Marvel Studios: What If?

[mr. excellent]

Rereading my initial reaction, I can't say that I feel the same way. Most of the season ended up being a disappointment for me. Mostly because of the pacing. I felt like the story never quite unfurled the way it could have. That said, the last 2 episodes were nuts.

I think the praise that I heaped onto the first two episodes was misplaced, and would've been more appropriate for those last 2 episodes. Now obviously, they wouldn't have the same punch they do for me had I not seen all the episodes leading up to it, but still. Those final 2 episodes went nuts, and I felt the story was told in a much smoother fashion. Hopefully season 2 gets the pacing right in each episode.

[mr. excellent]

Honestly, even with my newfound cynicism, this looks good. I hope that the story in each episode is actually told in a way that feels complete. Ya know, like an actual episode of television. Based on this trailer though, I am excited to see everything from the trailers play out. It all looks awesome to me at first glance.

[mr. excellent]

Okay, so here are the episodes I am most anticipating of the 9 we are getting, in the order I am anticipating them

What If...?
5) Strange Supreme Intervened
4) Iron Man Crashed Into The Grandmaster
3) The Avengers Assembled In 1602
2) Kahhori Reshaped The World <-- this and the Hela episode swap for me on any given day
1) Hela Found The Ten Rings

I am excited to see how these episodes favor once they've all dropped. In general, I think this series would be better as an anthology of 55-70 minute episodes *like Black Mirror*, with fewer episodes to really focus on telling a more complete story. Thirty minutes just isn't enough time to present a story with the philosophy of "show, don't tell". For episodes 1 and 2 though, those in and of themselves could be their own limited series. Like, those ideas would actually justify the 6 hour runtimes of Phase 4's Disney+ shows.

Hela finding the Ten Rings is immeasurably exciting to me. Imagine her leading the charge with the Mandarin and continuing her bloodthirsty conquest of the universe with Earth as her Home base instead of Asgard. Borrowing a little from DC, I could see advanced, hidden nations like Talocan and Wakanda joining forces and rising up to stop Hela from making the Earth the scourge of the universe *read: bringing unwanted attention*.

Also, the potential of that Kahhori episode has me so excited I don't even know where to begin. That concept is just wild, and after seeing something like this year's "The Predator", I would love to see more of various Native American culture's explored thru a sci fi lens.

[BackinBlack]

Personally my most anticipated is "What if Peter Quill Attacked Earth's Mightiest Heroes?", cause I like the idea of a late 80's/early 90's Avengers team being formed of the previous generation with T'Chaka, Hank Pym, etc.

I'm also wondering if this season will continue to the trend last year of Tony repeatedly dying. I know he'll be safe in the Grandmaster one since that was the holdover from last year and we saw that version in the finale.

[mr. excellent]

I think that one is next BIB. I love this one episode per day drop. Regarding yesterday's episode... I liked it. Hindsight may change my opinion, but it actually delivered exactly what I was asking for. A mostly self contained story that required minimal "telling" to the audience and mostly "showing". I thought Jeffrey Wright's narration was spot on and used perfectly, not too much, not too little. The cell shaded style animation looks better now than it did last season, and the voice acting was great! Seriously, one of my biggest gripes about last season is that the excitement of having the live action voice actors coming back to voice their animated counter parts only highlighted how different live action acting is from voice acting.

My wife and I really enjoyed this first episode. While we agreed that some of it was a little cheesy, it also felt like it was intentional and the level of cheese was crafted with care so as not to be too over the top. I can only hope that the rest of the season is just as good and also that subsequent episodes can outdo the first. How sad would it be if the first two episodes were the peak of the season?

Sidenote: Screenrant has a good review of season 2 up. While I don't enjoy that site as much as I used to in the 2009-1016 era, I'm glad it's still around in some form. I'll post the link below
screenrant.com/marvels-what-if-season-2-review/