjoying it, but maybe that’s bc we’re pretty much out of anything worth watching.
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I have been wanting to check out Shades of Blue for a couple years and never got around to it.
The first episode starts off with a rush. J Lo is a NY cop who turns her rookie partners bad shoot into a good shoot, and then when he gets cold feet about the coverup she explains that they are family.
The next day she gets picked up by the FBI collecting a payoff an undercover agent posing as a bookie. The Feds give her the choice, go to gaol and talk to your kid from behind a glass wall or become their informant and help them get to the guy they really want (J Lo’s boss (family) played by Ray Liotta).
Ray is such a fantastic actor, Jennifer Lopez is always good. The guy who plays the FBI agent seems believable as a smart guy but who lacks experience. I’m hopeful the rest of the show is this good.
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Finally, a date for the new season of The Orville 
… but it’s not until March. 
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I knew tudum would be fantastic. Now it’s Disney’s turn to give some Mandalorian season 3 news.
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Mando3 and the Cassian Andor show too please!!!
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Holy crap!
Please be awesome, please be awesome, please be awesome. 
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I’ve recently watched Leonardo (2021) and despite it not getting the best of reviews I really enjoyed it. The creators accept that they’ve deviated from historical facts, but the cast, atmosphere, and storytelling are superb.
Another one I’m currently watching which has really drawn me in is Nine Perfect Strangers, based on the New York Times bestseller by Liane Moriarty.
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In Doctor Who news, Russell T Davies is returning to showrun the show for the 60th anniversary special and series beyond. He is the guy who brought back the show in 2005, ran it with Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant. Interesting stuff. I have some mixed feelings, but RTD is a very good writer and should be able to make the show last a few more years. Just not sure he’ll give me what I personally want from the show.
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My wife is watching Nine Perfect Strangers which means I am also watching it. It’s 10x better than I expected it to be. We’re really enjoying it so far.
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I just finished Infinity Train Season 3, and if you know that show… well, you know what happens…
The finale is an emotional rollercoaster and full of “Cartoon Network, what the hell?” moments. It’s dark. You are not prepared for how dark it gets.
After a season that balances the typical goofy antics of the train’s denizens with a big new injection of tension with the Apex, it comes to a head with some shocking imagery.
Simon is too far gone. Off the deep end of bigotry, righteousness and pretty evil behaviour, he manages to brainwash the kids into nearly killing Grace, then gets into a fight with her, and when given the chance – tries to boot her into the train’s wheels.
She survives, thankfully, but at the cost of Simon really losing it! In this awesome voice-acting take, where Simon goes through like 5 different emotions at once, he gets caught off guard by one of the Cronenberg Dogs, who you’d expect to suck his soul up, but no! It vaporizes him completely. Bones and all! You see each layer of him melting!
Cartoon Network, what the hell?!
I’ve heard that next season is supposed to be a breather for what Season 5 was planned to be – but too bad CN cancelled it. This is a really interesting PG series that somehow really skirts those guidelines.
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