Actually ended this episode of Wandavision saying out loud “Really? Is that it?”.
With a stupidly long ‘previously on…’ and seemingly 8 hours of end credits – this episode must only be about 15 minutes long.
I am generally getting a tad bored with all the ball tickling foreplay this series is constantly giving me. I’m actually starting to question if it is such a good idea for Marvel doing so many TV series after all. At least with the movies they seem more constrained to 2-3hrs of story telling, so there’s a balance with economy of story and world building. Here the focus seems to be on padding.
At the beginning I had high hopes for this episode. But my goodness was it just ‘meh’. I’ll come back to the beginning later in the review.
First off let me get this rate out of the way: how disrespectful of Disney / Marvel to rerun the past three weeks ‘just for kicks’. Yes, it was a clever idea. Yes, your committee of witty writers came up with some lovely one liners – but all you’ve done is broaden your story, not expand on your story. There should have been at least 10-15 minutes extra of this episode (possibly debriefing Monica Rambeau more in some medical tent?). Because to just redo the same stuff we’ve spent two weeks already going through and investing in, was genuinely bullshit. If this was Doctor Who, this would be the ugly duckling ‘cheap’ episode of the series. Nothing of any real value was gained from this episode as a whole.
And let’s discuss why Disney / Marvel won’t expand on the running time: Because the series is clearly edited to be broadcast somewhere and fit a 30-min run time (with ads)… Completely defeating the object of having a streaming platform.
On another note, why on earth was last week’s episode corrected on Disney+ for proper English, but not this week’s?
However…
The introduction of this episode was brilliant. To start off so strong, and later piss on it from a great height, is so frustrating. But I digress. Monica Rambeau is a brilliant character. From what I have seen so far, she is amazing. How has Marvel created such a decent character from the same film that created such a train wreak as Captain Marvel? It is however, a shame we aren’t going to see more of the younger Rambeau character / actress, as that little girl’s acting was a genuine highlight to that film.
Even the ‘comedy’ was just ‘meh’ this episode. Clearly asking about if someone wants kids, then ‘oh no, I was offering you food’, was SO cringy I almost got whiplash from shivering so hard. I liked that when Rambeau was being rejected, she broke through 4 walls – a nice wink to the audience there. Woo is enjoyable throughout. But feel Darcy Lewis became more annoying than witty as the episode went on. When a character like that is written well, then it’s amazing – unfortunately seems like the writing A, B and C teams were unavailable for her lines.
I appreciate that Wandavision as a series is setting up the next Spider-Man 3 and leading to Dr Strange 2 – so certain rules need to be established. However, this info-dump seems to have been done to despite an actual decent story. Also, from reading some over-hyped positive comments and reviews concerning this episode is baffling me. To the point I am questioning if we were watching the same episode.
Predictions / Confusions
As I have no idea about the background or the comic books this is based upon, I thought it would be fun to predict what could be happening next. Feel free to comment below your own predictions / review and play along – BUT LIKE ME, NO SPOILERS! 😛
- The Acting Director bloke is dodgy to the point he is going around with a flashing neon light pointing at him shouting “LOOK AT ME, I’M A BAD GUY”.
- Is Vision a reanimated animated corpse? Probably too dark for Disney, but I enjoyed the sudden ‘slip of the ideal’ Wanda is living in. Possibly as she was slightly drained from using her powers on Rambeau?
- I predicted that maybe the “fast guy from the Xmen” franchise would end up being Wanda’s son – as it would be a cool way of blending the Fox and Disney/Marvel universes together. But turns out, that was not ‘Speed’ (name of the son) but ‘Quicksilver’ Wanda’s brother – which obviously has been featured in the films already. Oops! 😆
Remember: I’ve never read the comics, so just trying to work it all out from the films / series. - Notice how little I can predict, as so little actually happened.
WandaVision - S01E04
Pros
- The first 2mins was purely wonderful
- Monica Rambeau - very excited to see where she goes from here
Cons
- Really starting to feel Marvel is padding out to meet it's 9 episode target
- Very little of the overall story (again)
0 Comments
1 Pingback