Thursday, September 30, 2021

Marvel's "What If...?" (Episode 8)

No video this week. Suck it.

Episode 8: “What if somebody fought God and won?”

Our premise this week is that Ultron, the robot baddie from Avengers 2, beats all the Avengers and wipes out all life on Earth in a rain of nuclear fire, then bisects Thanos like a little bitch when the big purple grape shows up to claim the Mind stone. He goes on to annihilate all life in the universe—not by Thanos’s pussy-ass method of snapping his fingers, but by the tried-and-true method of blowing shit up. That done, he sets his sights yet higher, and decides to fight the narrator of the series, the Watcher, so that he can kill every living thing in every reality. Ever.

Ultra-Ultron and the Watcher fight. As you would expect with beings of such unimaginable, incomprehensible power that it makes mere gods puny by comparison, so awesome that merely attempting to conceptualize the vastness of their existence would shatter the mind of any mortal, they do this by punching each other. We end on a cliffhanger as the Watcher turns to the only other person with experience in the galaxy-destroying business, Dr. Especially Strange from episode 4. Cue cliffhanger. To be continued, etc.

There’s also a subplot involving Black Widow and Hawkeye (neither of whom have superpowers, may I remind you) trying to evade a being that is powerful enough to detect the existence of alternate realities and beat up the narrator. They then decide to try the plot from the first “Independence Day” despite neither of them being Will Smith, or even Chadwick Boseman.

Q: They’re doing the Avengers thing of having everybody do one on their own, then coming together for the finale, aren’t they?

A: Yup.

Q: The Watcher keeps saying he can’t intervene because he swore an oath. So … who did he swear an oath TO? Like, doesn’t that imply there’s someone or something even bigger than him that can enforce obedience?

A: Good question, imaginary interlocutor. You’re so smart not to mention handsome. And not at all rambly, disjointed, forgetful or almost 50.

Q: Isn’t the animation a little uneven?

A: Yeah, beautifully detailed in some frames, then there’s an explosion or people running, and all their limbs turn to rubber.

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