Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-11-14 (Thursday)

On 11/15/24 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:

What did you watch?

On the day I woke up at 3:30am and couldn't get back to sleep, I finally managed to get through "Deadpool & Wolverine", and also a Lifetime flick.
So I watched:
Deadpool & Wolverine (Disney+) - Going in, I expected this - but this was definitely less funny than the first two "Deadpool" flicks, especially "2" (which is my favorite).
    And the recurring characters from the first two flicks, even Morena Baccarin, get little more than cameos here (and T.J. Miller's character is completely memory-holed without reference; Brad Pitt's "character" from "2" is also inexplicably absent, though this one may have gotten an oblique reference!).
    In short, this flick suffered a lot of the same problems as "Ant-Man 3" - generally ignoring cast/characters from the first two films; being less funny (pretty much *un*funny in the case of "Ant-Man 3"!); launching into a new "quest" with a new "big bad" that we don't particularly care about - though this one is admittedly a lot better than "Ant-Man 3"!
    The other problem I had with this one was its deliberately much closer integration with the rest of the "MCU" (and especially in the recent "Multiverse" stuff) - the first two films worked as well as they did, I believe, exactly *because* they were nowhere near the MCU, and only had ties to 20th Century Fox's "X-Men" flicks. This one explicitly *forces* both Deadpool, and Wolverine, into the MCU, and the film wasn't the better for it, IMO.
    What does work here are the cameos. I don't want to spoil it, but some of the cameos actually wowed me, because I didn't see them coming, and they tie this film in with some earlier franchise stuff that was pre-MCU as well.
    That said, I was disappointed that Channing Tatum was playing Gambit here (yes, I know he's wanted the role for years!), and that poor Taylor Kitsch was once again ignored.
    Sidenote: I had totally - I mean totally! - forgotten that Chris Evans was in the original "Fantastic Four" flicks!
    Anyway, some of this does work - I really like the montage where Deadpool tries to find himself a "Wolverine" in the Multiverse and keeps getting brutally beaten by various versions (including by "The Cavillrine"! Ha!!). And the creepy looking dog with the mutant tongue ("Dogpool") is a great bit too.
    But it almost feels like it takes way too long before they give Hugh Jackman something to do. And placing this in the retreads of the "Loki" TV series just felt... off.
    Sidenote: Emma Corrin is scary skinny and, like, not in a good way.
    All the archive footage from the earlier "X-Men", etc. flicks does seem to imply that this is in fact the end of the road for both Jackman and Reynolds (both are probably getting too old to keep doing this).
    I did like the post-credits scene - like the other "Deadpool" flicks, this post-credits scene doesn't set something up in an upcoming film, but it does prove a claim Deadpool makes earlier in this film!
    Overall, I guess I liked this. I just didn't like it nearly as much as the first two "Deadpool" films.
soaps: Y&R - Fri's thru Wed's(?) ep's. Phyllis sets a good trap for Sharon, and still no one will believe her that Sharon is EVOL?!!! At the end, it looks like we will finally learn who is behind all of this, as both Phyllis and Sharon look to have been "summoned" by a third party... Meanwhile, Victor reveals to Nikki, family and friends that he has rebuilt the Newman ranch. And both Jill and Ashley return to town for Abby's and Devon's wedding (at the ranch), which takes up most of the Tues & Wed episodes.
The Woman With My Face (LMN) - For the second time on Lifetime, Nicole Marie Johnson stars as identical twin sisters.
    In this one, Johnson plays a single-mom journalist who moves to the town she was apparently born in to discover... that she has a married identical twin sister (a librarian?) she didn't know existed!
    Being a journalist, she soon keys into the fact that the circumstances of both twin sisters' original adoptions is shady, and starts investigating. As does another obnoxiously ambitious local reporter (Brey Noelle).
    Soon enough, our heroine reporter(tm) is getting threatening notes to drop it, and is possibly being followed... Will her dogged investigation get her, her sister, or her teen daughter killed?!
    Honestly, this one was very convoluted and the revealed motive was almost like something out of a comic book.
    Of Johnson's two "identical twin" Lifetime movies, I vastly prefer "Lies My Sister Told Me".
What did you watch?