Agatha All Along - September 18th

[The Gnat]

(cross posting from the MCU thread)

Now that the show has a real trailer to it, needs a thread. Trailer definitely has some very good horror to it and I like the feeling of unsettling that feels right for following-up on WandaVision.

 

[Jakuvious]

This looks fine, I'm just getting more and more into the camp that I'm having a hard time caring. Like, this is a perfectly reasonable and solid trailer but still not quite good enough to make me actually get excited for the show. And the character/premise alone certainly isn't enough for that either. If it comes out and everybody says it's fantastic, then I'll get hyped, but I kind of just won't feel any of that until then, I think.

[Broncofan]

23 hours ago, Jakuvious said:

This looks fine, I'm just getting more and more into the camp that I'm having a hard time caring. Like, this is a perfectly reasonable and solid trailer but still not quite good enough to make me actually get excited for the show. And the character/premise alone certainly isn't enough for that either. If it comes out and everybody says it's fantastic, then I'll get hyped, but I kind of just won't feel any of that until then, I think.

The problem is we've seen side characters / smaller hero TV stories really fail to catch any real momentum.   Some of them are actually decent story-telling wise, but they're such small stakes, it doesn't matter as much (Echo).  Others have been just absolute trash (Secret Wars, She-Hulk).   Loki S2 was outstanding, and Hawkeye was great,  but they're really part of the Phase 1-3 goodness.   Ms. Marvel was the only original TV series I enjoyed, but the Marvels movie didn't really keep the momentum going (although I thought she was one of the few bright spots in a mediocre movie).   It hasn't helped that the movies other than GOTG3 (again part of the Phase 1-3 goodness) have fizzled.   Quantumania was downright awful, and while I don't hate Marvels as much as some do, it's definitely not great, or even good.  

And the fact that Wanda's story of pain and suffering / sublimation of her grief was changed to a pretty by-the-book-Black-Hat role (mega-powered, but still standard) in MoM, really takes away a lot of the momentum that series was trying to build.     So I share the total lack of interest that it's must-watch TV.    Worse, MoM almost eliminates the need to see WandaVision for future payoff, because they basically negated her character growth by killing her off, and without much, if any real impact on Strange himself (and yes, I know they can always bring her back, but that then creates the "no-consequences" pitfall when characters are resurrected that hero stories are fraught with when they go that route - so it's a lose-lose scenario with MoM).   

Feige & co. built up so much good will with Phase 2-3, they got a pass for Phase 4 with my viewership, I watched every one with an open mind going in.   Phase 5 has ended the automatic goodwill with me.  And I'm a pretty forgiving viewer, so I can only imagine how others might feel. 

Trailer-wise, having Plaza should help, and it might be a decent series.   But I'm not compelled to watch for sure.  

Edited July 9 by Broncofan

[D82]

 

46 minutes ago, Broncofan said:

The problem is we've seen side characters / smaller hero TV stories really fail to catch any real momentum.   Some of them are actually decent story-telling wise, but they're such small stakes, it doesn't matter as much (Echo).  Others have been just absolute trash (Secret Wars, She-Hulk).   Loki S2 was outstanding, and Hawkeye was great,  but they're really part of the Phase 1-3 goodness.   Ms. Marvel was the only original TV series I enjoyed, but the Marvels movie didn't really keep the momentum going (although I thought she was one of the few bright spots in a mediocre movei).   It hasn't helped that the movies other than GOTG3 (again part of the Phase 1-3 goodness) have fizzled.   Quantumania was downright awful, and while I don't hate Marvels as much as some do, it's definitely not great, or even good.  

And the fact that Wanda's story of pain and suffering / sublimation of her grief was changed to a pretty by-the-book-Black-Hat role (mega-powered, but still standard) in MoM, really takes away a lot of the momentum that series was trying to build.     So I share the total lack of interest that it's must-watch TV.    Worse, MoM almost eliminates the need to see WandaVision for future payoff, because they basically negated her character growth by killing her off, and without much, if any real impact on Strange himself (and yes, I know they can always bring her back, but that then creates the "no-consequences" pitfall when characters are resurrected that hero stories are fraught with when they go that route - so it's a lose-lose scenario with MoM).   

Feige & co. built up so much good will with Phase 2-3, they got a pass for Phase 4 with my viewership, I watched every one with an open mind going in.   Phase 5 has ended the automatic goodwill with me.  And I'm a pretty forgiving viewer, so I can only imagine how others might feel. 

Trailer-wise, having Plaza should help, and it might be a decent series.   But I'm not compelled to watch for sure.  

Yeah, this is where I'm at. The whole growth of Wanda being completely undone with MoM really ruined a lot for me. 

I want to have some faith they'll turn it around and start making good movies with good stories again, but their recent string of misses don't give me a lot of hope. 

I may watch this if I get bored but I'm not going to be eagerly awaiting its release. 

[Kiltman]

9 hours ago, D82 said:

 

Yeah, this is where I'm at. The whole growth of Wanda being completely undone with MoM really ruined a lot for me. 

I want to have some faith they'll turn it around and start making good movies with good stories again, but their recent string of misses don't give me a lot of hope. 

I may watch this if I get bored but I'm not going to be eagerly awaiting its release. 

They basically have admitted defeat it seems on maintaining huge swaths of continuity of characters between film and the shows.

Going back to a more separate feel than they had the first couple years of the D+ world Disney wanted them to do.

I’ll be plenty happy if we are getting the street level stuff like daredevil, side character exploration that can have stakes and maybe the rare intro series if they have plans for the character in the the immediate future. 

Liked Moon Knight but like when the hell is he showing up? Problem with the films recently too where they don’t have rapid successive plans for people. People got attached when they got to routinely see characters. Where is Shang-Chi? Where is Kate Bishop? Where is (insert name here)?

You add in fumbling scripts (Blade), reshoots (Cap4) or entire movies (ThorLaT), I get the pessimism.

That said I’m excited for Agatha, Hahn was delightful in Wandavision and look forward to a dark campy side story.

 

[THE DUKE]

There are ideas in the trailer I like, but nothing in that trailer told me why I should be interested in her character.

[The Gnat]

Starts tomorrow and I'm very excited.

Trailers have been looking great. And I love that it's a double drop to start and a double drop to end on October 30th.

[Kiltman]

Like the vibes from those first two episodes 

[MKnight82]

On 7/9/2024 at 8:48 PM, Kiltman said:

Problem with the films recently too where they don’t have rapid successive plans for people.

This is their biggest problem IMO. They shouldn't have spent so much time with all of these new random characters. The should have done something familiar and rolled right into a new captain america movie or something like that. Right now they've just been introducing new character after new character but not doing anything with them. Its like when the Walking Dead tv show got bogged down in later seasons because they had too big of a cast. You'd go 3 weeks before you'd see Rick again. Just stick with the gravy train that has keep this machine going why do they have to push all this other crap out right now. 

[Kiltman]

37 minutes ago, MKnight82 said:

This is their biggest problem IMO. They shouldn't have spent so much time with all of these new random characters. The should have done something familiar and rolled right into a new captain america movie or something like that. Right now they've just been introducing new character after new character but not doing anything with them. Its like when the Walking Dead tv show got bogged down in later seasons because they had too big of a cast. You'd go 3 weeks before you'd see Rick again. Just stick with the gravy train that has keep this machine going why do they have to push all this other crap out right now. 

Yeah

in a vacuum I get it. Downey, ScarJo and Evan’s hanging up their characters, rights not totally theirs for the Hulk and Spider-Man. 

There was a need to replenish the roster. 

Chadwick dying obviously screwed up their plans for him to be the face of the next saga. Covid prolonging everything. Lots there that messed with their plans.

But they should’ve pivoted earlier and at the very least announce where some of the characters would show up again. 

They haven’t outright failed every release, but it was definitely harder transition than I think anyone thought from the “home runs” of phase 3 to the “singles and doubles” of phase 4 & 5. The inverse of like one miss in Cpt Marvel to like two or three big hits with double the output leads to a lot of the hate train.

[THE DUKE]

Hmm, hasn't grabbed me through two episodes.  The end of episode two was at least a little cool, but i've yet to see a reason why I should care about any of them.

[The Gnat]

17 hours ago, THE DUKE said:

Hmm, hasn't grabbed me through two episodes.  The end of episode two was at least a little cool, but i've yet to see a reason why I should care about any of them.

I care about Agatha and that's enough. And then with the Teen, I am intrigued by that character and what's his story. So I'm definitely in on it. We're not supposed to care about the other characters yet, in my opinion, because Agatha doesn't care about them at all. The Teen cares about them because he cares about all witches, it seems, but we're being rushed into knowing them because Agatha doesn't care. She's doing what she always has done, she's working the system for her own end.

I thought that they did a solid job of explain Agatha and where she is at the start of the show compared to the end of WandaVision. And to me it made good sense in terms of what she was trying to do with the coven and the Witches Road. And I'm excited to see where the Witches Road leads because I think that could be fun. I'm excited to see what other witchy things they pull from for media.

[THE DUKE]

4 minutes ago, The Gnat said:

I care about Agatha and that's enough. And then with the Teen, I am intrigued by that character and what's his story. So I'm definitely in on it. We're not supposed to care about the other characters yet, in my opinion, because Agatha doesn't care about them at all. The Teen cares about them because he cares about all witches, it seems, but we're being rushed into knowing them because Agatha doesn't care. She's doing what she always has done, she's working the system for her own end.

I thought that they did a solid job of explain Agatha and where she is at the start of the show compared to the end of WandaVision. And to me it made good sense in terms of what she was trying to do with the coven and the Witches Road. And I'm excited to see where the Witches Road leads because I think that could be fun. I'm excited to see what other witchy things they pull from for media.

I don't even care all that much about Agatha at this point.  She was a solid foil in WandaVision, but if she took a shotgun blast to the head at the start of episode 3 and it turns out that Debra Jo Rupp was in fact Agatha All Along, it wouldn't be that much different for me at this point.

[D82]

I think I'll wait until the full season is released and give it a watch...there's nothing I've seen or heard so far that tells me it's a "must watch".

[INbengalfan]

21 hours ago, D82 said:

I think I'll wait until the full season is released and give it a watch...there's nothing I've seen or heard so far that tells me it's a "must watch".

Same