And don’t forget Narcos, Pedro is great in that too. I heard he was an acting coach and after seeing a student’s audition tape for the role, he put in for Oberyn himself. Hope he sent that guy a nice bottle at some point.

He has a good role in the movie and yes I liked him in G.O.T.

I went into Prospect not knowing much about it aside from a trailer I saw several weeks ago, some great low key sci-fi with the sci-fi part almost unimportant. Reminded me of Moon (2009) another great, low key movie with the "sci-fi" almost being irrelevant, just the back drop to a good story.

Edit: Just looked up Moon on RT, 90%/89%

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/moon

So far there has not been a bad Disney/Marvel movie. Not one that I wouldn’t watch over again. Hopefully Captain Marvel is also great. I don’t like if she is the most powerful of all. That seems not the best because I’d think Hulk/Thor are more powerful. And mostly I don’t like most powerful type because I like how the characters have to overcome their weaknesses.

Funny have you all seen Avengers from SNL. Hawkeye is hilarious.

Not to be contrarian, but keep in mind that the critic/viewer spread on RT might represent several things. Could be that Disney has most reviewers in its pocket, or that most reviewers are identity politics die-hards who would never neg a movie with a strong female lead. On the other hand, there could be substantial voting by “viewers” that haven’t even seen the movie but strongly object to it on political grounds (outspoken feminist actor, female superhero, feminist marketing, etc.)

One thought would be to look at less “controversial” Disney films in RT to see if any show a similar spread - if not, the “Disney stooge reviewer” theory loses some juice.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/frozen_2013

90/85

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/antman

82/86

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ant_man_and_the_wasp

88/77

I picked this almost at random, I don't recall anything controversial about Ant-Man or Frozen and the scores more or less line up within reason. There is always going to be some movies critics like a little more and vice versa, the spread here is fairly small.

Captain Marvel is at 81/36, which shows something more along the lines of The Last Jedi which today stands at 91% critics, 44% public.

I would wager the public rating for TLJ is far more accurate than the critic rating and suspect the same for CM. Movies that have an agenda to be pushed get "help from the critics" which any half way decent movie doesn't require, see Frozen, Ant-man I and II. Several reviewers I trust (were talking years and years of reviews) all state the same thing.

The movie is flat, the actress comes across as boring, she has zero character arc, CM can do everything first shot, men are beat on in the movie while women can do no wrong.

Hell the trailers are boring as hell, Fury and the cat look more interesting.

We saw the same thing in The Last Jedi, Disney telegraphed from miles away they were going to do the same thing here and they did.

Want to see an interesting female character? See Prospect instead. Close as I'm going to get to a spoiler.

Thanks for pulling those - so it seems like the “Disney corrupts the judges” theory can be left to the side, and we’re back to either “the judges are biased liberals” or “many of the fan voters didn’t see the film but are attempting to manipulate the outcome for political reasons.” Or of course some combination of the two. I can’t think of a clever way to distinguish though.

I just checked a few pages of reviews at Rotten Tomatoes and all the people giving it negative reviews do seem to have watched the movie. Apparently they deleted 53,000 "1 star" reviews a couple days ago that were obviously politically motivated.... so even with 53,000 reviews deleted, the almost 10,000 they have right now are at about the same rating (it was down to 33, now it's at 36) and the reviews I read were mentioning scenes and plot twists from the movie.

So I think ultimately it's just coming down to a lot of people don't like the movie even if they're not aware of the political issues.

Disney very much can corrupt the judges when they wish to do so. They have in the past gone after critics who were too negative in regards to Disney. Shutting down the RT poll "are you going to see this movie" surprises me not a jot.

The Last Jedi is a clear case of "judge buying." there is no way in hell 91% of critics honestly thought it was a great movie when the public hated it so bad they refused to show up for Solo.

Edit: As an aside, Brie Larson AGAIN was brutally rude, hostile and condescending to fans who participated in a Wired Q&A press event a few days ago.

This is the new spokesperson for the Marvel Universe; a thin skinned, humorless ideologue with resting bitch face and no ass.

Just great. It was fun while it lasted.

By the way- Did you know who owns Rotten Tomatoes?

Fandango, a company dedicated to selling movie tickets (ponder that for a second, positive reviews sells tickets)

Who runs Fandango? Paul Yanover

Mr. Paul Yanover has been the President of Fandango Media, LLC since October 2012. Mr. Yanover served as Executive Vice President and Managing Director of Disney Online at The Walt Disney Company and Disney Interactive Media Group (now Disney Interactive, Inc.) since June 2006 until January 2011. Mr. Yanover served as Senior Vice President since December 2001 until June 2006 and General Manager of Walt Disney Parks & Resorts Online of Disney Interactive Media Group. ...

um, minor detail is that Fandango is actually owned by media competitors to Disney - Comcast and Warner bros. but don't let that get in the way of nice conspiracy theory....

So your saying some guy who worked for Disney upper management for years isn't putting his thumb on the scale time to time? Explain to me again why the "are you going to see this movie" poll was removed for a Disney production on Rotten Tomatoes? A competitor would relish making Disney squirm no?

Fandango is dedicated to getting "asses in the seats" it is where they make their money.

I'll point out this dynamic has been noted, several years ago.

https://gizmodo.com/fandango-will-probably-ruin-rotten-tomatoes-1759743925

"“Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes are invaluable resources for movie fans, and we look forward to growing these successful properties, driving more theatrical ticketing and super-serving consumers with all their movie needs,” Fandango President Paul Yanover said in a statement."

Its been noted anything below 3.5 stars on RT has problems showing up. Inherent conflict of interest here.

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut and never ask a movie site that sells tickets on the side if a movie is great.

Each to their own I suppose, but I think Brie Larson is extremely attractive, small arse and all IMHO. What I don’t agree with is her SJW agenda and disagree with most of the shit that spills from her mouth.

Saw the movie this evening - I'd give it a C overall. First 1/2, even a bit longer, I was quite bored. Movie picked up as it got more towards the finish line. I didn't find the movie really creative at all - it reminded me of a mash-up of many other movies and plots, and I struggle right now to find one thing about it that had some originality. My 9 year old who is an Avengers and Star Wars fan was pretty bored through the first half as well. The movie never really established anything remotely dangerous for the hero IMO. She basically had no weaknesses at all, which again made it so it seemed she was never in any real peril.

Bottom line for me is it reminded me of a "filler" episode of a TV series - something that wasn't up to par compared to other episodes, that really only acted as a bridge to fill in some overall arc and story-line bits.

Unlike others - I actually had some pretty high expectations for this one - but left feeling a bit disappointed. And it's true, the cat is pretty much the best part of the movie.

Ah, the old Superman conundrum. They were smart enough to give Superman 1 weakness; he wouldn't kill people or let people be killed, so you could manipulate him into all kinds of strange situations by kidnapping Lois Lane, for instance... or putting him in a situation where he had to choose to let 1 live and 1 die, etc.

The Dark Herald covered the "overpowered hero" angle just a few days ago. God-like heroes are difficult to write ultimately because they are boring to the reader, where is the challenge? Superman is a humble guy to some degree who can be taken out by Kryptonite or as you pointed out using innocents against him. It gives the character some depth and suspense in the story.

https://darkherald.net/2019/03/06/blogs-and-ends-march-2019/

In other news, 40,000+ reviews on Rotten Tomatoes go missing yesterday..

captain-marvel-user-reviews-rotten-tomatoes (resized).jpg

Who’s stronger Captain Marvel or Rey?

A good number of those must also have been bogus positive reviews to explain the (relatively minor) % shift. Seems fine if RT is protecting their system by removing clear shill votes.

I cannot claim to have done a comprehensive study, but as a consumer of various media sources I’ve now seen a good number of “it’s great there’s now a female lead in the Marvel universe, but the movie was blah” (NPR and Slate leap to mind). I wonder if RT codes that type of review as “fresh”? If so it would wrongly skew the results IMO, since they’re not saying the movie is any good, just that they’re happy women are getting in on the mediocre superhero flick gig.

I'm not sure I follow you, it went from being 31% to 43% which indicates they removed far more negative than positive votes. Flipping through a page or two of viewer ratings several people indicated that their 2 and 3 star ratings had been removed and in one case a person left a 5 star just so they could complain their 2 star one had been erased.

And yes I chuckled at a number of reviewers who gave the backhanded compliment about how women now have a mediocre flick.. I guess they all forgot about Halle Berry in Catwoman, Helen Slater in Supergirl or Jennifer Garner in Elektra (A trilogy no less!)

If they chopped 40k votes (leaving only 14k) and they were all negative, I’d expect much more than a 12% shift. But I am concedely not a mathematician.

I saw CM this weekend. Suppose I went out of habit because I've never missed a marvel movie in theaters. I wasn't expecting much, and I was correct. Just found the story to be pretty weak overall, and outright boring in some parts (especially at the farmhouse). The character just isn't that interesting overall, she is clearly super-powered & has no weaknesses really. Those factors just don't lead to great character development (sound familiar?). I'm not sure it would have made any difference if another actress was playing the role either.

Still made $155M opening weekend. Saw a lot of parents with their little girls in the theater, which is what I was expecting. But I wouldn't recommend it to a casual viewer. I'd say it was a bottom 3 Marvel movie. Just not very memorable at all.

Nick Fury was the best part of the whole movie. The worst part was what they did to that poor Space Invaders pinball machine. How many of you instantly knew the pin was Space Invaders when it first appeared blurry in the background (raises hand). And I don't think that was an original backglass, looked too "cartoony" to me. And the only time I laughed out loud the whole movie was Fury's pinball joke, something like... "Shit I'd have the high score too if was stuck on this station for 6 years"

Also watched Prospect Thumbs up, really enjoyed it! There are a lot of limited budget Sci-fi movies out there that fall flat, but this one was really good.

I feel tricked for having clicked on that link to discover one of the saddest sites on the internet.

Writer has some pretty good insights about story writing and Hollywood in general.

Thanks for the review, I trust your review more than anything on the web.

no comment.

Well I still need to watch your suggestion Mandy. Goes both ways!

Yeah, I was pretty underwhelmed by the character. She played it pretty straight-faced, kind of dour and without much to make me like her. Also she didn't really face anything she didn't immediately destroy, zero struggle and infinite powers. Just "bleh".

Which is too bad, the comic character is pretty snarky and sarcastic. Would have liked to see more of that. I guess I prefer the funny movies.

So according to IMDB the total number of reviews for Captain Marvel, after one hour of opening, exceeded the number of reviews during the entire theatrical run of Avengers Infinity Wars. If that's true, that does seem to be somewhat fishy.

Disney will soon own X-Men, Fantastic Four, Deadpool, Daredevil not to mention The Simpsons and Avatar (4 future movies). Let's how they don't get too mired in the SJW movement.

Nothing to see here, just move along..

199897_e0a (resized).jpg

Can’t tell what the date on those are, but hopefully they were among the 40k reviews culled for being fake. The ratio of real to fake reviews on this one does seem pretty extraordinary.

It worked. The Cheeto gorging bovine American public yet again handed their money to the Mouse so they could waddle in and get their hit of social justice indoctrination. But cool effects, right? I didn't see the movie how did that butt double look? You can't have social justice unless the female lead has a nice round butt in a tight suit. Just ask Black Widow she'll tell you. Look at the movie poster. The male characters displaying their powers, the female character displaying her...assets.
a1 (resized).jpga2 (resized).jpg

Anyone catch the new Avengers trailer this morning?

Perhaps I'm becoming hypersensitive to this stuff now. Found the very end to be interesting. So it's pretty clear that the fans generally don't like Captain Marvel, but Thor has officially declared that HE like her, therefore WE are supposed to like her too now?

I was hoping she was going to come in at the end & help save the day, but based on the trailers & post-credits scene I think she's an integral part of this film. That's not really encouraging.

Full disclosure: If she's able to pick up Thor's hammer I'm going to lose it. And I'm 90% sure that's going to happen, you know, just because she's awesome & can do anything #marysue #girlpower #feminism

I really hope she doesn't ruin Endgame.

EDIT: Oh wait that's actually Stormbreaker (Thor's Axe) in this film. Technically not Mjolnir (Thor's Hammer). Of course she can pick it up. hahaha

Disagree - coming in at the end and helping save the day would be the very definition of Mary Sue. It's actually better that she would be integrated and not swoop in at the end when all seems lost. It also lends one to believe she won't be OP and be able to defeat Thanos basically herself. And, honestly, I don't think the EG directors would even do that - they understand how important it is for the original characters to be heavily involved in defeating Thanos, and not a newcomer. I'm pretty sure we'll see a full team effort at the end.

I have heard of this in various comment sections but was waiting for more confirmation.

https://boundingintocomics.com/2019/03/13/new-reports-of-empty-theaters-at-captain-marvel-add-to-movies-controversy/

Several sites have noted people reporting empty theaters, but lots of tickets sold.

Disney also opened almost worldwide which is unusual, unless you are trying to pump the "opening weekend numbers"

Check this out! I WANT ALL OF YOU TO DO THIS AND POST IT. I just went to my local theater online. Tonight: Friday night 8PM Captain Marvel. Should be the hottest time and the hottest night for a movie. There are SIX seats sold right now. Holy **** lol.

CM (resized).jpg

Some notes:

1. Your theater has regular showings, IMAX showings, DBOX showings, DBOX 3D showings (nice theater!).
2. You theater is playing this movie 29 times today, almost every 30 minutes from 11am-11pm there is a showing.

I think it's a bit misleading to say your theater has only sold 6 seats to the hottest time and night of the movie, when your theater has chosen to show it 28 other times today. In comparison, a family movie geared towards children that just opened up yesterday, WonderPark, only has 8 showings for the entire day.

Notes noted

In comparison this same theater showed The Force Awakens 30 times a day and it was sold out/nearly sold out for at least three weeks. Looks like Captain Marvel fell off the cliff. I'll keep an eye on when the theater cuts back the 30 showings a day to half or less than half that.

I just checked multiple showings at this theater:
6:00-8 tickets sold
7:00-15 tickets sold
7:30-40 tickets sold (someone bought a block of 30 seats. will they show up?)
8:00-6 tickets sold
8:30-8 tickets sold
9:00-8 tickets sold

Yeah it's a nice theater. We saw Tron in 3D Imax when it came out. Maybe my favorite movie going experience in quite a while. AMC theaters are down the road. Not as nice a theater but they have those damn nice oversized EZ chairs that recline! You have any of those?

Bahhaaa, so much for wholesome family entertainment.... Cha-ching!

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/james-gunn-back-as-guardians-galaxy-3-director-1195066

They can't win ... I've seen mostly praise about this, as it's very rare for a large company to backtrack on a decision like this, especially since it seemed so permanent regardless of fans desires.

Yeah, they fired him over decades-old edgelord bullshit. Bringing him back was the right thing to do.

Screw him, I saw those tweets, this guy is a creep.

Based on their tweets, seems like at least some of the cast may have been willing to sit out over Gunn losing the director spot. I think that, not "fan desires," would have been the bigger factor for Disney. At best 5% of viewers know who directs a big-budget action movie, but everyone would notice immediately if Star Lord or Drax was recast or didn't turn up in the new flick.

Captain Marvel should be 'like' Ant-man not a major hit like Avengers. I think Black Panther broke out and people are expecting every movie to be like BP, but that should not be the case IMO.

Agreed. And looks like Captain Marvel is currently at $600m worldwide to Antman’s final $520m, so it will check that box. If it approaches $1 billion I’d be shocked, that would be insane for a C-list character like this.

I more or less liked Captain Marvel. I thought it had a certain sort of Iron Eagle silliness that could have been avoided with an older looking actress. I was hoping for a more credible explanation as to why this character hasn't been mentioned in the last ten years. Fury had numerous other occasions to push the button before Infinity War.

https://cosmicbook.news/disney-manipulated-captain-marvel-perception

1) Exactly, why didn't Fury page Captain Marvel when aliens were invading New York? Pretty much end of the world stuff right there.

2) The "McGuffin" people were chasing after had already been determined by a prior movie to be somewhere else NOT where it was found. This could be attributed to some vagueness though. In the comics it is more definitive.

3) Origin name of super team retconned.

4) The missile scene was ludicrous as was much of the third act.

5) Fury losing his eye time frame contradicts movie canon, See Winter Soldier.

6) Meeting aliens time frame retconned (See Thor)

7) Shield name used... decades before Iron Man introduced then as “Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division."

The first act of the movie is rather flat, the middle is better and the third act is more than a touch ridiculous. The only time Brie comes across as genuine was in the Stan Lee cameo for some reason. She can do anything including hacking a game boy and pay phone to make intergalactic phone calls on a planet she has no memory of being on before.

Mary-Sue to the extreme.

Jackson was the star of the show, the cats role way over-rated.

Skrull guy was pretty entertaining too.

Edit: And yes there is a strong anti-male message through the whole movie.

The guy is a creep and I'll not rehash what has already been flogged to death here. Provided plenty of evidence, I'd not trust the guy within 50 feet of a child. GOG was an awesome movie, doesn't change my opinion of the guy an ounce.

I agree with someone else who had an insightful thought on another site.

Gunn was never fired.

Oh they said he was but in reality he was not. There was no effort to dump the script he wrote for GOG3 nor was there any real effort to find another director. Disney just didn't want anything that could potentially screw up the Fox acquisition. Now that it is all but in the bag it is safe to "rehire" Gunn.

Makes perfect sense all things considered.

I’m not following you on this portion. How could Gunn, one way or the other, have had an impact on the Fox acquisition?