I’ve always preferred the hodgepodge grandeur of Down on the Upside to those albums (which I still love).  It was cool to hear them try out different sounds and just mess around a bit. 

Not that Layne Stanley wasn’t a very important part of Alice in Chains, but they are still making music and released an album a few years ago that got rave reviews.  So they are still standing, too. 

Music critics and fans can be elitist and narrow minded pricks sometimes. I finally listened to Funstyle just this month. It was definitely an experience, but it had some good songs, and bad songs, and some weird songs.  

Millar’s Cap is the worst I’ve ever read. I was so happy that his blatant edgelord cynical commercialization of the property (including changing their name!) was practically ignored in favor of honoring the inherent optimism of the classic source material.

I agree. I theorized on another comment around here that Whedon’s formative Avengers experience was the Shooter run, which was very striking to me in how unpleasant Cap was when I read it. You’re not wrong about the drill sergeant aspect to his earlier appearances, but all these characters were written in more one…

I missed some of Whedon’s humor from JL. (Definitely not the Flash-WW joke, which he reused from AoU). While I appreciated the grandeur Snyder was going for and would prefer a movie length edit of his cut overall, some of the Whedon humor was a nice humanization.

I remember that now! I think his major contribution was the “I don’t like bullies” angle, possibly the “I can do this all day”.

At the time I don’t recall feeling this way about his Cap, but after seeing what Evans and other writers were capable of for the character in his solo movies and IW/Endgame, it just makes his Whedon showings seem even more off in retrospect.

Man, on my most recent rewatch that line was still a groaner but just stood out that much more for how gross it is. 

That Whedon does not know how to write a character with sincere earnestness is very spot on. It’s sort of a problem of his, even worse in Age of Ultorn, that EVERYONE talks in one-liners and jokes all the time.

I would grant your point if Avengers Cap didn’t feel off from his First Avenger and Winter Soldier appearances. It feels less like he changed in the interim between the first Avengers film and Endgame and more like Whedon didn’t write him well.

Cap is towards the bottom center. Directly right of Iron Man and directly left of Wanda. Don’t miss Vision in the upper left- they were trying not to spoil his look at the time.

Stuff like Joe Fixit and when Wolverine was running around Madripoor “disguised” as Patch, I just feel like no one around them is fooled but just don’t want to piss off the superhero cosplaying in their midst. 

It sounds like you are mostly disappointed by Whedon’s dialogue, which is more than fair. I like the one liners when they are relevant and work, much less so when they feel artificial and forced (which with every rewatch feels a little more).

With the destruction of an Eastern European country and the army of Ultron bots, the Age of Ultron movie owes a lot to the “Ultron Unlimited” story from the Busiek/Perez run. I hardly ever see anyone make that connection.

I think he already put in his time with the indie roles at the start of his career and is cashing in his pay day. He’ll go back to them, I’m sure.

It gets ragged on a lot (and it certainly deserves it for the subpar parts) but the parts that work are amazing spectacle and fun.  The good stuff outweighs the bad for me. 

The Thanos connection was a retcon, though, and he never really interacted with them. 

The ridiculous names is a stylistic choice- it’s Kirby.

The Eternals as a concept outside of the Marvel Universe (as Kirby intended) is actually interesting, as it gives them their own space to be heroes and connections to Earth’s past. When brought into the MU, they become just another secret sect of superhumans fighting a secret war with a secret group of villains. And…