Disney+: WandaVision
 

I didn't think I wanted to watch this. Then the trailer premiered last night.

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In.

I’ve said it a million times, but Elizabeth Olsen is hot as the surface of the sun. I’d win wars for a longing glance.

Early reactions to the first 3 episodes are encouraging


<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">WANDAVISION is a tantalizing experiment with shades of Lynch that is almost irritatingly dedicated to slowly playing out its mystery. (I wanted more!) But one surprise: It&#39;s funny! The jokes feel at home in the I LOVE LUCY/BEWITCHED-homaging world, Paul Bettany is a comedy star <a href="https://t.co/ulKuupVgmH">pic.twitter.com/ulKuupVgmH</a></p>&mdash; Hoai-Tran Bui (@htranbui) <a href="https://twitter.com/htranbui/status/1347951271618244608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 9, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>


<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">It’s like WANDAVISION was specifically made for me. Each of the three episodes I saw fully captures (and rarely deviates) from the tone, humor and dialogue from a classic sitcom. Kathryn Hahn as the nosy neighbor is incredible.</p>&mdash; Mike Ryan (@mikeryan) <a href="https://twitter.com/mikeryan/status/1347951382914080769?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 9, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I got to see the first three episodes of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WandaVision?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WandaVision</a> and it was everything I hoped it would be: funny, clever, creepy, and above all, sort of tragic.<br><br>The reality is: WandaVision is taking the Marvel Cinematic Universe places it has never gone before, and there&#39;s no going back. <a href="https://t.co/BzNujPcUtP">pic.twitter.com/BzNujPcUtP</a></p>&mdash; Hector Navarro (@Hectorisfunny) <a href="https://twitter.com/Hectorisfunny/status/1347960392488607746?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 9, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

This is going to be amazing

/obv

Starts on Friday with a two episode drop!

Looking forward to it.

Nine episodes in total and once Season 1 finishes its run, The Falcon & Winter Soldier begins the following Friday.

These tweets are ads.

I'm personally hoping for something nearly as creative and experimental as Legion.

WandaVision will have nine 20-30 minute episodes.

Falcon and Winter soldier will be six 50-60 minute episodes, same as Loki, which is currently prepping for Season 2.

She-Hulk will be ten 20-30 minute episodes, as will Ms. Marvel.

Legion was awesome though they went so far out there they occasionally lost me for a bit.

Well, it’s Disney+. So they have to keep things fairly accessible for a broad audience.

FX can take more chances.

20-30 minutes episodes? That's disappointing...

Yeah, it would have been nice to have seen 45-60 minute episodes but it the 20-30 minutes are tight with no-filler, it shouldn't matter.

Kevin Feige confirmed that WandaVision ties directly with Dr. Strange And the Multiverse of Madness along with Captain Marvel 2.

What truly sucks is that the four movies that Marvel has in the can won't be released until the end of 2021 or 2022.

These are based on comic books.

This is perfect.

Not everything has to be some super duper amazing epic story arc.

All of the Marvel TV series will most certainly have a story arc and connect to Phase 4 & 5 of the MCU.

But instead of seeing that arc in a 2 hour movie, Marvel will have more time to develop the story over the course a 4-8 hour TV series.

So when does this drop Dane? 12am pacific?

Well that was interesting and bizzarre. They do a great job of recreating the feel of a classic sitcom.

WandaVision can be weird because Marvel has already won

Marvel doesn’t need to chase new audiences because it’s already the biggest game in town

By Chaim Gartenberg@cgartenberg Jan 14, 2021, 4:19pm EST

WandaVision is the Marvel universe’s most comic book show yet, if not in content at least in concept. It’s a dense-looking storyline that will be released on an episodic basis, with characters and a setting that are virtually impenetrable to new viewers — so much so that Marvel Studios even went so far as to produce a clip show recapping the critical moments of the 23-odd films that precede it.

It may seem like WandaVision would be barreling toward the same issue that has hounded traditional comics for years — a high barrier to entry with complex storylines, character dynamics, and lore that span decades and serve to confuse and drive away new readers — but WandaVision arguably doesn’t have that same problem.

Pick up a random issue of Spider-Man or Iron Man, and you’ll likely be confused by the contents, unless you’ve found a particularly accessible entry ramp like a creative reboot (for example, Jonathan Hickman’s recent run of the X-Men books) or a self-contained crossover. Comic sales are doing just fine, but the industry itself is a drop in the bucket compared to the massive pop culture impact of the Marvel blockbusters. Even the bestselling books of all time can’t come close in popularity.

The fact that WandaVision isn’t particularly accessible to new viewers isn’t a mark against it: it’s a spinoff of what’s arguably the single most popular film franchise ever made and a direct follow-up to Avengers: Endgame, the biggest movie in history. Comic book movies and shows are no longer tiny underdogs trying to lure in new viewers who aren’t the traditional comic audience — they are popular culture now.

WandaVision doesn’t have to cater to a new audience; it’s free to get as weird as it wants for the unprecedentedly large audience it already has, an audience that Disney is hoping will sign up for monthly Disney Plus subscriptions to watch it. (The same goes for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Loki and Hawkeye and Ms. Marvel and all of the other Marvel shows heading to the service.) After all, why sell customers a $15 movie ticket to a giant blockbuster only once when you can get them to subscribe to your streaming service for $8 per month forever?

In fact, Disney Plus’ very existence incentivizes Disney to make WandaVision more obtuse to new viewers. After all, all of the Marvel movies that you’d need to understand WandaVision are already on the streaming service. If someone opens up WandaVision on Friday and decides to shelve it while they work their way through the rest of the MCU on Disney Plus, then Disney wins just as much as it would have had they watched WandaVision itself. Even Marvel Legends — the recap show — requires a Disney Plus subscription to view, and it ends each episode with a list of movies (also streaming on Disney Plus) people should watch to better understand WandaVision.

It’s a strategy that we’ve already seen Disney use to great effect with Star Wars. The Mandalorian’s second season tied in heavily to past Star Wars shows like The Clone Wars and Rebels. For fans who were up to speed on the older shows, The Mandalorian was delivering payoffs that were years in the making. For fans who weren’t, they suddenly had a great reason to keep those subscriptions going after the season finale to catch up.

WandaVision is by all accounts one of the strangest Marvel entries yet. It’s not the show the studio was hoping to use to kick off its TV efforts. (That title goes to the delayed — and more mainstream — The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which will follow in March.) It doesn’t need to cater to new fans because of the sheer momentum of the Marvel machine, even though the first few episodes also demonstrate that it’s weird enough — and detached enough — from the main films that people can still come to it as its own thing.

But Marvel’s entertainment juggernaut is so big and consistent that it doesn’t really matter which show kicks off Disney Plus. The company has already won over viewers. All WandaVision needs to do is give them a reason to subscribe.

https://www.theverge.com/22231578/wa...s-mcu-audience

Well, that was.....something. I was trying very hard to watch the peripheral in the shots to try to pick up clues for basically anything. There was some here and there, the biggest I saw

They truly did a great job recreating the feel of those old
sitcoms.

The laugh tracks, dialogue, silly jokes, the camera angles, the boxy aspect ratio. It was all note perfect.

Agreed. Strong sense of nostalgia in a few places, taking me back to the early days of sitcom reruns.

And Elizabeth Olsen.....hnnnng. I'm going to have to rock/paper/scissor with Buehler over her.

Weird ****ing show. I don't even-

Quick on the draw, Vail. :D

I’m apparently retarted.

I've heard they actually did film in front of a studio audience. Those aren't laugh tracks.

Meh. I am sure it will get better.

I loved the second episode.

Man. I was able watch the first episode up until...



...and I just couldn't take any more of this bland garbage. It's like watching paint dry. Back when stuff like this was on TV it was popular because it hadn't already been done to death for 75 years. I suppose if I actually liked Olsen as an actress, the Scarlet Witch and Vision as characters, and was willing to watch it just because of that...then I might be entertained. As it is no thanks.

What the **** did I just watch? Oh and leeeeegsssss.

This is what I found the first one seem almost right.

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Yep I was able to finish both episodes. I think I'd rather have my fingernails ripped from my digits then soaked in rubbing alcohol than watch again.

Dibs. Mother****er.

Yeah. If it was just sitcom schlock it would be fine. But the parts that were creepy were by god creepy. The stark toaster and the stop it stop it stop it from the bosses wife and then the radio thing was just ****ing straight up creepy.

If it was just a sitcom it would be bad. It’s obvious this isn’t that. And Bettany and Olsen do a pretty damn fantastic job of being charismatic enough to keep a guy engaged. Plus some of the jokes are damned funny. The whole chewing gum thing was actually pretty damn funny. I laughed every time the cartoon gears froze up.

And Elizabeth Olsen continues to get hotter. Somehow. We need to get science on it because I’m lost. Christ she’s a dime.

So looking forward to watching today

Not gonna lie, I barely made it through the first episode. In my defense, I had been up for 20 hours. I’ll watch it again tonight.
And I might add, I didn’t hit one spoiler tab in this thread. NOT ONE!!!!

Sorry Buehler, Mary-kates and Ashley’s sister is all mine.

Hope it gets better soon....if I want Black and White TV I can watch the Decades Channel.

I get these first couple of episodes are supposed to build up to something better ( or at least I hope it does) but I just wasn't as excited after these 2 as I was The Mandalorian.

I thought the first two episodes were absolutely amazing.

First off, the showrunners spared absolutely no detail in recreating the Petrie household from The Dick Van Dyke Show, then followed that up by sparing no detail in recreating the Darin and Samantha Stevens household of Bewitched (I really loved the title sequence in Episode 2!). Casting Kathryn Hahn, who's really become a treasure as of late, was a stroke of brilliance. She can do that "smarmy" housewife trip perfectly, then flip a switch and become something altogether different.

I thought the first episode did a brilliant job of asking "What am I doing with my life and what am I doing here?", not only because they were living in the world of two classic and all time great family sitcoms, but with their careers and home lives and their lives in general. Mad Men did an excellent job of asking that question that so many people in the 60's, especially housewives, were struggling with that WandaVision is asking as well:

Is this it?

Clearly, Wanda is trapped somewhere but the illusion of the perfect 1960 American household, which she must have seen on TV as a child in Sokovia, is stopping her from thinking clearly. But where is she and maybe more importantly, when?

Knowing that this program will directly tie into Dr. Strange & The Multiverse of Madness along with Captain Marvel 2, chances are that's she's somehow warped reality or maybe she's stuck in between alternate universes or hopefully, something completely unpredictable.

Either way, I am in!

Fixed your post

I get where you are coming from.......I guess it just didn't flip the switch for me like it does you.

But knowing the quality of most all the Marvel projects they have earned enough points for me to be patient.

FYI, this was not supposed to be the first Marvel TV series that went to air. The Falcon & The Winter Soldier was supposed to be first, followed by Loki, then WandaVision but COVID delayed the completion of the other two series, so WV aired first.

I think that it would have been better received by some people had a more "traditional" Marvel series like The Falcon & Winter Soldier aired before a series like WV, which was purposely meant to be something different and outside the box.

I lasted about 15 minutes. Just couldn't get past the whole WTF? bit.

Not a big Marvel fan to begin with, though, which I'm sure doesn't help.

Dick Van Dyke was a consultant.

Looks absolutely awful

I didn't realize that was DVD and Betwitched houses.

I watched a bunch of Nick at Night as a kid, and maybe that's tripping a little nostalgia in there, but I had no trouble continuing to watch. At all. I was quite intrigued where they were heading.

If you have Hulu, you can watch the 2nd episode of the Dick Van Dyke show to see the same exact kitchen, even down to the old tube radio sitting on a shelf, as was shown in the first episode of WandaVision.

The set director did an amazing job of replicating absolutely everything.

Yeah, I think it's going to be very cool, especially considering that a huge portion of the audience watching WV grew up watching classic sitcoms such as Bewitched and Dick Van Dyke.

I'm super excited to see where it goes next.

The first episode was rough to get through for me too. While I appreciate what they were trying to do, I never liked those B&W sitcoms. It was basically an exercise in spotting easter eggs for me. The second episode was better. IMO they would have been better off combining them and starting with a longer pilot. I ran some errands between episodes and almost didn't watch the second one. Glad I did though. otherwise I might not have ever come back to it. Now that walls are bending between realities, I'm much more interested.

The MCU has had so much success so far, it was only a matter of time before they started branching out into shows that don't resonate with the casual fans. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes because I love the actors and the characters, but the show started out like nails on a chalkboard to me.

Really? You didn't get the reality bending out of the first one?

Vision didn't know WTF was going on right after he said he actually is incapable of forgetting anything.

And that whole "stop it stop it stop it" thing was just epically creepy. Same with that Stark toaster commercial.

I mean they went a long way out of their way to make it different.

I liked how they even had the separate beds in their bedroom.

I did, it was just way over powered by the 60's sitcom. I hated those shows. The reality bending in the first episode wasn't enough to compensate for me. The choking scene was great, but 10 seconds compared to 20 minutes.

I do think this might be a show a lot of younger marvel fans might have some problems getting in to. It’s obviously not the normal slam bang action stuff and anyone younger than 35 won’t have any idea about 50-60s sitcoms

Love the tone of this so far. I hope it doesn't devolve into regular action Marvel fare this season because this looks unique and interesting in a way that most of the MCU's stuff just isn't.

Heh. I'm close to 50, but as an 80's kid those 60 sitcom reruns sucked. Took away airtime from cartoons, monster movies, kung-fu movies, a-team, airwolf, star trek reruns, battlestar galactica reruns, TNG, etc. I hated Beaver, DVD, Jeannie, etc.

I noticed the similarities because they pretty much slap you right in the face with it from the beginning. The ottoman that Vision walks through right after they enter the living room made me smile but then they just keep pouring it on and, to me, it becomes a derivative mess rather than an homage. I'll check back in to this thread at a later time to see how you guys are reacting to it but for now I'll try to stay out so as not to become a wet blanket.

Yeah, but that’s the point. :D

Something traumatic has happened to Scarlet Witch and her mind’s defense mechanism has placed her into familiar and safe surroundings. She feels that something is wrong and amiss but she can’t place her finger on it.

As soon as she figures out that everything is wrong, the episode ends and she finds herself and Vision placed into yet another set of familiar and safe surroundings.

We heard an unidentified voice say “Who did this to you?”, so this is definitely not happening in the corporeal world and she’s somehow being manipulated. What makes this interesting is the “Who” and the “When” of why this is happening to her.

Kevin Feige has stated that this occurs after Endgame but that’s all we really know after two episodes and I’ll bet it will be a few more weeks before we really know what’s going on.

That's about enough of your beatnik enthusiasm.

I gather from reading through the comments to this point and not seeing any kind of mention of it that this is not based off of a comic book storyline but? This is original material, yes?

Kind of.

I watched some dork videos on YouTube that suggest it’s loosely based off of the Scarlet Witch House of M series. Which I’ve never read so I can’t corroborate but it seems reasonable given the fact that they’re dorks and analyzed every frame of the trailers.

And apparently the French translation of the name of the syrup in the first episode is House of Misery.

Who doesn’t love some syrup made by the house of misery?

This is how the lead up to House of M started. Wanda having the kids was a big part of the lead up.

I think it might be based on it. I've never read any of the Scarlet Witch, but my daughter does. Last night she begged me to take her to the comic book store so she could get the rest of the series that she's convinced it's based off of. We were able to find the last 4 that she didn't already have, and I picked up book 1 of the Constantine Original Sins graphic novel. Never been a Constantine fan, but I enjoyed it so far.

Wine, . .. with breakfast, . . . for dinner.

House of M(isery)?

As some have said there are some comic storylines that are influencing the show.

Video here lists out more comic book influences and other Easter eggs. It does contain spoilers so viewer beware.

Oh hell. My bad. Wine.

Thanks.

On a semi-but not really related note, I had bourbon barrel aged maple syrup on my waffles this morning. Maple syrup has never been so good.

I'm sorry, but there's a reason people don't watch 50's style shows anymore. They're outdated, the jokes aren't funny, the laughtracks are annoying, and outside of nostalgia there isn't a place for them in entertaining television nowadays.

They wanted to pay homage to them, I get it, and it is bold for them to try and they've done a great job recreating that type of television, but to take up the first two episodes with a majority of that content was just a chore to get through. We get it, they're trapped in some sort of illusion, some sort of fake reality. Outside of a guy almost choking at a dinner table and a beekeeper getting out of a manhole cover, I couldn't have less interest in episode 3. Sorry but it's been boring as shit the first two episodes and doesn't make me want to watch the upcoming ones, just to sit through 23 minutes of gibberish while only a few spots are actually intriguing and keep my attention. Bold? Yes. Entertaining? **** no.

There is entertainment outside of sex, action and bad language. As shallow as the 50’s and 60’s shows may seem, today’s television is largely just as shallow, just in a different way.

But to each their own.

Thought I'd post the Dork Videos I referenced.

Emergency Awesome. I got into this dude during GoT. He decodes dork into layman's terms well.

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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zs1R_zKXh_M" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

New Rockstars. They are far more dorky. And they have some livestream stuff that must be the mountain top of dork, but these videos, they've filtered out a bunch of the worst of the dork. Skip their in-video ads.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NgtLRWoH6Wo" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/52ICM2NTtHo" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Watch the dork videos, there is a lot more in there than sitcom-y schlock.

This show is far from shallow so far for anybody actually paying attention.

So now we’ve moved into the late 60s/early 70s era of sitcoms.

How about spoilers for 24 hours?

JFC.