Monday, November 22, 2021

Episode 87: Thankful for the Marvel Cinematic Universe!

 


Welcome all, and to our fellow Americans, Happy Thanksgiving! It's become a tradition here at Planet 8 for us to celebrate and be thankful for some genre-related franchise, and in the past, we've been thankful for Star Trek, Star Wars, and James Bond. This year, we are expressing our love and gratitude for the magnificent Marvel Cinematic Universe -the MCU! Now with 26 films and climbing, not to mention the MCU TV series, we've been blessed with a bountiful collection of films that created a rich, complex, and deeply rewarding experience for the viewers. 

We'll have a conversation about our early experience with the MCU, when we first started hearing about Marvel making an Iron Man film, what we thought of it and how Marvel blew us away with that and the succeeding films. 

Casting has been a big key to making the films successful, and we'll talk about our favorite castings and the ones we thought might have been crazy, but actually worked out really well. 

Of course, no discussion of the MCU would be complete without going around and talking about which Marvel movies are our favorites! With so many to choose from now, it's getting harder to pick, but we do come up with a few. Amazingly, there are few MCU films that we don't like. There may be a few that we like less...but somehow they have kept a high level of quality through the series.

The crew also talks a bit about the latest MCU film, The Eternals, so if you haven't seen that film yet, be warned! And we can't neglect all the activity on Disney Plus - four series so far, and as this episode goes live, the Hawkeye series will be hitting the airwaves in a couple of days! Where else will the Marvel Cinematic Universe go? We can't wait to see.

For the Sensor Sweep, Bob shares information about a book by his friend Norman England, Behind the Kaiju Curtain: A Journey onto Japan's Biggest Film Sets. This book is a personal record of Norman's experiences while he wrote for Fangoria and was able to visit the sets of a number of kaiju films in a professional capacity. He met many of the actors and crew on the films and the book gives you an intimate look at what went on in the Japanese film industry in the 90s. If you like kaiju films, this is a must-read! Ask for it at your local bookseller, or get it at Amazon or Barnes & Noble

That's all for us this time. Listeners, we are also thankful for you! We appreciate you listening to us, commenting, subscribing, contacting us on Twitter and Facebook. It's great to feel a sense of community forming around Planet 8. We hope that you and yours are safe and well.

Avengers Assemble!!

2 comments:

  1. I'm happy with the MCU as well.
    As far as ranking them goes - and this seems to be a favorite pastime or perhaps obsession in many corners of comics and movie-going fandom - I usually shy away from that. Suffice it to say, there are some that I've liked better than others, but I can honestly say I didn't dislike any of them, and trying to rank them seems almost like a pointless (and thankless) task.
    I also agree with Larry (I think), who mentioned having a bunch of favorite scenes. I can really relate to that, and I can say that one of my absolute favorite scenes came in Iron Man 3 of all movies: the part when he saves all of those people who got sucked out of the airplane's fuselage. Truly a satisfying moment that encapsulates what superheroes are supposed to be about.
    Another great conversation, everyone.
    -Edo Bosnar

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  2. Hey Edo, nice to hear from you again!

    I agree, ranking is so hard, and especially with these films, my thoughts change so much, it's difficult to say which films I love the most. More than anything, I am still in awe that we have these films. I never would have thought I'd see these characters brought to life on the big screen so well.

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