Lauren

This movie was amazing. I am a big fan of how post Endgame content has shifted from focusing on Humans who built their power (From Serum/Biology/Technology) and bringing in Non-Human elements that our characters are learning through, and dealing with. The story of Shang Chi in particular was great. It had great pacing since we were learning all about multiple characters history in a short time during the events of the story. The fighting scenes were really fun to watch, the CGI looked amazing, the costuming is so gorgeous, and the world they created is very interesting and not like anything we've seen.

[Spoiler Alert] Was excited for the hype, and excited for the prompts, since they are interesting questions. Instead the show just talked the prompts and has characters make very uncharacteristic choices from what we have seen in the movies. The changes don't seem to really play out to anything and the stories always cut off where there should be something. For example, Peggy Carter really did not actively make the story any different at all from what we saw in the short episode. It just opens up the questions of: well what happened to hydra if they did not have their winter soldier? Do the Starks still get killed if they disappeared? How would Steve and Tony's relationship change, as Steve would be much older, and already have the iron man capabilities, so would Tony ever become a hero, and how would that change his story? How would Peggy Carter interact with all the heroes when she comes back? She came back to a day when women do have a lot more rights, so what does she do with that knowledge? How does the rest of the known story differ from how Steve Rogers timeline did. We really didn't get to see the impact of the prompt. Just, slightly altered with no real different outcome. We saw some changes in the second episode, with how T'challa impacted Thanos, and was able to act as the glue holding the Ravagers together. Did his family just wait for him to come back and never move on to transfer leadership? Would Peter quill even be able to help his dad destroy the universe or did he just die like so many of the kids that were brought to him did? Why would Stephen Strange go looking for answers to become a sorcerer because his girlfriend died? He has the ego the size of New York and only went searching because he was not able to be the best in surgery after that point. Even just adjusting the story to have his girlfriend die when she was trying to save the ancient one could have carried on that same story but made more sense, because he already had that power. The zombie episode is honestly just, in my opinion, a train wreck. T'challa can talk down Thanos from Genocide, but he couldn't talk down Vision from feeding people to his girlfriend? How in any way possible would Thanos turn to a zombie with 5 stones? I know marvel likes to 'dumb-down' their heroes powers so they can make drama, but come on. It's zombies. Against 5 stones. Why would he have gone to Wakanda anyway? He was drawn to the mind stone. Did Groot get zombified or is he just permanently holding his zombie raccoon and thunder god friend because he loves them? Odd story choices that didn't make sense for what we know of the characters every time. Just feels like lazy writing, and visually isn't appealing. Since Marvel is tied to Disney, and Disney makes lots of gorgeous 2D and 3D animation styles, I expected better animation. Maybe something a little more stylized and not so every character looks the same (which if anything just shows that Marvel picked out white brunette men as most of their leads and are hardly able to be told apart in this animation style). But for Marvel who has amazing artists, plus having access to Disney tech and animators, should have been way more interesting, unique, or flowed better. Overall, it just seems like a hodge podge of writing that could be improved.