There are more things in the Parable than Stanley knows about. [Blank Scripts AU]

Marvel’s What If…? Episode 1 Review: Peggy Carter Changes MCU History

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This review contains spoilers for What If…? episode 1.

What If…? is the latest Marvel Studios small screen project to arrive on Disney+ after much fanfare. The animated anthology show, created by Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia writer A.C. Bradley and Marvel storyboard vet Bryan Andrews, aims to explore alternate timelines in the MCU multiverse. In order to fully grasp the basic premise of What If…? as a whole it helps to have watched Marvel’s Loki, which recently introduced the multiverse to the MCU.

What If…? episode 1, “What If… Captain Carter Were The First Avenger?,” focuses on a (mainly) WWII-era version of Peggy Carter who made a key alternate choice that affected the creation of Captain America in a major way.

It’s a fun episode! Your mileage may vary depending on how much you love Peggy Carter, but since I love her a whole lot I had a good time watching this. The main downside, I suspect, to any of these installments, is that they’re inherently redundant. As far as we know, none of the fantastical concepts here will bleed into the live-action MCU. But if you’re here for a good time and not a long time, What If…? should make for a neat weekly diversion.

Our What If…? reviews are going to adopt a different format. More of a “breakdown” that we hope will still satisfy regular readers but also help younger viewers and those less familiar with the MCU keep up.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at “What If… Captain Carter Were The First Avenger?”

Required viewing

In terms of understanding the central characters and how things changed inside the branch timeline featured in this first episode, we would recommend revisiting Captain America: The First Avenger, Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter, and the opening act of The Avengers. If you’re on a full Peggy Carter binge, why not add both seasons of ABC’s live-action Agent Carter series to your watchlist, too?

What’s different?

This episode explored what would have happened if Steve Rogers was unable to take the super soldier serum during World War II and Peggy Carter volunteered to become Dr. Abraham Erskine’s lab rat instead.

Peggy’s “what if…?” was deciding to stand her ground and stay in the room while the serum was administered during the iconic transformation sequence featured in Captain America: The First Avenger. She then had a chance to intervene in the Hydra bombing, but Steve got caught up in the action and was subsequently shot.

With time running out to perform the super soldier process, Peggy jumped into the machine and went on to become Captain Carter, having all the physical powers of Captain America along with a different costume and an altered shield with a Union Jack at its center.

Steve was badly injured and had to undergo intense physiotherapy while Peggy trained to be the best she could be. Their relationship blossomed and, thanks to Howard Stark, Steve took on the role of her sidekick in a Tesseract-powered Hydra Stomper – basically an early version of the Iron Man suit. Meanwhile, Peggy faced interference from Colonel John Flynn, who was regularly on hand to pour out a stream of misogyny regarding her place in the fight.

In a familiar First Avenger train sequence, Peggy went on an altered mission with Steve, Bucky Barnes and the Howling Commandos to take out the Red Skull, however it was Steve who ended up falling from the train in this timeline and not Bucky, so it stands to reason that Bucky wouldn’t then go on to become the Winter Soldier.

Other more minor changes include Peggy probably not making out with her own niece during any Civil War shenanigans in the future – and please do not direct me to any fan art depicting that scenario in the comments, I beg you.

In the end, the Red Skull used the Tesseract to summon a tentacled “champion of Hydra” and Peggy had to sacrifice herself to push it back back into the space portal from whence it came. She emerged from the portal pre-The Avengers’ Battle of New York.

Who are the voices?

Jeffrey Wright plays the show’s narrator, Uatu The Watcher, and he’ll be here for every episode.

Returning to voice their characters from Captain America: The First Avenger were Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark, Neal McDonough as Dum Dum Dugan, Toby Jones as Arnim Zola, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, and Stanley Tucci as Dr. Abraham Erskine. Other MCU actors joining in were Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and Ross Marquand as the Red Skull, reprising his role from Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame.

Bradley Whitford may seem like a new addition as the arrogant Colonel John Flynn, but he previously portrayed the character in the live-action Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter released back in 2013, so even in the Sacred Timeline Flynn continued to be a thorn in Peggy’s side for quite a while.

The elephant in the room here is Steve Rogers. Chris Evans did not add his voice to the What If…? mix, so it was up to Marvel animation alum Josh Keaton to stand in for Evans, and he honestly did a really good job of it all things considered.

Standout moments

I gotta say it was truly wild for me to witness Captain Carter have adventures onscreen at all! It was obviously great to see Peggy kicking ass with her enhanced strength – the serum only beefed up her already brave and competent nature – but this version of the character has something of a unique origin, having been concocted as a kind of throwaway addition to the match-3 game Marvel Puzzle Quest in 2016. A couple of years later, Saladin Ahmed added her to the pages of Marvel Comics in Exiles #3, and it clearly didn’t take Marvel Studios long to figure out how to apply the enthusiastic Captain Carter fan response to an MCU project.

Peggy riding Steve’s Iron Man-esque Hydra Stomper into a dogfight during the WWII montage sequence was a delight, frankly. The animation in most of the fighting sequences was terrific and really took golden opportunities to reach for the kind of punching, kicking, shield-throwing ballet that the live-action format could never quite achieve with its restrictions of reality.

I found myself slowly warming to What If…?’s animation style, which I probably still wouldn’t describe as my favorite if I’m honest. I love the What If? comics, and this series felt like an opportunity to really push the weirdness envelope a little more. You only have to look at what Netflix accomplished with its anthology series Love, Death & Robots to see how differently a What If? series that embraced other styles and voices could have gone, but I grew up on Saturday morning cartoons, stop motion, Fantastic Planet, and Heavy Metal, so forgive me for briefly imagining the possibilities of this project in a wilder sense.

One of the oddest standout moments for me was when the episode subverted my expectations somewhat. After Steve was seemingly killed during the train heist, I thought the creators of the show were all set to explore him becoming the Winter Soldier, and I have to admit the idea intrigued me a little! However, it didn’t go down like that, and I was left to mentally wander down a different “what if…?” rabbit hole alone.

How does it work out?

In the future, Nick Fury used the Tesseract to transport Peggy back from wherever she ended up after she entered the portal, and it looks like she joined the Infinity Saga-era Avengers Initiative in Steve’s place. Whether it all worked out well for this episode’s specific MCU timeline remains to be seen, but it would be really fun to see if Agent Coulson had a pack of Captain Carter trading cards!

More to come

Episode 1 played like a pilot for an ongoing Captain Carter series for good reason: What If…? has been confirmed to include at least one Peggy Carter installment in every season going forwards.

“A lot of the season one episodes are riffing off certain points in the cinematic universe and maybe even delving in a certain phase, but we need to expand and explore more things, so we had to come up with other ideas that were a little further down the timeline,” director Bryan Andrews told us, later adding “Peggy Carter is pretty awesome; Captain Carter is pretty awesome, we’d love to see more of her.”

Marvel’s What If…? is now streaming weekly on Disney+ every Wednesday.

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The post Marvel’s What If…? Episode 1 Review: Peggy Carter Changes MCU History appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3AAseau

This is one of my OCs that I am adding to another au that I am creating. Chapter one is underway. If any of you feel like you want to draw a little comic of the scenarios that are on the bottom of the list, go right ahead in fact I highly request it because I am not really a great artist. I only draw from reference, but private message me first for permission to post it

(My preferred style: Actual cartoon style drawing or something close to it.)

Name: Emma Elena Pines

Foster Family: Caryn Pines(Foster Mother), Filbrick Pines(Foster Father), Stanley Pines(Favorite Foster Brother), Stanford Pines(Also Favorite Foster Brother), Shermie Pines(Older Foster Brother.)

Biological Family: Aubrey Picket(Mother), Roy Picket(Father)

Nicknames: Em, Emily(from people that dislike her), Sis (From Stanley), Baby sister (From Stanford), Brat(Filbrick), Little Pumpkin(Caryn)

Nicknames that Emma gives to her Fam. :

Bubba(she gave that nickname to Stanford since she knows that he’s older than Stanley), Lee(to Stanley since she alway last messes up his name), Mommy( to Caryn), Father(To Filbrick, for she also had a disdain for Filbrick and is also scared to death of him), Blacksheep(From Crampelter whenever he wants to piss off the Pine twins.)

Age: 10

Likes: Being close to her family, singing, adventure, animals

Dislikes: Filbrick, Being away from her family, feeling useless, darkness, bad people, strangers.

Hobbies: Helping Stanley shoplift, digging through trash for food

Bio: Was born a summer baby, June 18, 1959(Stanely and Stanford would both be 15 at this point. If I am wrong, correct me). Has a really high IQ just like Stanford. Learned to walk and talk like an actual kid at age one. Taller than what her age says, which is why people often misjudge her as an older person despite her age. Is bullied a lot because of her black hair and the fact that she’s taller than most kids.

Her biological mother had died in a car accident that was caused by her biological father, who was put to jail, becuase he was drunk and angry. The only thing she has of her mother is a necklace with a cross on it (I forgot to draw it on her). Does not really remember her mother at all. Often time when she is asleep, she has dreams of a women who tells her what will happen in future events so that she can prepare for any future danger.

Her mother made a will for Caryn Pines to have custody of her. Caryn loves her, will do anything to make sure her friends daughter is safe. Filbrick doesn’t not like Emma at all, for he does not like the fact that he has a daughter now. Refuses to acknowledge her existence. Further into the story Filbrick tends to make sure that Emma knows her place as women of the house(not going into detail about what he does, but I will say that when he is drunk...it’s bad.)

Stanford and Stanley both absolutely adore Emma. Whenever they come home from school they immediately go to greet thier precious baby sister and play with her until she was satisfied. Stanford loves to read to her, teach her new things, and loves to rock her to sleep on his father’s rocking chair when Filbrick is not around. He immediately fell in love with Emma when he noticed that she was not afraid of his six-fingers, she was actually curious of them and loves to look and play with them by pulling them until Stanford’s hands were sore. Although he often risks the chance of losing his glasses when he gets a chance to hold his sister, he wouldn’t trade that moment for anything in the world. Stanley just loves to play with Emma, he’ll play peek-a-boo, tag, tickle game, anything that Emma wants to play, no questions asked. He often will teach her how to box when his mother is not looking. Will defend Emma against anyone who makes fun of her height or her hair(even if it’s a kid). Whenever Emma has a nightmare he will let her sleep with him on the bottom bunk(Although him and Stanford will take turns on who she gets to sleep with), She likes to sleep on Stanley’s stomach and Stanley will just coo at her and mention to Stanford how cute she is.

(A little bit of an AU for the scienc project part)

Before Stanley was kicked out, Emma tried to defend Stanley by saying that she saw the whole thing (which she did) and that it was definitely an accident. Filbrick wants to throw Stanley out, but Emma yells that she’ll tell the family his secret if he doesn’t let Stanley stay. Filbrick threatens her to be quiet or that she will get in ‘trouble’ for talking out of turn. Finally had enough, Emma tells the rest of the family what Filbrick does to her when thier backs are turned, which angers both Stanley and Caryn while Stanford just stands there in shock Stanley tries to attack Filbrick while Caryn yells at him, telling him that they were getting a divorce and that he will never see his family again. Angered by the fact that Emma ruined the family, he tells her Stanley can stay in the family, but she leaves. Shocked by the cruelty of her father, Emma goes to her room in tears while Stanley folllows her. After making sure that Emma was okay and that his and her stuff was packed, he marches back down and yells at Filbrick, telling him how much of a monster he is and how disgusting he is for treating Emma the way he did. He also yells at Stanford for just standing there doing nothing while thier father kicks their own little sister out. He tells Stanford that he is even worse than thier father. He doesn’t even give Stanford a chance to speak or to even apologize as he storms off to talk to his mother, who is crying in her room, clutching the divorce papers. He tells her that he will take care of his sister and to call the police on Filbrick. Caryn promise and wishes Stanley luck and that whenever he calls home Filbrick will not be there to answer. With that Stanley takes Emma to the car and they drive away from the hell hole they call home. Emma is still crying because she believes that she has ruined everything and that Stanford doesn’t care about them anymore. Stanley comforts her and tries to convince her that Stanford does care and that he was just angry.

Which leads the to now. Emma is 10 years old, on the streets with his brother Stanley and looking worse for wear. She had to endure emotional and physical pain from strangers and gangs that her brother participated in. Stanley doesn’t really like the fact that joining in a gang was the only way to keep them alive, but one look at his precious little sister, who was cold, sick, and hungry. He felt like he had no choice. He had to do it for his sister.

I Like to Watch: The Rock (1996)

by Don Hall

With the slowly creeping reality that Hollywood isn’t making a lot of new movies just lately and having already watched fucking everything out there twice, the re-watching of those films you remember from decades prior to pandemic is exactly what streaming provides.

Back in the days of Chicago, at one of the many BUGHOUSE! shows, Joe Janes and Brian Sweeney debated on the topic “Michael Bay: Hack or Genius?” This is not to re-litigate that debate but I highly recommend you listen if you’re so inclined. It’s flat-out hysterical.

I’m not what you’d call the biggest fan of Bay’s oeuvre but when Bay is at his most Bayness, he can create some truly remarkable cinema.

The Transformers was a blast up until the Shia LaBouf character was aged out. Giant robots fighting over dominion of the Earth? That magically turn into vehicles created by humans? From outer space? C’mon!

The Bad Boys trilogy was an exercise in the chemistry between two incredibly charismatic actors with some of the most badass car chases and explosions known to film. Scorsese might have cornered the market on brilliant storytelling, amazing and creative camera work, and the best use of scoring in history but you aren’t gonna find a single Humvee chase in Cuba that destroys an entire five blocks of buildings while the leads trade comic quips throughout in Age of Innocence.

I loved The Island just because the whole thing was so completely ridiculous and fun.

Bruce Willis playing hardcore driller-dad to Ben Affleck? Billy Bob Thornton as a crippled NASA scientist? Steve Buscemi doing a callback to Dr. Strangelove? Strippers, outer space Evel Knievel, and blue-collar morons saving the planet? Huge destruction of Paris, Hong Kong, and Wall Street by asteroids? Few hunks of cheesecake laden with sugary strawberries and rich chocolate sauce covered in Reese’s Pieces chased by a Peanut Butter Chocolate shake couldn’t top Armageddon.

But the sheer out-of-body beauty and over-the-top ridiculousness of 1996’s Nicholas Cage/Sean Connery spectacle The Rock is the pinnacle of machismo Michael Bay genius.

I’m from the eighties. While not nostalgic for those myriad badass men kicking ass and making jokes about it films, I still grew up with them and can’t help but love them in some way. Explosions and cars and impossible accuracy with weapons that are huge and stupid are quintessentially juvenile joy. The tale that spins the hero saving the world (in whatever parameters the tale decides is “the world” — destroying a globally killing asteroid or saving 70,000 people or taking out the vicious bad guys) is all myth but they’re myths that posit that we sacks of meat and nerves have some control of the events that surround us.

There is a moral code in these things. Sure, lots of killing but in an almost Looney Tunes sort of video game death. Plenty of shit blowing up. Amid the controlled chaos is a code of good guys and bad guys. Extremely binary. Simple. Good guys do all the same things as bad guys do but for the right reasons. Good guys gun people down for love or freedom, they sacrifice themselves for a greater good even when it does not serve their best interests. Bad guys do it for filthy lucre. Bad guys kill for selfish reasons. Monetary gain.

The truth is that we humans are far more like Woody Allen (for the intellectual class) or the idiots from Dodgeball than John Rambo or John McClain. We are beset by complexity, bills, random injuries, and anxiety. Rarely are we challenged in that do or die scenario except for when we pay for it (no one is required to do the Tough Mudder or go skydiving). In the life of the real, there are no genuine action film bad guys or good guys. So we live vicariously by watching them.

In The Rock Ed Harris plays a general in the special forces whose motivation for stealing biochemical weapons and rockets, infiltrating and taking hostages at Alcatraz (by now a tourist attraction), and threatening to murder San Francisco is all about the military’s blatant covering up of covert deaths of American soldiers. His methods are that of a villain but his intentions are honorable.

Sean Connery is John Mason (a character that is no less James Bond if he had been captured in the sixties and imprisoned for 35 years). Mason is a criminal. An escape artist. An enemy of the state whose only motivation for the first half of the movie is get free and create a relationship with a daughter he had with a one-night stand because “she is the only evidence he ever lived.”

Then there is nineties Nick Cage. His character is named Stanley Goodspeed. Stanley Goodspeed. Despite his ability to drive a Lamborghini like an adrenaline junkie on meth and shoot with deadly accuracy when necessary, he is a nerd. A scientist. Awkward and goofy. Despite his girlfriend being super hot and, unlike any nerd in the history of geekdom, his propensity to sit shirtless on his couch, drinking wine and playing the guitar and looking good doing it, Goodspeed is a nerd because Bay tells us he is. And because he tells us he is repeatedly.

Throw in some extraordinary character actors and go to action stars — Michael Biehn, William Forsythe, David Morse, Tony Todd, John Spencer, John C. McGinley — and there’s enough goddamned testosterone in this thing to melt your fucking face.

Three scenes. Twenty minutes to set up General Hummel’s plan (with an incredible action sequence of him stealing the weapons and the obligatory fuck up that lets us see how horrifying the chemical is), Goodspeed’s nerd status combined with his almost godlike ability to handle the pressure of diffusing a bomb in a container while having poison gas shoot all around him, and Mason’s backstory as the British Intelligence guy captured and then the one guy in history to escape Alcatraz (the rock of the title).

From that point, every scene is a ridiculous, masterfully executed action sequence. Non-stop action. I remember reading a blurb about Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple on Broadway that boasted ”a laugh every six seconds. This film can boast a giant action boner every two minutes.

A haircut turns into hanging John Spencer from a clothesline over a building which turns into a massive car chase in San Francisco (like 30 cars are destroyed in this thing), which turns into the Navy Seals dropping out of a plane into the waters surrounding Alcatraz. Then we have Mason navigate the Galaxy Quest back entrance to Alcatraz (Best Moment: Connery opens the door and says, in all his Scottishness “Gentlemen, welcome to The Rock.”) followed by the bad guys slo-mo gunning down the good guys from an elevated position in a prison shower.

All the while one sits in amazement at the glorious weirdness of Nicholas Cage. I wonder what Harris and Connery thought about after each bizarre line reading of lines like:

"I’d take pleasure in guttin’ you, boy. I’d take pleasure in guttin’ you... boy.” What is wrong with these people, huh? Mason? Don’t you think there’s a lot of, uh, a lot of anger flowing around this island? Kind of a pubescent volatility? Don’t you think? A lotta angst, a lot of “I’m sixteen, I’m angry at my father” syndrome? I mean grow up! We’re stuck on an island with a bunch of violence-for-pleasure-seeking psycophatic marines, SHAME-ON-THEM!

and

“What do you say we cut the chit-chat, A-HOLE? You almost got me killed twice! And my jaw hurts like hell.”

and

”How, in the name of Zeus's butthole, did you get out of your cell?”

Once everyone is killed and then only two of the good guys left are Connery and Cage, we are treated to lots of showpieces — a gun battle that ends with a bad guy getting his head crushed by a hanging air conditioner, an improbable ride in metal hanging buckets, a show down between Hummel, now reluctant to actually kill 70,000 people and mercenaries he hired (see? Filthy lucre).

Of course, the two of the really bad guys get respectively shot in the chest with a rocket and one of the biochemical pearls shoved in his mouth and everyone wins.

Michael Bay might be a hack. He might be a genius. All I know is that The Rock is the Citizen Kane of a very specific genre of film and it will remain in my movie collection right next to Goodfellas, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Breathless, and Vertigo.