What's your fandom(s)?

Ah, I feel you. I usually wait until all the episodes come out too but I really enjoy all the suspense and trying to find out what's happening next, haha. My tumblr turned into a Peggy Carter and Hayley Atwell shrine over night, heh.

I watched the first couple of episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D but I laid it on ice (pun not intended). From what I gathered it gets better?! Also the cast looks pretty cool and diverse. I'm all for that too!

I like Thor and I like Jane but I don't like their relationship. I didn't like how the love story unfolded. BAM! They were in love. Also, and this is a very unpopular opinion, but Loki gets on my nerves. It's in his nature and he's a villain and all, but what on earth does he want?! I hope the third movie is infinitely better than the second one.

We definitely need a Hawkeye movie! Clint Barton is just so awesome and I was disappointed when they announced phase three and there was no Hawkeye or Hulk for that matter. :/
Iron Man irks me so much and I'm kinda peeved that he's going to be in the third Cap movie. Sure, the Civil War storyline doesn't work without Tony but I'm just afraid that Tony might outshine Steve...in his own movie.

It's the same as the Spiderman deals - I love Andrew Gardfield as Spiderman, but it'd be far better if the rights were returned to their original owners for a myriad of reasons. 

I like these movies so much I'm seriously considering doing my dissertation on them in relation to American identity? like that's psychotic fan levels??

that article is so great! basically, yeah, Steve was disabled, poor, an immigrant, an artist, probably frequently unemployed because of his health, an orphan, lived in Brooklyn aka gay central and was almost certainly bisexual (if you ask me) etc etc  like if you think he's gonna uphold conservative values and ideals y'all can get wrecked. 

Edit: these values are also what makes Steve the most culturally relevant of the Avengers (of the pool of those who have fleshed out back stories and origins within the current MCU canon)

I also really like this bit:
'In the fall of 1940, over a year before Pearl Harbor, he first volunteers to join the army to fight the Nazis specifically. This isn’t an apolitical patriotism forged out of a sense that the U.S has been attacked; rather, Steve Rogers had come to believe that Nazism posed an existential threat to the America he believed in. New Deal America.'
And the stuff about the anti-communist angle is super interesting!

TWS HURTS. SO MUCH. I don't know much about the comics, but enough to know that the story for Civil War was, in the original source text, an absolute MESS that took years to fix and was later completely unravelled. From previous films, they clearly understand the source material - they get Cap as a concept - so I think whatever they do they'll be able to keep it's essence. Plotting is going to be the problem - with old characters, it doesn't take much to give them development as they're already established, but the new ones need a lot of time to be implemented. And with so many characters coming into the franchise in the coming years, yes it is a cause for concern. Also Tony is a tool. I do not like movie!Tony. Even if RDJ's ego doesn't get in the way, his fans will definitely kick up some sort of fuss. (My Tony based gripe is that 3 films of his own and he's had no REAL character development - he's still an apple)

I'm also here for Lesbian Peggy Carter, and will accept Gay Bucky Barnes.

I WANT CHRIS EVANS TO DO THE CHEST GRAB TO ME, PLATONICALLY. IT's MY LIFE'S GOAL. 
like i legit just want to be his bff. 
also, didn't the cast seem like the ultimate party when they did the press tours for TWS? 

can we really trust that 'black widow centric' doesn't mean she gets 3 extra lines that turn her into a functioning human and not eye candy??? can we??? i'm just trying to not get my hopes up too much.

ALSO YES!!: 'So no, there’s nothing “revisionist” or “politically correct” about portraying Steve Rogers as an explicitly progressive superhero. Without that, he wouldn’t be Captain America.' #nailedit

People are pretty negative about the Spiderman reboots, but, aside from being a structureless mess in terms of plot, I actually quite like them? Like Emma and Andrew both do a really good job of them, and the thematic content is pretty strong and coherent. Additionally, I like that Andrew Garfield has spoken quite openly about the altering of characters to be more diverse - particularly about Spiderman being bisexual. (this just in the Bisexual Agenda® is taking over)

Man, it's The Relevance of Captain America to American Identity or Teen Film as a Uniquely Positioned Feminist and Progressive Space. What a sad git honestly.

Yes! I definitely feel the characterisation of Avengers is always all off, and often discounts what's been happening in the standalone, hero-centric films (ie. what's up with bucky's absence in aou? how are they going to explain that? and in relation to steve's development/characterisation/trauma? like 'soz guys just sad about something not relevant to this film's plot so let's move on cool bruce what's up'??)

OOH gonna check that out

I'm definitely excited for the new faces for phase 3! not only stingy white babies!! yaaay! I'm still really disappointed in the casting of Cumberbatch, who is literal trash, as Dr Strange. Like...he's not exactly short of offers...he could have refused, if he had any morals, on the grounds that taking the role would be incorrect representation and whitewashing. :/

As I understand it - in the comics, Tony is sort of held up as the danger of a white guy power fantasy? like you aren't meant to idolise him, you're supposed to criticise him and see him as a cautionary tale? So the movies have FAILED. Like how many times can he learn the spirit of Christmas or whatever. 

I'm basically just for an all queer Captain America cast, I can't be stopped. In fact, Bucky post-TWS as asexual/aromantic following all the emotional trauma of Hydra. 
He totally does! I can't decide if that's Steve or if Chris is just a massive flirt/such a great guy everyone just falls in love? 

Christ, like...Joss Whedon has done a LOT of great work, but post-Buffy he had this massive lull of non-success until he did Cabin in the Woods in like...2011? 2012? he's not really written anything so explicitly feminist since Buffy, and I think he's lost his touch. And whilst I appreciate his feminism...maybe it's time to take a step back and let women take some jobs, especially when portraying women's issues. 

I didn't say before BUT people I work with looked at me like I was an alien for saying that Cap was my favourite Avenger. And I was ABOUT to be all 'with the social and cultural context and importance of the character to the media and cultural identity of the youth of today...' THEY SAID 'I like Tony because he's funny'. I nearly died. Right there. I could have cried. Some people have no taste.

Holy moley this is a lot of text to take in. I'm just going to agree with everything you're both saying (because you are basically taking words out of my mouth, and because I don't really have time to respond to everything) apart from the fact that Andrew Garfield is not my choice of Spiderman, I actually preferred Tobey Mcguire honestly. He had the look and the voice, he was the perfect Spidey to me.

Oh and I'd say Tony is basically just there for our amusement, whereas cap is more interesting and has a story I actually want to sit down and listen to/watch/read. Tony literally just got handed his dad's riches and genes. Give me a Howard Stark film - I want to know how he came to be what he was, where he learned everything, where he got his genes (his mum or his dad? I hope mum.), I want to see him grow up and become the Howard Stark we know.

YES 
plus Howard's the better-looking of the two of them so yeah, certainly. Anything for better looking man candy and better, more dynamic male characters and plotlines. 

Yepp. They should have just put Howard Stark in the Avengers hahaha

Yes! The ways in which the new films pull off the ostracized nerd thing is really great - it's a plotline that's actually really out of date, but they made it work.

Hmm...I'm not holding out hope. Whedon isn't known for maintaining his canon very well - yet all it takes is a simple acknowledgement or offhand comment to satisfy that.

I really cannot stand Sherlock and I didn't even make it through the pilot. Separate from a lot of the standard issues people take with it - behaviour of actors, maintenance of a lot of plot points/ideas that are stale and outdated - from the outset it seemed rather pretentious and to think a bit too much of itself. Like...at the end of the day, Sherlock Holmes has been done to death. Now is the time to have fun with it. Which is why I like Elementary - because it does poke fun at itself, but also observe and challenge the source text in a way that's very refreshing.

I'm not hugely familiar with Dr Strange's story - but essentially it's a spiritual/cultural journey, right? So having a BRITISH white guy (or American if he does an accent?) going in there and taking ALL THEIR KNOWLEDGE is a bit to colonial/imperial OR rich white guy goes to India to discover himself~~ in it's execution. I probably won't pay to see the film, but I'll no doubt have to watch it to keep up with the canon. 

Man, I'm just infatuated with all of the Captain America cast members. Evans, Stan, Mackie, Atwell. Put me in a sandwich with them. I'll die happy. What do you mean you USED to be obsessed with Zayn? He's only gotten better with age??

YEah, I feel the large shift with superhero films now is that they now have far more thematic content, and try to speak to society as a topic, rather than empowering a handful of niche audience members ie nerds. Most people do see them for the excitement, but I like them as a comment on modernity. Thing is - I can identify the plot/thematic ideas for a lot of superhero films. But the Avengers? No idea. I enjoyed it - but did it say anything? No. It's the biggest grossing superhero film and it said nothing. How sad is that?