Per Wikipedia,

The film was originally scheduled to be released on March 29, 2024

So 3 weeks… And three years. I hope they plan to release it someday Kif.

(But seriously, as long as it’s good like the first two I’ll be happy.)

instead of memories with my loved ones

thousands of memes

Maybe the memes are the loved ones. 😢

Ant-Man is such a fun film series, I really hope we get an Ant-Man 4 that is a real Ant-Man film with the full cast of characters, specifically Luis (Michael Pena) and Kurt (David Dastmalchian).

I wouldn’t. I do however want more “this guy is always showing up”. Coulson of SHIELD showing up everywhere during Phase One really helped connect everything together.

I hope Damage Control and some reoccurring characters can keep showing up whenever superhero stuff happens.

I would love if it were Valentina or Everett Ross, but those actors might be a little too big. Obviously Maria Hill COULD have taken on that role if not for a certain fever dream. Similarly had stories gone a different way Sharon Carter could have been a fun choice to keep popping up.

But if the answer is Damage Control, works for me.

Sounds like he was the intro villain to give the Fantastic Four some street cred, but then absent from the rest of the film, and then the rest of the film was just too much other stuff going on.

I hope it is just a straight 10 minute cut that they can add to the home release or as a single deleted scene.

Of course I would have loved a, the Fantastic Four is short on resources and has to team up with the bad guy they just defeated, story. But that doesn’t sound like the story we’re getting.

But importantly I’m a Malkovich fan, so I hope he’s back in the future.

Maybe a better way to look at it is Tony Stark then.

Prior to the events of the Iron Man film his guide was Obadiah Stane. The Stark company leaned heavily into weapons manufacturing. For Peter Parker it is more chasing Tony, so he does lean more heroic as a starting point. But for Tony, he has to learn from his own mistakes. Obviously Riri is ALSO chasing Tony, but goes about it differently and ends up in a different situation.

I dunno, for me it works.

I completely disagree. I also want to see her become a superhero, but what I saw here was a real person with “low stakes” problems.

She wanted her friend back. That’s a relatable problem. Now… She makes a deal with the devil to do that, but I get it. I don’t think she’s being set up as a villain. She didn’t do anything villainous. She did some bad things, but I don’t think she is a villain.

She is a hero who hasn’t figured out her way.

Think of Spider-Man during Homecoming. Now Spider-Man has the benefit of Iron Man, but think about if he didn’t. He tracked down the bad guys to a ship, that ship got cut in half and… it’s a complete disaster. Spider-Man got lucky.

Now think of Spider-Man in Far From Home. He hands EDITH to Mysterio. He gets help from “Nick Fury” & “Maria Hill”. He barely saves the day and at the cost of his identity being revealed.

Now think of Spider-Man in No Way Home. He nearly kills, arguably attempts to murder, the Green Goblin. Only a multiversal version of him is able to stop him.

Riri doesn’t have that. That’s her story. Sure she has family, but they don’t know what to do, they don’t know how to help. Riri is willing to take on more risk.

You have to learn to be a hero. To learn you need help. Riri will get there, but she has to make A LOT of mistakes along the way.

In terms of her future, I hope it is a Young Avengers type movie. I want her alongside these other people. I want her to learn and grow to make the “correct” decisions. But it isn’t going to be free. She’s made some bad choices, but that’s ok. She can learn, she can grow.

Whenever you send a card to get graded, no matter which grading service, they serialize every single card

Wouldn’t serializing a card “damage” the card and make it less valuable? I know the grading service wouldn’t say so, but that’s because they damaged it.

The moment they announced Cats I knew it wasn’t going to work.

First, the story sucks. A bunch of cats prancing around and learning not to be a dick to that one cat.

Second, Cats is a spectacle. The reason you go see Cats in a theater is for the spectacle. Everyone is dressed up and dancing around. It’s meant to be an experience. You can’t translate that to film.

Sure, but you’d have to find someone willing to talk about it. In fact you’d probably want to find at least 2-3 people who can all confirm the same story.

Plus if you can call it a scam right out of the gate (this article is a follow up to the original purchase article when the phone was first “released”) maybe you can limit the damage of the scam.

If you can spend $100 to rightfully call out a scam that would have made $1,000, is that a net win? That’s an honest question. I think so, but I understand that might not be the case.

First, when Mephisto is talking to Parker, Parker asks if he’s going to give him everything he wants. Mephisto responds, “No, I’m going to give you the tools.”

Second, while we never hear the exact terms of the deal, from either party, we get the ambiguous time jump where Riri has studied for months and created a new Natalie.

Riri thinks she has created a new AI Natalie, she even asks it to run diagnostics. Importantly she believes she brought Natalie back.

Now in this moment it looks like she’s rejected the deal. We see a bunch of formulas, some with mathematical notation, but also some that look like runes. Her magical knowledge might have come from working with Zelma.

But then we cut back. Riri and Mephisto talk more and it’s clear that Riri has taken Mephisto’s deal. This is further confirmed later when the scar grows on her arm.

The magical knowledge, at least in part, is a result of Mephisto and not Zelma.

Now maybe the deal only gave Riri the knowledge/power to revive Natalie, but even then she thought she was reviving AI Natalie and not real Natalie. As we saw with Parker the obsession seems to be consuming. I expect, like Parker, she won’t be able to just stop once Natalie is back. Riri, as repeated by Mephisto, wants to be “iconic”. Unfortunately “iconic” doesn’t mean “good”.

Her mom should be pissed that she revived Natalie but didn’t ask for Gary too.

Her mom was amazed when Natalie first appeared and later on in the series asked if she could build an AI Gary too.

Additionally Mephisto didn’t revive Natalie (at the end of the series), he gave Riri the tools to revive Natalie. It is possible Riri will revive Gary next. Riri also didn’t seem to fully understand what she created/revived because she didn’t expect that Natalie could touch her. I expect everyone is just going to be amazed at what Riri did.

As for paperwork, they live in a post-blip society with aliens, androids and wizards. Sure this is weird, but they’ll figure it out. In fact Natalie returning might get the attention of some big names like SWORD or Doctor Strange.

Reddit sorta half did it with the “other discussions” or duplicate tab.

As an example,

https://old.reddit.com/r/news/duplicates/1lvi6kb/a_clicktocancel_rule_intended_to_make_cancelling/

I never saw any apps implement it, but it does look like it was part of the API, but maybe it wasn’t robust enough.

I also know at one point, and possibly still, is that it lacked URL normalization. So for example, exanple.com/headline and example.com/headline#topstory would be treated as two different articles.

Similarly https://youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ and https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ

Would be treated as separate articles.

These are all fixable problems, but require work.

I agree that more time should have been spent developing characters. I got the vibe from several episodes that this was supposed to be an 8 or 10 episode series, but it was forced during editing down to 6.

I don’t think she’s supposed to be a hero or a villain. Look at where Tony Stark is at the start of Iron Man. He runs one of the worlds biggest weapons manufacturing companies. That’s not hero or villain. But he is being used by villains to do villainous things. That’s where Riri’s story is.

She’s trying to figure out life and what she wants is simple, she wants her friend back. She wasn’t planning on it, but it happened.

Apart from being rushed I thought the show really worked well.

The full quote is worth reading,

"I have no real intentions of going back. I say I’m not retired because if something special came up, I’d go back, but otherwise, no.”

He also goes on to say he has a special project that might come together, but it doesn’t sound like a priority.

Obviously he deserves retirement, he’s 80, take it easy.

However it sounds like a cameo or small part is still a possibility. His role in Endgame was fun and excellent use of the existing world. If he wants to keep on being a grumpy old man and have Michelle Pfeiffer take on a larger role in a future Ant-Man movie, I think that works. Just have him yell a few lines.

The marketing for this film has really been all in. It’s been fun and I wonder what else we’ll get before the premiere.

Per an article ~2 years ago Mahershala had been asking for script changes. No question that as an actor Mahershala is fantastic. Additionally I expect as an actor he can recognize when a script isn’t going to work.

Now he isn’t a writer, so it’s possible his suggested changes just made things worse. Knowing something isn’t working and fixing something that isn’t working are two different tasks. It’s also possible it just isn’t fixable.

It sounds to me like the film is probably back to the drawing board and Mahershala, while still attached, will have an option to exit once the new script is written.

It’s also possible that the film has been scrapped completely, but Disney isn’t ready to announce it just yet. I think that’s less likely, but possible.

Re Benedict Mephistobatch, it definitely didn’t sound like Sacha Baron Cohen at first, but I didn’t hear Benedict. I think The Hood/Parker makes a comment about his voice but I assume any voice change is just Mephisto finding which voice they find the most comfortable. When both Parker and Riri are sitting at the pizza table it’s clear they aren’t 100% there with the jarring camera cuts.

Re Dormammu summoning & agreements. I think that works out and I like it. I did a little digging and due to the events of Spider-man FFH and NWH we know those take place in 2024, and Multiverse or Madness right after also in 2024. Wakanda Forever has a deleted scene that has it starting in 2024, but since it has a “one year later” scene, would put it in 2025. Then Ironheart is supposedly six months after Wakanda Forever. However Multiverse of Madness ends with Strange growing a third eye, then the mid credits has him not worried about and utilizing the third eye. So that scene could have happened anytime. (Although that scene talks about incursions, but it could still tie in).

Re BARF I wonder if she built her own or borrowed and improved on Tony.

Re Taking the deal. As soon as she asked the clarifying question, “And you only want me, it will only affect me?” I knew she was going to take the deal. At that point she’s already accepted it in her head and was trying to talk herself out of it, but she couldn’t. It was such a great scene.

Re Generational Curse. I expect Mephisto helped Agatha obtain the Darkhold, but I think the family curse was just Agatha. Any manifestation of the curse that we saw was just Billy.

Re Mysterio. I hope he faked his death and returns someday. He’s one of my favorite villains.

Re Once in a lifetime genius. Shuri and Wakanda don’t make themselves known to the larger world. Outside of Wakanda few know who Shuri actually is and even if they do, she just has Wakanda technology, no one knows Shuri made it,

Re Natalie. Riri fails to create a duplicate Natalie after the first one is deleted in the magic deal. Riri has no idea why it fails a second time. To me this means someone else (Mephisto) was involved the first time. Second the new Natalie isn’t aware of the old Natalie or what is going on, which is to say a different Natalie, but I’m not sure Riri knows what she’s brought back since she was surprised Natalie could interact with her. Since one of the themes of the show was death/acceptance, I think she brought dead Natalie back.

Re Zeke. To destroy the flowers again. He hates flowers.

Re Connections. Also Thor and his hammer.

Lost 4 or had 4 total?

1. Wakanda Forever MIT Suit (Built before the film)
2. Wakanda Forever Wakanda Suit (Built with Shuri)
3. Ironheart MIT Suit (Student ID required)
4. Ironheart Car Suit (Family)

Also Tony did way better/worse in Iron Man 3 when he had them all self destruct at the end.