Does Marvel’s latest What If…? do Chadwick Boseman justice?
What If...? brings in as many movie actors as possible in a very wacky episode dedicated to Chadwick Boseman
TV Reviews Chadwick Boseman
A few weeks ago, the creators of What If…? talked about their process for breaking stories. They said it involved a big poster of all the Marvel characters they wanted to do something with, and while trying to figure out what kind of Black Panther stories they could tell, they noticed that—courtesy of the prologue scenes in Black Panther and Guardians Of The Galaxy—both Peter Quill and T’Challa are nearly the same age. From there, it must’ve been a pretty easy leap to get to “What if the thing that happened to Peter Quill happened to T’Challa instead,” and so we get the Ravagers abducting T’Challa in the 1980s, Yondu raising him to be a space outlaw, and, finally, T’Challa becoming Star-Lord.
Yes, this is the “Chadwick Boseman is Star-Lord T’Challa” episode of What If…?, and it’s somehow even more fun than that premise would imply. The episode starts just like Guardians Of The Galaxy, with Star-Lord on a desolated planet trying to retrieve a metal ball that we Marvel fans know contains one of the Infinity Stones. Just as he grabs it, though, he’s interrupted by a squad of goons led by Djimon Hounsou’s Korath. Rather than waiting for Star-Lord to introduce himself and getting the great “Who?” gag, though, Korath immediately recognizes his celebrity idol. As it turns out, T’Challa’s Star-Lord isn’t a wannabe Han Solo dirtbag like Peter Quill; he’s a widely beloved Robin Hood-type figure who has single-handedly reformed the Ravagers into a team of space heroes.
Hounsou is a delight as this version of Korath, and I’m convinced that he should get a lot more voice acting jobs and a lot more comedy jobs based on What If…? alone. His utter joy at being able to hang out with Star-Lord and meet his merry band of thieves is infectious, and as good as the “Who?” line is in the movie (plus the payoff when he sees Quill later on), his casual insistence that Star-Lord is his best friend later in this episode might be even better.
Korath joins Star-Lord and the Ravagers just as they’re given a chance to pull one last big heist, which comes courtesy of femme fatale Nebula (Karen Gillan, reprising her role from the movies), and you can tell she’s a femme fatale in this universe because she looks exactly the same but has long blonde hair (pretty funny!). Nebula’s plan: break into the archives of one Taneleer Tivan, a.k.a. The Collector, and steal a supply of extremely powerful, life-giving seeds that can be used to effectively end hunger throughout the entire galaxy.
The heist itself hits all of the main caper highlights, including a predictable double-cross and the equally predictable triple-cross where we find out that any and all treachery was part of the plan. More importantly, T’Challa meets a new friend (Howard The Duck, played by Seth Green, who gets to make Seth Green-style sardonic comments) and finds proof that the people of Wakanda weren’t wiped out by aliens, as Yondu had led him to believe, but are actually totally fine and have been sending messages to space in hopes of finding T’Challa.
Star-Lord fights The Collector (Benicio Del Toro, apparently, though his performance here is nowhere near as deranged as it is in the movies), the Ravagers fight the Black Order, and eventually T’Challa and Yondu have a heart-to-heart about Yondu’s lies. It turns out that T’Challa was just a nice kid who made the Ravagers into better people, and Yondu assumed that he would want to leave them if he knew Wakanda was safe. In the end, T’Challa and his new space family return to Wakanda to meet his Earth family, and everyone lives happily ever after. Well, until Kurt Russell’s Ego shows up to meet his son, regular Dairy Queen employee Peter Quill, so the two of them can destroy the universe. Whoops!
Now, as you may have noticed, this episode has loads of movie actors returning to reprise their movie roles, and save for a handful of exceptions (Hounsou and someone who I won’t mention until later to avoid spoilers), they’re all kind of… not great. Michael Rooker is always a delight in live-action, but his performance as Yondu here feels weirdly stiff. Similarly, Gillan already does a voice for Nebula, and it seems like she doesn’t always hit the right note combining that voice with the extra noir flavoring of this variant. My guess is that the issue has something to do with me being used to seeing these actors in live-action, which allows for a lot more of a physical personality to come through, combined with movie actors not necessarily putting in a full performance for something that amounts to maybe five minutes of animated screen time.
I generally prefer professional voice actors to celebrities just doing their normal voice, and while professional voice actors may have done a better job with some of this parts, I feel like having the actors from the movies reprise their characters is an important part of what What If…? is all about. Without Boseman, for example, I’m not sure there would be any point to this episode existing… which brings me to Boseman. Look, hold your tomatoes and beer bottles and whatever other things you want to throw at the computer, because I’m not going to say anything bad about him, but I think his performance in this episode is missing something: a spark. Chadwick Boseman embodied T’Challa in such a powerful and comprehensive way that his voice performance here is a faint echo of his big-screen portrayal. And while he does a good job making Star-Lord feel different from the Black Panther, his performance doesn’t feel as impactful as it should be.
It all comes back to this disconnect between the animation and the performances, I think. Boseman had so much charisma in live-action, and while the quasi-realistic aesthetic of What If…? is typically good, there are just some actors who don’t click with it. Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige had nothing but positive things to say about Boseman’s performance recently, describing him as “gung-ho” about it, so clearly something is off in the translation between Chadwick Boseman reading dialogue in a booth and Chadwick Boseman’s voice coming out of Star-Lord’s mouth. The art style seems like a likely culprit, and while I don’t necessarily think it’s a major issue (Boseman certainly isn’t bad in this episode because of it, just not as charismatic), I do wonder if it will be a sticking point going forward. We’ll have a better idea next week, which centers on a character whose movie actor did not provide the voice.
Stray observations
- What’s the What If? What if… Yondu sent Kraglin and Taserface to Earth, resulting in them picking up the wrong kid because all humans look the same to them?
- Did they cheat? Nope, assuming the events of Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 take place before King T’Chaka is killed in Captain America: Civil War. Everything else is acknowledged as being changed by T’Challa’s presence in space.
- Did The Watcher interfere, even though that’s the one thing he must never, ever do? Nope, that’s two for two!
- Alright, I put it off because I didn’t want to spoil the reveal in the body of the review, but: Thanos! Josh Brolin as Thanos! I full-on cackled when he first showed up, and I love that they turn “this guy wanted to wipe out half of all life” into a running joke. “It’s not genocide, it’s a random and efficient way to cut down on the strain that we put on the galaxy’s finite resources!” Sure, buddy. Like that would ever work.
- Lots of Easter eggs in The Collector’s lair, naturally (always nice to see Cosmo The Space Dog). Some of the things I saw might cheat the What If?, but I’ll let them slide because the Easter eggs in The Collector’s lair have never been strictly canon anyway. If they were, Tobias Fünke and Adam Warlock would be running around together in the MCU, and I refuse to accept that Marvel would allow something that good to exist and not show it.
- After last week’s episode, I wrote about how Marvel’s insistence on convincing everyone that What If…? is a Real Marvel Thing is doing a disservice to both the show itself and cool characters like Captain Carter. You can read it here.
- The episode is dedicated to Chadwick Boseman, as it should be. I don’t know if this will ever be more than a footnote in the Chadwick Boseman canon, but at least the episode is a hell of a lot of fun.
261 Comments
Well, I’m glad to see they’ve decided to revive the What If … ? TV show but I can see they’re playing it more safe this time.I have to admit it was a bold move to open the last version of the show with “What if Agent Coulson survived being stabbed by Loki in The Avengers?” (not what I expected!) but that was nothing in comparison with their deciding to run in serial fashion with just that theme week after week for 7 seasons! I was literally stunned with the audacity of it all!Sure it seemed rocky in the first season but they bravely stood the course and it really picked up once Bill Paxton appeared (everything is better with Bill Paxton, of course) and then it went from strength to strength from Season 2 for at least the next few seasons.I know a lot of people say Season 4 was the best but I did like Season 3, especially the one character on the Desert Planet of Blue Filters (that was a great episode) and my favourite MCU villain resolution which was quite meditative in the end and probably delved a little better into their goals “I only wanted to make the world a better place.”/”I know.” than with Thanos where it ended with punching stuff a lot. Sure, Thanos’s means were not the way but it would have been nice if they addressed the problems he raised and was trying to solve in his own misguided way as they didn’t go away!Season 5 did a What If within a What If by jumping into the future and with all the time jumping and more alternate timestreams in the final season of the seven, it was like a Russian Doll of What Ifs within What Ifs. All up, I thought the show was great with its What If Ghost Rider and Inhumans were good? too!Anyway, I’m glad to see after all that prevaricating, they’re all but saying characters from the What If? stories could be seen in the so called main MCU, I look forward to the formal canonisation and reappearance of Coulson and his gang (what a great job they did with all those characters they came up with, right?) any day now!
I didn’t think much of the spin off “What if …Agent Carter was an absolutely perfect at everything Mary Sue , surrounded by incompetent sexist Mad Men characters (except for that guy from Dollhouse)“ one, but a lot of people liked it, so what do I know
How Did Peggy become any more “super” in that episode than the real Captain America we watched in live-action?
I think he’s talking about Agent Carter, not last week’s episode. I don’t recall that characterization at all being the case though.
Nah he’s definitely talking about Episode 1 of What If… that just aired. He called it What If and referenced Bradley Whitford’s sexist general character.
No, he’s definitely talking about Agent Carter.
He’s continuing the first guy’s bit that joke’s about Agents of SHIELD being a “What If”. The Dollhouse actor he’s referring to is Enver Gjokaj, who is nearly the only non-misogynist in Agent Carter.
Nah. It’s Agent Carter. That show has the guy from Dollhouse (Enver Gjokaj) as the potential love interest.
No, he references “except for that guy from Dollhouse” which is actor Enver Gjokaj, who played Victor on Dollhouse and Daniel Sousa on Agent Carter. The “incompetent sexist Mad Men” is in reference to the other male characters in the SSR, not to Bradley Whitford.
Bob is wrong. So very wrong. Jfc. And I bet he’s not really a doctor, either.
Not great, Dr Bob.
It’s more of the medium than anything. It’s easier to draw Peggy do all the cool stuff than it is to have Chris Evan’s stuntman do it. Flipping a truck is much harder to do in real life.
Bob’s just mad she didn’t have giant knockers.
Well, I’m glad to see they’ve decided to revive the What If … ? TV show but I can see they’re playing it more safe this time.
What an odd way to describe this show.
How do you revive a never before made TV series on its second ever episode?Edit; I didn’t read the rest of your post.Sadly, I think AOS is done. I think you won’t see any What Ifs featuring AOS or Netflix shows or whatever. Plus I doubt the Inhumans will ever come up again.
Weirdly, there’s actually some rumours circulating that some of the actors from AoS will turn up in Secret Invasion.
Chloe Bennet had to duck out of Powerpuff Girls because of scheduling conflicts, Elizabeth Henstridge recently had to fly back to London for filming, and even long before those two things, there was a (potentially bullshit) leak that they were recasting Daisy Johnson.
I don’t think the MCU will leave anything on the shelf; they’re bringing back Tim Roth to play The Abomination and Alfred Molina to do Doc Ock. They’ll find a place for AoS, given enough time, I reckon.
I wasn’t thinking of AoS in What If? just that they could use AoS characters in the MCU. They don’t have to do much more than say something like “This is Quake, she can cause earthquakes” or “These are Jemma and Fitz, they are SHIELD scientists”, this is Mac “the current director while Fury’s on assignment”, May “senior agent” and so on and so on. That’s about as much back story as many characters get at the start of their introduction in MCU films and TV and they can go from there while being suitably vague to even not mentioning AoS at all (so maybe they’re even alternate versions of those characters in the MCU and all of AoS the TV show were variants or whatever).I’m just thinking there’s especially nothing really stopping them from using the characters now with the multiverse being official if they wanted to (and that part contains the operative words).My personal opinion is that they did a superb job building these characters up (the advantage of long form storytelling over many seasons even over linked movies and AoS is there as an expansion pack for those who want it to take or leave in their own personal headcanons as they see fit).I guess at the end of the day, it seems such a shame they just won’t commit one way or another about AoS’s status, though of course I’d prefer it was in some way ‘in’ even if it’s AoS was always an alternate universe (which then went into/created even more alternate universes) and the actors and their characters were used in the MCU even if they’re not actually the AoS ones but alternate ones which may have some to a lot of different personal histories.
I see what you did here.
I really didn’t think that was Del Toro voicing the collector because, as the review says, it’s a way more reserved performance than in the films, to the point where it felt like an imitation by an actor who knows Del Toro’s voice but doesn’t know this character. Also, I really didn’t buy this prissy antiques hoarder as a heavy duty brawler. I see him more as someone who gets others to fight for him, or uses traps to take down his enemies.That aside, I enjoyed this a lot. I was never particularly fond of Pratt’s space-doofus character, so this is a version of Star Lord that works a lot better for me. He’s noble and heroic, but also free-spirited and cheeky. It seemed like a believable version of a T’Challa who’s not weighed down by the sense of responsibility to his people.
He’s listed in the opening and closing credits. My take would be he was either directed to be a bit less silly, or wasn’t able to be quite as loose in a va recording booth.
Yeah, that was a weird version of the Collector that has no basis in the comics or his MCU appearances. How he became that version of himself could be a What If? episode.
How he became that version of himself could be a What If? episode.
Easy: He became that version because it was his plan all along. Collect as much as he could, including weapons and upgrades…except in this timeline there was never the threat of Thanos to keep him in check.So with Thanos out of the picture, he’s able to put his plan in to motion much earlier, leading him to being who he was in this episode compared to the version Thanos took out in Infinity War.
What If he got a hold of the Super Soldier Serum? He had Cap’s shield.
He’s an Elder of the Universe. Like Ego or the Grandmaster. They’re a step above the Titans, and only just below Galactus. If he feels like fighting, I’m sure he can.
The MCU collector has had fewer lines across multiple films than he had in this episode. There was barely a “character” there at all.
Also, I really didn’t buy this prissy antiques hoarder as a heavy duty brawler.
There were twenty years between T’Challa leaving Earth and when he recreates the opening of GotG.That would have been plenty of time to talk Thanos out of his genocide run, which would have left the Collector in position to make his move.Which could very well have been what he was planning in the Prime MCU before Thanos came knocking in Infinity War.
While his super-buff looks are out of sort, let’s keep in mind there was an ORIGINAL Cap shield in his weapons collection. Who’s today he didn’t get his hands on a few dozen vials of the Super Soldier Serum and decided to try it out?
I mean, I might give a few vials a shot with the promise it wouldn’t come back to bite me in the ass. I got a lot of storage boxes to move in my garage.
That said, I too didn’t recognize a few voices in here at all! Del Toro like you said didn’t sound like himself (I would have loved some more of that flamboyancy of the films) and Brolin sounded like… well, Brolin. I was concerned at first he was phoning it in, but he really pulled off Thasual pretty nice.
Gillan was excellent as a femme fatale. She’s incredibly versatile (and a true goofball in life). This is all she’s ever wanted to do since childhood was act, and she really breathed life into a new angle on Nebula. Still love the animosity the two of them had.
I thought Gillan was great too. I really don’t understand the recapper’s criticisms. I thought she took the Nebula voice she already does and gave it more of a heist/neo-noir feel. I think she should do more voiceover work
Yeah the way the Collector is presented in the regular MCU he doesn’t have a physically imposing presence at all. And he seems way more like a foppish weirdo. Different universe I guess but this seemed like a totally different character
I struggled with this episode a lot more than I thought I would. Don’t get me wrong, I found it to be just a fun heist episode and thought there was a lot of funny beats. Especially Korath was such a constant barrel of joy here, each line just making bust out laughing.
Where it got little bit difficult for me was in the last third and how the show dealt with the revelation that Yandu was a literal child abductor. Now I get that it is a similar storybeat than in GotG2, which don’t get me wrong really glorified a toxic parental relationship, but there at least I got the story sense of it as Peter had lost his mother back home and Yandu was protecting him from Ego with that decision. Here there’s no such explanation, instead it is Yandu accidentally coming accross T’Challa and lying to him about his home in order to keep him around. That’s a really heavy action to insert into a fluff episode like this and as a consequence it never really knew how to properly handle the revelation. I just can’t figure out why they didn’t take another route instead seemingly imply that child abduction isn’t that big of a deal if the child in question has wanderlust in them.
Honestly the episodes being only a half hour long does make it hard to flesh out the concepts of each episode.
Agreed, it was a bit of an odd choice. With the way that the episode made a point to re-establish that the Wakanda force field renders the city invisible, you could have had Yondu genuinely believe that there’s nothing there, no place to return the kid to. If he found out the city still existed much later, but didn’t tell T’Challa, there’d still be the bones of the same conflict.
Or to keep it really simple, have T’Challa have a fight with his father or something else happen that he thinks he can’t go back. And then later in the episode state that it is too late for him to go back before coming across that ship and understanding that that family is still there for him.Anything except that insane approach to shrug off literal child abduction.
You’re timeline seems a little compressed here. Yondu didn’t lie until T’Challa was an adult, after T’Challa had reformed some of the worst people in the universe into a good family. Yondu, selfishly, didn’t want to lose T’Challa because he loved him as a son by that point. It certainly wasn’t glorifying child abduction though.
“So Your Honor, I was driving when I saw this kid walking along the road. After insisting that he gets in to the car with me, he started telling me about all the things in the world he wanted to see, so we just started touring the country. No, of course we didn’t tell his parents or even let them know he was fine, I mean the kid never asked for it.Anyway, after two months on the road, the kid finally started talking about maybe going back to his family, but by then I had grown to really like the kid. So naturally I told him that I had checked in on them and that they had all been brutally murdered. After all, how else would the kid have stayed with me of his own free will? Which he was doing at that point, as I think we can all agree that you can’t abduct a minor if he is okay with going with you.So we can all agree that I’m actually a really good dude here, right?”
You understand the murderous space pirate who regularly threatened his (other) adoptive son with being eaten by the crew was not intended to be presented as your new unproblematic fave, yes?
But Yandu wasn’t a good dude back then. He becomes a better one over time.
I appreciate that T’Challa went willingly, with he and Yondu having the same sense of adventure and exploration.
I got the sense years had passed into adulthood as well before Yondu lied to him.
Peter on the other hand literally just lost his only parent moments before being abducted. If anything, there was a sense of Stockholm Syndrome there with Yondu being the only one who cared about his welfare, despite the fact HE KIDNAPPED HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Is the impression that you got that Yondu told T’Challa that his home had been destroyed that same day? I definitely thought he left of his own free will, and it was only later when he started to get homesick that Yondu lied. Unless the idea was that he was too young to consent to leave, it’s not much different than Trillian leaving Earth with Zaphod Beeblebrox, excepting of course that her home actually was destroyed. In longer form, there probably would have been more time for some broader emotional beats, but I think that T’Challa’s initial fury over being lied to but later acceptance that it wasn’t done maliciously and now he’s home after all is done pretty well for a 30 minute episode.
IIRC, Yondu had already decided not to bring Quill to Ego, because he’d already discovered that Ego had lied to him about not hurting any of the previous kids he’d trafficked.
I personally think that Yandu and Quill’s relationship is toxic, but it isn’t glorified because it’s not supposed to be aspirational in anyway. It’s just celebrating that he did have a “dad” in spite of all the messiness of his upbringing. I don’t think all is forgiven and the complexity of those two characters is one of the better formed relationships in the MCU
Hey, maybe the next thing you can write is the huge, messy Twitter controversy surrounding this episode as well.I can’t actually find one…but I’m sure if you look, I’ll bet you’ll be able to squeeze out a few brain-decaying paragraphs from something some nobody rando said. I mean, worst case scenario, you can just manufacture some outrage yourself. You need to meet your daily stupid shit quota!
So they DIDN’T do the thing you’re mad at them about, so you invented a scenario where they did and you’re mad at them for it? Why are you here?
(It’s a criticism of the AVClub’s practices, not something the poster actually believes.)
https://www.avclub.com/peggy-carter-is-having-a-superhero-a-moment-but-marvel-1847469806Like I said. Barsanti needs to meet a daily bullshit quota, and this ain’t it.
Not sure if he is good enough to manufacture. He needs some kind of spark. Let’s just hope Pratt doesn’t say anything stupid for the next few days.
“Jesus!”
I’m a little worried he didn’t do Quill’s voice. Hopefully it’s just a schedule conflict or something and he isn’t protesting the dunking Quill received.
I can’t believe barsanti had the fucking gumption to link the shittiest article he’s ever typed.
I noticed they reverted to using Sam’s pic as the Captain America profile. Because of “fan backlash?” Or because the promotion for last weeks What If…? is now over? The world may never know.
Well, the fact that T’Challa just by some conversation can completely change Thanos into someone who not only hangs out with him and stops murdering people plus now has a non-abusive relationship with Nebula just makes Peter Quill look even more useless in the original timeline in comparison (yes all that had to happen to be part of that 1 in 14,000,805 but still) and that’s even before he and Ego go and wreck things even further.
a lot of the episode was bullshit. Even for a What If. It happened because people worship Black Panther and Boseman.
There’s 20 years between when T’Challa was picked up on Earth and when we see him stealing the Power Stone.That’s a looooong time considering how significant a branch that is on the timeline.
Black Panther is royalty and was probably at least partially trained in diplomacy but even then it’s still a stretch. However, as a running gag and as a farewell to Mr. Boseman I really liked it.
its more than a stretch, its fucking ridiculous. Any changes to Thanos from meeting Tchalla could only happen starting AFTER they met. By the time they meet, Thanos had already been subjugating planets and had the mindset of a murderous tyrant. We’re supposed to believe he did a complete turmaround just because Tchalla is cool? GTFO of here
Dude still mad that one of the super popular super heroes is black.
Youre an idiot. And youre assuming a lot. I didnt say anything even remotely racist. Youre obviously one of those people that automatically assumes its racist to criticize anything involving black people. Fuck you. It was just a bad episode, FACE IT.
A hit dog yelps.
You didn’t say it was a bad episode, dork.You said people “worship” the like 12th most popular superhero like it was a bad thing. Apparently it offends your sensibilities that a black superhero gets almost nearly as much attention as the other 15 white boys.Incels are funny.
I found Chris Pratt’s burner account yall.
You’re bullshit.
Your mindless, innaccurate, random insult doesnt successfully refute any of my points.
Your “points?” I was responding to your post that said, “This was bullshit.” Sorry I didn’t rise to that level of nuanced, insightful discourse.
It’s an alternate universe, within a fictional story. They did one with Black Panther because there’s a lot to like about the character, not because they “worship” him. Get over it or tell us what’s really upsetting you.
When I realized that T’Challa was just making everything better I definitely muttered something about Quill being a worthless brat. Maybe not fair to someone who just lost his mom, but whatever.
No no – it’s definitely fair.
Yeah, I thought Peter Quill ending up mopping floors of a rural Missouri DQ was just about right.
I like how the writers of MCU content continue to just screw around with the audience and keep making jokes that jab at fans for being so unbearable…
“Cap would never say Hail hydra!”
🙂
“Thanos doesn’t have the best argument and here’s why!”
😀
To be fair, a time traveling variant of Frank Castle with all of the powers of a Ghost Rider and the Silver Surfer tried to raise an infant Thanos to not be evil. It didn’t work out, turns out Thanos being a genocidal monster is kind of a universal constant…
WTF
The punisher is hardly a “don’t be a mass murdering, genocidal, psychopath” poster child
Even in this episode, Thanos’ position seems to be, “Okay, I won’t obliterate half the universe, but I still think the idea has some merit.”
It’s a good thing Rational Thanos is pretty chill, otherwise he would be like the worst anti-vax asshole.“Look, I have my rights. If you don’t want to snap your fingers and eliminate half of all life in the universe, I’m okay with that. But you can’t tell me that I can’t do it. Live Free and Die, pal.”
Yeah it was a funny spin on Drax’s actual role in GotG, who without Quill and the Ravagers likely would have been a blood-thirsty killing machine because of Thanos killing his family. So in this story it’s T’Challa who talks Thanos into not being a blood-thirsty killing machine into the reserved killing machine that Drax is in the movies.
We had that really good conversation before, remember? There was a mention of why not kill Thanos as infant in the comment section of a prior article and I mentioned Cosmic Ghost Rider and his complete failure in that regard and then you were there with this cover.I think Cosmic Ghost Rider was one of those fine lines between disaster and genius which land on the genius side (like Natalie Portman and her decoy in The Phantom Menace – yeah great George, you’ve just split screened Natalie Portman to learning years later that was Kiera Knightley?!?).So in that excellent Thanos/Thanos Wins miniseries (one of the first comics I’d read then went on to buy in decades) I was thinking about Cosmic Ghost Rider … yeah yeah yeah great it’s Wade in the future so original but then (!!!!).Five stars and then some.
good effort tho!
He did get Mary Sue’d a little bit.
I mean, it’s a what if story. It’s meant to be kind of extreme and silly. 😉
Thats all you got from that? That it makes Quill look bad? Not how utterly and completely ridiculous the whole “black panther changes everybody’s core personality” thing is?
I think the most important news is that Feige confirmed that Boseman did much more voice work during the What If session and that Coogler is incorporating it into Black Panther 2. They were very clever to stress they wouldn’t recast or recreate Boseman with CGI- looks like they don’t need to because some aspect of him will indeed be in the sequel.
I hope they do better than forced, mismatched dialogue, a la Carrie Fisher.
All her dialogue was actually clips from Amazon Women on the Moon.
I wonder what someone who didn’t know she died would think of her scenes in that. Would it seem as obvious if you didn’t know they were pasted in?
It’s an interesting question. Surely it would seem like a very weird arc. She’d probably join Finn and Rose as characters mourned for their lack of payoff after much setup.
I have seen people not notice the Tarkin scenes in Rogue One
“Your excellency Lord T’Challa! The Skrulls are attacking Wakanda! Do you want your sister and the other heroes in the film to fight back while you continue to stand here with your back turned to me?”“Yes.”
“Lord T’Challa, your people are losing hope!”“Hope is important :)“
I thought they did the best they could with what they had, it was noticable but not at the level of Tarkin in Rogue One or Lyvia Soprano. But honestly they could’ve just recast her, as hard as that would be to see.
I still wish they would have aged up Natalie Portman and had her do it. Maybe she would have taken it seriously then.
“Hello. Nakia. You are. Quite Good. At. Turning me. On.”
God, that was the worst part of a horrible movie.
i assume he’ll be a ghost with the other dead panthers
Oooooof nope. I’m okay with *not* seeing T’Challa/Boseman as a ghost.I actually think, from a storyline perspective, the next Panther *not* seeing T’Challa would be a much better storybeat. They’re desperate to pick up where he left off but they have to realize he’s not there to guide them and make the answers easy anymore.
My guess is that a lot of the major characters introduced early (like Captain Carter and T’Challa Star-Lord) will become foundational for some alt-Avengers down the line.
But wouldn’t that mean these stories are taking place in the same universe, thus requiring multiple What Ifs to exist simultaneously, which would violate the whole premise of What If?
I trust Coogler implicitly here. I believe he has the vision and desire to do right by Boseman and has the ability and standing to tell any of the studio guys to stick it if they try to interfere.
So, if Coogler uses CGI, recasting, deleted scenes, voice over, impersonators, Pet Sematary style resurrection, whatever. I trust him.
The other thing that Feige said recently has given me an idea as to what we’re going to see of T’Challa in BP2. We now know that Riri Williams will be making her debut in it, and if I were guessing, I’d say that she’s top of the class at that student outreach center thing they were building at the end of BP, and that she gets a trip to Wakanda and becomes friends with Shuri along the way. So my big extrapolation is that we’ll see or hear Boseman in the school scenes through voiceovers played over inspirational video stuff.What I’m really hoping is that as long as we’re seeing a school full of the future of Black MCU superheroes, they go ahead and put an obvious Moon Girl in the background as well.
rest in power, King. #RIPChadwickBoseman #WakandaForever
Is every What If? about heroes swapping roles?
Okay last night I literally started rebuild 2.0 after what if so 🤣I hope not, btw.
If your haven’t finished Rebuild yet, you’re in for a treat. I mean, Shinji still makes Claptrap look like Robert Downey Jr. but… It’s great.
Halfway through 3.0. I rewatched the series last year. It’s wild how it diverges. What the fuuuuuuck the end of 2.0. and 3.0 is wild so far.
Yeah, I’m currently re-watching the original series after finishing Rebuild 4 last weekend. Amazing how well the two versions play off of one another if you adhere to the idea that Rebuild is a continuation not a redo.One thing I am kind of shocked at however is just how much underage nudity Evangelion has. If this was live action the creators would be brought up on child pornography charges. And the majority of it is pure fan service. How many times do we really need to see Asuka slowly, gratuitously flash the crotch of her panties rolling over in bed? I know Japan has a somewhat more normalized acceptance of, uh, pedophilia, but we are talking about content that is now being distributed in the West on Netflix and Amazon, two of the largest streaming companies out there. We live in a hypercritical time defined in large part by internet outrage culture. How is this getting a pass?“I am so fucked up”.
I’m pleased by how much the Rebuild stand on their own but are also so much better when you’ve also seen the original series, EoE, and read the manga. And as a grand finale to it all, I think it’s pretty solid. Even if there are some things I didn’t really like along the way.As to the rest of your content, I had to look it up. In Japan lolicon like that is apparently ok because it’s explicitly not real children. In other countries, like the goods ol US of A, we’re ok with that work coming over and don’t prosecute because of freedom of artistic expression. But I’m sure someone out there is already making the argument that Asuka is an adult in the last two films and Rei, especially giant angel ones, are a whole different thing altogether.
Short, non-spoilery answer: No.Long, spoilery answer: While Marvel has kept a lot of the details under wraps, we do know at least a couple more of the upcoming episodes are about….
….Loki on Earth.
….a zombie outbreak.
….something to do with Ultron.
….Stark teaming up with Killmonger.
I’m halfway through this episode and it’s the most fun I’ve had watching a Marvel thing since Endgame.
This is worth it just for Korath and Thanos, I loved their defanged versions, especially Thanos blithely defending his plan as not genocide because it’s random. The only thing that rang false to me is that T’Challa must have been doing pretty amazing things pretty young to change things as much as he did. Drax’s planet never gets destroyed, it seems like Thanos never went to Gamora’s planet at all, Nebula doesn’t have any visible cyborg parts except her eye. Was “Cha-cha” like 13 when he convinced Thanos his plan was crap?
Mary Sue gonna Mary Sue.
Dude, it’s a what if story. It’s meant to be cheeky somewhat wish fulfillment. Stop saying Mary Sue.
But if he keeps yelling it enough eventually it’ll seem like he’s not just yelling it at women and people of color.
At least part of my enjoyment of this episode was imagining Boseman’s haters choking on their bile at how positive and upbeat this episode was.
If you can be one thing, it’s efficient.
Djimon Hounsou near about stole the episode for me.
I’ve never seen him (or, I guess, heard him) play such a positive character before, and it needs to happen more often. He knows how to sell pure, unselfconscious joy.
After last week’s episode, I wrote about how Marvel’s insistence on convincing everyone that What If…? is a Real Marvel Thing is doing a disservice to both the show itself and cool characters like Captain Carter. You can read it here.Yeah, we read it. It was embarrassing.Anyway, I really enjoyed this episode. I thought Boseman was great, and I’m glad that he recorded more so we’ll see his Star Lord again. The only part I had a hard time buying was that Thanos could be stopped by a good talking-to. However, “good” Thanos was a fun character.
Nebula: “So, here’s my Dad’s plan…”
Gamora: “Peace out, beyotches”
12-year-old T’Challa: “Has anyone suggested to him that this is a bad idea?”
ALL: “BRILLIANT!”
Nebula: “So, here’s my Dad’s plan…”
Gamora: “Peace out, beyotches”
12-year-old T’Challa: “Has anyone suggested to him that this is a bad idea?”
ALL: “BRILLIANT!”
It’s really weird for Sam to bring this up without acknowledging that his piece made a point of saying that the GotG twitter hadn’t changed to feature T’Challa, when exactly this happened a day or two later.
I don’t think “weird” is the right word. Really lame, maybe. Or really annoying. But not really weird, because for Barsanti, this kind of lame annoying thing is typical.
The only part I had a hard time buying was that Thanos could be stopped by a good talking-to. However, “good” Thanos was a fun character.
Thanos was on his “half/half” thing as far back as Gamora’s childhood (which I would assume means it was around the same time as T’Challa’s abduction.So it’s possible if the two met each other early enough in his rise to prominence, Thanos could have been talked out of it.
So, a few weeks back Kevin Feige or someone said that they would be taking a plot point from this What If…? and incorporating it into BP 2, I’m going to assume that it’s Wakanda going into space since that’s also a big plot in the comics at the moment.
Ah, they’re probably gonna do some sort of off-screen Space Death, or he becomes part of some energy blob or something. I was hoping they’d write out T’Challa in a more human way.
Dude, don’t get bummed out about things that haven’t even happened and may not happen yet.
I mean I could do that, but I also could go nuts and announce that, I, an 18-34 year old overweight white man with no children, boycott the movie. One gets me more attention!
Nuts and gum, together at last!
Either that or he goes off into space to find a new space colony for Wakanda.
“I have to go now. My not-home planet needs me.”
I think it’s less that they’re taking plot from this for BP2, & more that they’re taking unused voice clips from this, so they can have Chadwick’s voice come out of a masked, CGI Black Panther.
Kevin Feige said that the plan was to incorporate some of Boseman’s voice, i.e. some of the flavor of his performance on this episode (not actual recordings or story beats).“He read the episode that airs 24 hours from now and then came back and said ‘I really love this version of T’Challa.’ And we had a conversation after that with Ryan about ‘How do we get some of this voice,’ none of the storyline, but just some of that voice into Panther 2.”
T’Challa/Howard the Duck road movie confirmed!
Extraordinary that someone decided to make such a high-budget show with an art style that could be reasonably described as “what if Iron Man: Armored Adventures looked even worse”. 3D CGI is a goddamm plague.
You seem to be in the minority, here. Most everyone seems to think the animation is really good.
Right? It’s like a modern take on the Fleischer animation style – it can feel a bit ‘samey’, but I’m okay with something being coherent while being this “fluid”
Probably my single favorite scene so far is when Carter Ks the F out of the hulking German who is making fragile fraulein comments, because it looks very Beauty and the Beast in its exaggerated “dude getting his face punched in” look.
He must’ve accidentally wandered over here from Gematsu.
No, the art is really good. The animation (which is to say, the motion) is pretty dang sloppy.
That’s always going to be the problem with a realistic show like this. It’s just so hard to recapture what we already see these characters as in our minds. I personally prefer the much hated “cal arts style” because it is abstract enough that youre not making real world comparisons or constantly thinking about how fluid the animation is. That said there is no way Marvel wouldnt have been eaten alive if they went in that direction for this show.
Reminded me of top tier Disney at times. Like Aladdin.
It feels bland and generic. The backgrounds are gorgeous, but the figures don’t feel the same. I saw someone comment on Twitter that it feels like a videogame cutscene.
This is not 3D CGI, dude. It’s cel shading. Do you really think this looks like Jimmy Neutron or something?
It’s pretty obviously the same kind of mock cel-shading that Skyland pioneered back in the mid-2000’s. Looked like shit then, looks like shit now, just developed some more defined shadowing.
This is not 3D CGI, dude. It’s cel shading.
This seems pedantic at best. Cel shading is a technique applied to 3D CGI.
Pedantic at best, huh? What is it at worst?I can say that as a layperson, most cel shading looks 2D to me. It might have a 3D effect, but I wouldn’t call it 3D, any more than I would call iced tea, ‘iced hot tea’, even though the tea is brewed hot before being iced.Since near all animated productions are CGI these days, the whole thing seems like a wash if someone is going to rule out all these effects entirely.
At worst it’s just wrong.Cel shading is a technique designed to make 3D models appear 2D by altering how light is generated on an object to more closely replicate the kind of quick shading needed for traditional 2D animation. But it’s still fundamentally a 3D technique: it adjusts the shading, but a camera can still move through a scene and capture different angles in a way that’s impossible with 2D assets. Everything still has depth because everything is rendered with a Z-axis. And What If…? takes advantage of that third axis all the time, from obvious things like swooping cameras to the way a simple dolly shot from left to right will subtly show multiple sides of an object (because their depth gives them natural parallax that 2D assets don’t have, unless they’re painstaking faked through multiple unique frames). Some cel shaded shows try to artificially limit other aspects of their production to better approximate a 2D look (compressing backgrounds into multiple flat layers, rendering characters first and then inserting them into the show so movements can happen without parallax on them, tweaking models so they look more naturally hand-drawn from one angle in a way that would look like total garbage from any other angle, that sort of thing), but What If…? does none of that: it fully embraces its nature as a 3D show, particularly in the action sequences.
I don’t think it’s inherently bad (I have nothing against 3D animation), but there’s absolutely nothing unfair about calling this a 3D CGI show, because that’s precisely what it is.
I would say being pedantic is worse than being wrong. Pedantry is an attack, however passive aggressive. I’d’ve preferred you just call it wrong. I don’t mind being wrong.
That’s fair.
Yeah, you’re definitely in the minority on that. The cell shading is really good and looks like a Leyendecker illustration come to life.
I don’t think any of them look remotely like the real people. They have the basics right: “tall white guy with crazy white hair and eyebrows” but he looks nothing like Benecio Del Toro. T’Challa: black guy with the right goatee but he looks nothing like Chadwick Boseman, etc for all of them
This one is an A in my book. I really loved the conceit that T’Challa would reform the Ravagers and the effects that would spiral out from that. Thanos and Korath were great fun in their new roles. I do wonder what happened with Ronan, and if they’re going to be making a conscious effort to avoid the Infinity Stones in this series. They seemed to treat the Power Stone orb like the Tesseract, as if it were a fully capable MacGuffin all on its own. Even The Collector didn’t mention that it was just a container for something more powerful.I thought the voice acting was a lot better in this episode than in the first one actually. Del Toro did sound way milder, but aside from that, everyone’s voices had a lot more personality than some from last week. And since most of these characters are pretty strikingly different from their movie roles, the inexperience most of them have doing voice acting work played fine. This will probably be an ongoing issue with the series if it gets renewed, but I think we’ll adjust pretty quickly. Maybe they will too.
There’s no way Disney will ever convince me that was Benicio Del Toro voicing The Collector. Even if Del Toro were to personally proclaim it was him, I still won’t believe it. I know his voice (his actual speaking voice, not the voices of Fred Fenster, Frankie Four Fingers, The Collector, or any of the other myriad of strange voices he’s adopted over his career), and that certainly wasn’t his voice. Sorry, nuh uh.
I enjoyed this one more than the first episode. The writing was still very bad at times (especially Korath, which was way overdone), but there was a lot to enjoy. The easter eggs in the Collector’s lair, in particular, were fantastic, and I enjoyed the voice acting overall, as well as the continued great look of the animation.
Yes Chadwick’s voice didn’t sound on point as it should have, but he was dying of a painful cancer while recording.
I’m as big a Peggy Carter fanboy as anyone, but this episode was way better than last week’s. I didn’t think Hayley Atwell did as convincing a job as Captain Carter as she has in the other Marvel properties, and the action and plotting seemed pretty rote, as if the writers were determined to touch every plot button from the original Captain America movie.Maybe that’s why this episode was so great – it took the “What If…?” concept and ran with it. Of course, it helps that Djimon Hounsou was an absolute frigging delight in this – I totally agree with Sam that if this is indicative of his voiceover prowess, he needs to get way more work, because he was pitch perfect in every scene he was in.
That’s funny. I’m on the complete opposite of the coin. I thought last week’s episode was leaps and bounds better than this one. Just on the inventiveness of the animation they don’t even compare. This episode lacked in any sense of movement or thrill. I did enjoy the concept that T’Challa’s inherit goodness turned a bunch of miscreants and generally evil people into better people. I’m more interested in seeing how that came about than what we got though.
as if the writers were determined to touch every plot button from the original Captain America movie.
Because Captain Carter’s episode showed us the events immediately after the deviation. She becomes Cap and then we see how the events of WWII play out if it’s her instead of Steve. So yeah, story beats are similar because the timeline hasn’t had much time to branch yet.
This one doesn’t have that problem because there’s twenty years between when the timeline splits and when we catch up to T’Challa as Star Lord. So you can easily hand wave the completely different plot because after 20 years of course things will be significantly different.Now let’s say we go back to Captain Carter in a future episode now that she’s come out on the other side Tesseract in what appears to be the beginning of Avengers (2012). I’d expect her to be in a COMPLETELY different situation because between WWII and the initial battle of New York there’s been decades of the timeline being impacted by the existence of the Hydra Stomper, the Tesseract being in SHIELD’s hands…etc.
Hounsou has some voice acting experience, notably playing BET/Hudlin’s version of T’Challa for six episodes.
They should have named this episode: What If…Korath knew Star Lord.
What If… Korath knew who Star-Lord was?
If it’s Sam Barsanti asking the question, I always assume the answer must be ‘no’.
Yes. Now shut up
God bless you Boseman, you poured every minute you had in this life to continue making us smile, laugh, and feel inspired.
I’ll take this as a wonderful gift of his legacy.
And that T’Challa Starlord outfit is definitely going to be seen at alot of Cons.
Good review, agreed with a lot of it, and the Seth Green detail was appreciated! I missed that one.It almost feels that in addition to some varying voice performances, the mix itself seems particularly unweighty, especially compared to how amazing the sound always is in Marvel live action (and elsewhere it has some umph in this show – just not with the dialogue).So far, this show is… fine.
While I have enjoyed the first two episodes, I kinda wish this series was more like the comics, in that each story should be a worst-case scenario with a bunch of bad things emanating from the change in the timeline, but ending with a glimmer of hope for the future.
Yes, I seem to remember that “What If…?” always seemed to go to the darkest place. It seemed to me as a kid that it was Marvel’s way of saying “what really happened was the way it should have gone.”
After the last four years, I can appreciate What Ifs that are an improvement on the “sacred timeline”.One thing that was refreshing about Back To The Future, the new timeline is mostly better.
Give it time.
Despite the popular opinion that every issue of What If was a “worst case scenario” where things ended up worse than the original story, there were lots of issues where things either ended up the same or better. It’s almost a 50/50 split between “worse ending” stories and “same/better ending” stories.
Im greatly enjoying the running gag of, the person who assumes the role of another person is several times better at the job.
I look forward to “What if Luis was Iron Man?”
Peggy wasn’t really better at being Captain America. She had a head start because she already had combat training but they also had the advantage of the Hydra Stomper which Steve didn’t.Once he showed up in 2012 and could team up with the Avengers he looked just as good as she did.
Wait, are you sure T’Challa was better than Peter?
He turned the Ravagers into a force for good, and convinced Thanos not to go forward with his plan to kill half the universe.Hard to argue with the results.
You ever fucking planning on acknowledging that they switched the Captain America thing back?
Of course he won’t. Just like av club didn’t ever back down from the horseshit Ellie Kemper controversy they invented.
Don’t ask too hard. Apparently you get grayed.
Believe me, AV Club didn’t invent the Ellie Kemper stuff. That started up a day or two before AV Club published anything about it.
You realize that makes them look worse, right? Because that day or two was plenty of time to actually vet the story, but they didn’t do that.
I’m not sure what there was to vet. The group exists, it has a terrible history, she attended at least one event, and she was announced Veiled Prophet Queen of Love and Beauty. These are all facts. None of it meant that she was terrible herself, just connected to it. They updated the title to make it clear the group was racist, and then they also published a piece about her making an official statement about it. We all knew it would likely just be an issue by association, but aren’t we supposed to put privileged people with racist connections on blast?
We all knew it would likely just be an issue by association, but aren’t we supposed to put privileged people with racist connections on blast?I don’t really think so because, this being America, every damn one of us, privileged or not, has “racist connections” whether we know it or not. Member of a union? That union was racist as fuck at one point. If being associated with something that used to be racist is the measuring stick, then everybody’s fucked.
“Stretch things far back enough and everything is problematic!” is an argument that Black people love hearing, lemme tell you. It’s a much nicer way of saying, “Shut up! No one cares!” Never mind the fact that issues with the Veiled Prophet’s exclusive social group are much more recent than your example. Your input just strikes me as an attempt at silencing, which is not appreciated.
If Tenreyro had bothered doing literally 5 minutes of research (even as little as reading the replies in the Twitter thread in question), she would’ve seen that this was already revealed 3 years ago & that Kemper had already made a statement about it back then. A few more minutes of research, & she would’ve noticed that Kemper’s two signature roles were both people who’d escaped a racist cult, and that she’d publicly endorsed & donated to the BLM protests last year. And the original headline on that hack piece was borderline libelous.
The original headline was garbage, I agree. That in itself was problematic and an obvious click-bait ploy. Yes, the reveal on the Veiled Prophet was old and might have even already been on her Wikipedia page, but that statement from 3 years ago? Buried. Where is it? Honestly, if you could find it for me, that would be great.You also know that AV Club wasn’t that only place this was reported, right? Kemper wouldn’t have responded if it wasn’t broadly (re)reported.Also, as we know, roles don’t necessarily tell you about the person. It’s called acting. And getting paid.
Let’s be real y’all. The reason we didn’t think it was Benicio Del Toro playing the Collector this time was because we could actually understand what the fuck he was saying. Whatever he’s doing in the live-action is gibberish.
I think his performance reflected the advanced status of this version of The Collector. He was more powerful, and feared, than the original.
Fuck sake I need a new site. I haven’t found a site that matches av club, or has the same amount and variety of content. But I can’t click on any more barsanti articles and the prick is reviewing what if, which iwant to gush about. The first two minutes had me dying. It was a lot of fun. I saw Brolin’s name in the intro and figured he would be just a quick cameo, he had a TON to do here. And more Howard the duck finally!
if you want a site sucking off marvel/disney 24/7, io9 is just around the corner
You’re unclear about what you don’t like about his articles. I’m curious. What’s up?
I loved the Howard the Duck bit. It made me hope that if they bring back the character in any substantial way, they do it as an animated film rather than as an uncanny valley cgi or prosthetic nightmare like the Lucasfilm version.
I haven’t watched this ep yet and won’t read the article till I do, but… I am really loving the fact of so many big time MCU movie actors lending their voices to What If. I know it’s an easy money gig you can do in your pajamas and all, but it’s nice to (judging from the first episode) hear in many cases the right voice from the right character.
Having everyone in their homes for a year and a half with next to no movie production did have an upside for cartoon production.
clearly something is off in the translation between Chadwick Boseman reading dialogue in a booth and Chadwick Boseman’s voice coming out of Star-Lord’s mouth.
The T’Challa of the BP movie and What If… is, despite the all the talents of Boseman, Coogler, too perfect and and even bland at times. He has no flaws: at least in Civil War T’Challa was struggling with vengeance and loss. Its Boseman’s skill and nuance that make T’Challa a fully developed character when its not in the script.In What If … T’Challa is again flawless, but the animation doesn’t match the subtlety of Boseman’s live action performance. Animation can have that kind of subtlety with a nearly perfect hero — the Peter Parker that Kingpin kills in Into The Spider-verse, for example, is depicted as a very perfect good guy who is also an interesting nuanced person, an effect achieved by both writing and animation. The animation of T’Challa in What If… is very nice but not quite as successful with emotional range.
I have to agree. T’Challa was compelling in CW because he realized the futility of revenge. Then in BP he was basically perfect. The characters around him seemed more human and were making tougher choices shaped by their experiences. BP T’Challa is basically naive in his goodness, even after his father’s hand in the prior events are revealed. Before Boseman’s heartbreaking and untimely passing, BP2 was apparently centered around political upheaval of Wakanda that has been front and center in the comics for a while now. Something that would’ve allowed for a lot more gray area for the character to explore. As far as I know, a version of that is still happening but it’s because the throne has been vacated, as opposed to T’Challa having to reconcile with why there’s even a monarchy to begin with.
Hit the nail on the head. Boseman acts so well with his face to express interior stae: showing hesitation, doubt, contemplation, etc… but to get that out of animation, it helps to consider that already in the character design. The style they’ve committed to for this series isn’t up to the task (I don’t think they’ve even nailed dialogue, really), it tends toward realism—taking away more exaggerated comic expressions—but it also uses very flat shading on the faces that also limits more natural emoting.
The real trouble I’m having with the dialogue is the run time. 30 minutes to cram an entire backstory and adventure with so many characters is having these characters talk virtually with no air between their lines.
There’s no beats. It’s like “here’ssomefactsaboutmycharacterandnowyoureply””okaysowhatdowedonow””I’llleadthewaydon’tyouworry”. They need to be about 5-10 min longer to really allow the flow to go smooth and let the story breathe.
yeah… so far, the most interesting thread to come out of responses to this show for me is how people articulate the difference between a great actor and a great voice-actor as intersecting Venn diagram circles… I get why Marvel views the voices of the movie actors as both a selling point and as an argument for creative continuity, but it sometimes creates a gap between what we expect and what we get. Boseman’s acting (probably closely followed by Michael B. Jordan’s) is probably the most celebrated performance in the MCU, even before the inevitable retrospective effect of his death. And this episode took a farther shot than the first in experimenting with the personalities of these characters. The expectations were higher, and it’s hard to imagine a What If? episode focusing on Boseman that didn’t have at least the potential for some kind of letdown. Time compression is a factor, too: two episodes in, both stories have, for me, been pretty successful in taking its characters in different directions that felt like a balance between transformative and organic (at least, when they’re not just for comic relief, like Thanos…). But here’s a thought: Captain Carter wasn’t that different from Agent Carter as a person; but a T’Challa with wanderlust is a potentially believable, yet much more significant departure. Black Panther makes a plot point out of the question of Wakanda’s insularity, but frames it more as a widening sphere of responsibility. Wanting to explore for the sake of exploring (and also doing good stuff along the way) is a different thing…I think this might be why the last episode felt like it worked better as a self-contained episode, and this one felt more like a sketch for a (more successful) feature-length film, where the heavier lifting it was doing with the characters felt more earned…
I don’t feel Captain Carter didn’t require a difference. She was MADE for being a superhero, she just didn’t get a chance due to misogyny and women being prohibited from active duty in the era. She was a crack shot and just as noble and patriotic in her duty as Steve was.
This was a case of someone else taking up the mantle because of one small change. And that’s okay. I also love the fact she was exhilarated at her new powers when tackling the Hydra caravan.
Frankly, I feel like she was even better at the role than Steve, but one could argue that’s due to the limitations of live-action. She REALLY kicked ass. That she took down a flying squadron with her bare hands was an impressive and tremendously enjoyable sequence.
I think there is validity to the idea that What If? T’Challa is more of a radical departure to the original than What If? Peggy Carter, and this is related to the dissonance some viewers feel between voice actor and character. That said, I still feel BP and What If ? T’Challa are too flawless, which makes them less interesting imo. I also found T’Challa’s reaction to betrayal and reuniting with his people very understated (too understated in my view) which I think is a reflection of the animation approach. Nevertheless, an interesting point on the effect of T’Challa’s wanderlust on the story vs Carter’s transformation.
He has no flaws?I would say his ego/pride got the better of him early on, otherwise he’d have just thrown Killmonger in jail (if not worse).
He really did lack that flaw good heroes have. Sure, a hero that handles himself well is awesome, but when they’re TOO good, they can alienate an audience and find disconnect as a truly unbelievable fictional character. He really seems perfect in this. But I was still impressed he managed to turn half the galaxy around in its issues. That’s some grade-A debate skills.
But I was still impressed he managed to turn half the galaxy around in its issues. That’s some grade-A debate skills.
Given that Thanos is insane — which might make him impervious to arguments — his transformation seemed more implausible than Yondu, who is a decent person underneath his rough exterior and criminality. But it was entertaining to see.
it wasnt implausible-it was totally fucking stupid and insane. By the time this black paqnther met Thanos, his core personality was already formed-he had brutally culled tons of planets, before anything in the avengers happened. We’re supposed to believe all that is gonna be turned around just because black panther is such a smooth talker? The real life inspiration for this asinine plot point-and the whole episode-is that people worship chad boseman and think black panther (and him) are irresistable, and that leaked over into the writing.
“Given that Thanos is insane …”I don’t think that is a given at all. When has this ever been proven?Being an extremist (which is what Thanos is – a universal-extremist) does not make one insane.
Thanos is a cruel narcissist whose plan is not only sadistic — how else to describe watching your family and friends turn to ash and disappear — its not rational. Making half the sentient beings in the universe disappear is not going to solve any problems (at the same time creating enormous suffering) — at best it is going to merely postpone any calamity Thanos is claiming to try to avoid. But he has an obsessive fixation on it nonetheless. And even the friends of the reformed What If…? Thanos thinks the fact that he still believes its not a terrible idea is a little … crazy
Thanos is a narcissist, but that does not make him insane. Many people are narcissists and we don’t say they’re insane.If Thanos’ plan was actually sadistic then he would choose who to kill. He leaves it all up to chance and the half of the universe that is killed is random. That part of it doesn’t sound sadistic to me.Also, if killing half of a population so the other half can survive is sadistic, you’re saying that culling herds is sadistic. Many animal preservation groups do exactly this because they know that if they don’t, the entire group will starve because there are not enough supplies for all of them. This is the entire basis for Thanos’ plan.“Making half the sentient beings in the universe disappear is not going to solve any problems (at the same time creating enormous suffering)” I guess you skipped the part of Endgame where they said that a post-snap Earth had many of its global problems solved – less pollution, less crime, less hunger, etc. Pretty much everything Thanos was trying to do. Yes, there was emotional suffering, but for those left alive they were alive. “At best it is going to merely postpone any calamity Thanos is claiming to try to avoid.” No, if Thanos had used the stones to double the current resources in the universe (which is the standard rebuttal to his plan), *that* would merely postpone the calamity by kicking the problem down the road. A post-snap universe where they didn’t undo the snap would lead to long-term changes so that things didn’t get as bad as they used to be.“But he has an obsessive fixation on it nonetheless. And even the friends of the reformed What If…? Thanos thinks the fact that he still believes its not a terrible idea is a little … crazy” He has a fixation on the idea because he came up with it, and was talked out of it, but he still wonders “What if?” If you came up with a plan like this but didn’t go through with it, you’d likely want to tell everyone you meet about it.Sorry, Thanos *is* a narcissist and an extremist, but he’s not insane.Now the Thanos from the comics who killed half of the universe because he was in love with the personification of Death and wanted to impress her – *that* guy is insane.
Death in Marvel Comics is a hot babe tho’
I disagree. I thought Boseman’s voice work was great. He added a certain swagger and fun to the line readings that differentiated the character from the MCU T’Challa and made sense seeing as how he’s lived his live as a Robin Hood type as opposed to growing up with the heavy burdens and traditions of Wakanda. Obviously he would’ve had even more presence if it was live action but that was about as good as it gets for a cartoon voiceover
My main criticism isn’t about Boseman’s performance, its about writing that renders the character too perfect, too devoid of flaws and inherently imo less interesting than he could be. If anything, Boseman’s performance (both here and the BP movie) mitigate that issue by finding nuances that aren’t in the script. I will note, however, the Robin Hood scenes being discussed are not T’Challa’s most emotional ones, but ones focused on his swagger and swashbuckling
I never would have realized that was actually del Toro doing the Collector’s voice without looking it up.
Don’t recall this being addressed in the show “Wheres Gamora?”
I’ll do you one better: Who’s Gamora?
No, I got it: What is Gamora?
When is Gamora?
Why is Gamora?
How is Gamora? She doing alright?
LOL
How is Gamora?
Wheres Gamora?
Everyone went with the (decent) joke answers but never followed up. Gamora is a nobody in this timeline who grows up on her planet doing whatever. Thanos never visited it and kidnapped her.
A very lucky nobody.
No, she becomes a Thanos. She’s in the poster. Maybe if these are all different timelines she’s a nobody in this specific one, but the poster tells us she’s wearing golden armor and carting around his dumb helicopter sword.
I thought the voice acting this week was better than last weeks, although I’m still not crazy about the voice direction in general. (Everyone sounds way too smooth. I hear more nuance from the characters watching the new version of Ducktales…)
I’m really curious about what happened to the universe in Cha-Cha’s absence. The Collector’s collection was full of Easter eggs that suggest mass destruction or somehow things getting displaced. Asgard lost both Thor’s hammer and Hela’s helmet? Captain America’s shield? A “chatty” Kronan’s arm obviously refers to Korg. Sounds like some things for wrecked.
They say that in this episode Thanos wasn’t the universal boogeyman going around destroying civilizations while looking for the Infinity Stones, so the Collector stepped up to fill that void, which explains why he has so much more stuff.
What If… they officially change Thanos’s name to Captain Genocide?
Carina got to throw off her chains and live!
I’m sure others have mentioned this, but I agree on the stiffness, although not in the voice performances. It’s in the animation. As vibrant as the images are—and as well as the action pops given the canvas of cartooning—the character animation veers too hard into “realistic.” They just aren’t very expressive. Their body movements, particularly in conversations and in the faces, are severely limited. That’s not as noticeable with characters like T’Challa and Nebula, who we know as very focused, precise people. But someone like Yondu needs to be livelier, and it’s just not there.
aw really? i am IN LOVE with this style! it’s that perfect in-between of the movies and comic books.
I think that, generally, the animation is great. It’s lush, the environments are incredible, the set pieces are unreal. But like I said, there’s kind of a mannequin quality to the characters that clashes with how alive the rest of what’s on screen is.
yeah i getcha.
Some of the consequences here didn’t make sense (Hela’s powers are innate; they don’t come from her crown, for example), or were just plain cheesy (Reformed Thanos). On the whole, though, this was an improvement over episode 1.assuming the events of Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 take place before King T’Chaka is killed in Captain America: Civil War. No need to assume; we already know that it’s true. GotG 2 is set in 2014, & Civil War is set in 2016.
(Hela’s powers are innate; they don’t come from her crown, for example)Says who? I’d say this episode establishes they come from her crown and as I recall there’s nothing in Ragnorok that contradicts that.
In her very first scene in Ragnarok, she manifests a blade without the crown on.
I was thinking about this after I posted and how the idea that her powers came from her hat didn’t really jive with the movie’s “it wasn’t the hammer it was you” message. So I’m gonna say that much like the hammer the hat channels the power, so if captain america can pick up the hammer and shoot lightning, The Collector can put on the hat and…manifest weapons.
You really gave this episode a worse grade than that yawn-fest of episode 1? Yikes
I don’t think a booth brings out the best in actors who are not professional voice actors. Sebastian Stan also sounded lifeless last episode.
Chadwick Boseman: *comes back to do the voice of T’Challa despite dying of cancer”Sam Barsanti: “I think his performance in this episode is missing something: a spark. his performance doesn’t feel as impactful as it should be.”Bruh, may want to redo this one
I remember when Chadwick was first cast as T’Challa, and he remarked that it was funny to him that he so drawn by the MCU’s humorous tone but he himself was being cast as what would likely be the most serious hero in the setting. I can’t help but think that when they wrote this episode, they wanted to give him the chance to play a funnier take on the character. I do agree that the art style means that not all of his charm makes it through onto the screen, but at the same time you can still tell everyone had a blast recording the dialogue.
I enjoyed it. Maybe a bit too much humor, but it was damn fun. Felt like Taika W. was back in the fold.The only thing that kind of irked me was the rapid pacing with the dialogue. One sentence immediately following another with very little pause in between. It felt like a Youtuber got ahold of it post-production.
I know it’d be hard for anyone who isn’t Boseman to pick up the torch…but I would love an episode that goes in to just how T’Challa won over Thanos.Especially since he had 20 years in which to do it. A series watching him build that reputation would be fun.
A 30 minute galactic heist movie. Tightly scripted. Beautiful animation. All-star cast. Actually subverted my expectations in a fun way! This was a damn A+ in my book.
AGREED!
Is King T’Chaka alive because Bucky survived the train mission in episode 1, or are all the episodes in separate universes independent of one another?
So how’d Cap’s shield and Thor’s hammer end up in the Collector’s weapons cache? Looks like, absent Black Panther, the Avengers were destroyed?
I was actually a little disappointed when Wakanda wasn’t wiped out. Not that I want that to happen, but usually in What If… world, everytime something good happens, something bad happens somewhere else to balance it out. In this case, without T’Challa, Wakanda fell somehow.
No T’Challa, Killmonger becomes king, declares war on the world, and even Wakanda’s might can’t beat back every other nation, not without heavy losses, anyway
Maybe the difference is that the movies are for 13 year olds, and this is more geared towards small children.
This was absolutely cringeworthy fan fic with no arc, but of course we’re watching it as a tribute to Chadwick. On that basis, I am happy they did it, and sure hope they put more effort into writing better non-hagiographies.
Strange, I don’t see anyone notice a fairly major discrepancy, even when the conversation seems to be dominated by a laundry list of nitpicks.At the end of The Guardians of the Galaxy, when Peter finally opens his mother’s final gift, she refers to him as “my little Star-lord.” Peter Quill was Star-lord since he was a child. So, it doesn’t make sense that T’challa would take the same name. I get it, it’s a shortcut to help lesser viewers understand the premise, but it seems like a weird choice to help out that lady who would not shut the fuck up while I was watching Black Panther as she constantly asked dumb questions like, “Who is that? What happened to that other guy? What’s that thing?” when they still have a lot of rewarding, nuanced aspects of the show that aren’t just easter eggs.
It’s also part of the joke, that everyone accepts that as an appropriate name for him, while Peter Quill was more or less demanding his own nickname.
That’s very much not the joke! Peter’s issue isn’t that people refused to call him by his chosen name, it’s that no one knew who he was.He thinks himself a “legendary outlaw,” but he’s not nearly as famous as he wished he was. Since T’challa made so many waves with the Berserkers, his reputation precedes him.
They didn’t know the name. But when they heard it, they laughed.
Maybe Peter’s mother got the “Star-Lord” name from Ego. And Ego might have let the name slip when he told Yondu to go to Earth to retrieve his son. Then Yondu mentions that name to T’Challa when he’s growing up, and he takes it on as his own.
I wanted to love What If?, but I have to admit it’s not quite doing it for me. I think you are right, it’s something about the art style. I like the stories just fine, But the style is leaving me cold. Peggy Carter didn’t look muscular, she just looked bulky and blocky, and the facial expressions in both episodes are a problem with me. It seems kind of Hanna-Barbera at times, and Disney has the resources to do way better than that.
I think his performance in this episode is missing something: a spark. Hard disagree. Boseman sounded like he was having an absolute blast, like he was still very much the kid Yondu abducted, exploring the stars and changing the universe for the better. Gillan’s Nebula has to sound different, since the fundamental nature of her character has changed. Because T’Challa changed Thanos for the better, so much of what scarred (and motivated) Nebula didn’t happen. Brolin, likewise, had to dial back the menace. Imagine if James Earl Jones had to voice Darth Vader as a decent guy?Anyway, T’Chaka’s recorded message about his son going to another plane of existence has me lying to the kids about the dust in my eyes, and that’s all I have to say about that.
OH my god, this episode was SOOO much better than the last one. This is what the show needs to be doing – taking the story in weird, unexpected (yet organic) directions, not just introducing a very minor change and then repeating the exact same beats of the original story.I really liked this and it made me even more disappointed that the Captain Carter episode was such a friggin’ whiff. Imagine if they had allowed themselves to really open up the possibilities of the Captain Carter story and get weird with it, not just re-tell TFA beat for beat plus Iron Man (for some reason.)Captain Carter deserved better. Star-T’Challa was spot on.
I’m sure others have mentioned this, but the only real “error” is that T’Challa called himself “Star Lord”, which was a nickname specifically given to Peter by his dying mother.Should have made him “Star King” or something.
Easy fix. Ego mentioned the name “Star-Lord” when he was romancing Peter’s mom (i.e. “I’m going to make you pregnant and you’re going to have a real Star-Lord.”), and she told it to Peter.So in this continuity, Ego mentioned the “Star-Lord” name when he told Yondu to go find his son. Later, Yondu mentioned it to T’Challa as he was growing up, and he took on the name as his own.
Needlessly convoluted. There’s nothing that interesting about the name dumb name“Star Lord” that you’d need to jump through all those hoops.
I came with a solution in one sentence – how is that “needlessly convoluted”? There was one hoop involved and I didn’t even have to jump through it – it was laying on the ground so I easily stepped into it.And it makes sense that in the normal continuity Ego would give Peter’s mother the name “Star-Lord” since it’s not a normal name for a human living on Earth. But for someone living in outer space going from planet to planet, it’s a perfectly cromulent name.
Multiple hoops. Hoop 1: Ego drops the name “Star Lord” to Peter’s mom (which makes little sense.) Hoop 2: Ego tells Yondu the Star Lord name (which makes even less sense. It’s not like it’d be on his birth certificate or anything.)Dumb hoops you have to painfully contort your body to get through, not gently step through on the ground. They should have just not used the name and given him something else.
My one suggestion/criticism for this episode is this:I wish that when T’Challa had found the Wakanda ship, they had included in it the magic flower (or whatever) that gives him his Black Panther powers. Could have been hidden in a chamber that activated when it detected his DNA or necklace or whatever, with instructions from the hologram.
So he would have been powered up for that final fight with the Collector and they could have had a real knock down, drag out superhero fight.
The entire point of this story was that it was “T’Challa” who did all of this, not “Black Panther”. Making him get the Black Panther powers for the final fight would defeat the entire purpose of the story – that it’s this man who is the real hero, not the powers.
So why does changing his ways and becoming a good guy also turn Thanos into a total pushover? Dude took on all the Avengers simultaneously without breaking a sweat in the movies, but here he almost gets taken out by just two members of the Black Order.And does anyone else think the final scene of the episode is meant to refute the idea that the whole universe would have been better off with T’Challa as Star-Lord? Sure, he reformed Thanos and the Ravagers and made a ton of people’s lives better, but now Quill has been found by Ego, and without the Guardians to help him, he probably won’t be able to prevent Ego taking over the universe.