I can’t imagine the Sokovia Accords would do much to change Wakanda. I mean, when you think about it, the Sokovia Accords were meant to rein in extra-governmental super-vigilante activity. Well, there’s only one super-vigilante in Wakanda, and he/she basically IS the government, and mostly limits his super activity to inside his own borders.

But it does seem like the Blip was basically the death of the Accords, or at the very least a serious wounding of it that took a long time to recover from. Damage Control is doing its thing now, after all, and has gone after numerous extralegal superheroes (though you’ll notice that generally speaking, they went after superheroes who were either not rich, not white, not male, or all three, which I think is a statement in and of itself).

But anyway, dials! I’ve always liked Attuma, both because he’s the more interesting of Namor’s most major villains between him and Tiger Shark, and because his name is fun to say out loud. Go ahead. Say it. Attuma. Attuma. Now put on your Ahnuld voice and say “It’s naht Attuma!”. Fun, right?

Sure, he was reduced to being Namor’s muscle, but you know what? That’s fine. This wasn’t Namor’s movie, and maybe if they do give him one (seems unlikely), maybe then we’ll see an Attuma who is dissatisfied with his king allying himself with the surface in any way and deciding maybe it’s time he was in charge. But for what this movie needed, Attuma was fantastic. And having watched the Marvel Studios Assembled special on it, the guy who played him was so excited to be doing it, that gosh, it just feels good watching him perform, knowing that for all his brutal warrior stoicism, he’s hiding almost childlike glee at being in this movie.

I’m okay with these two being condensed into one dial. Especially if they’re like a Switch Clix thing where you can pop one off of the sculpt or have them both on there.

Glad you dialed them. I'll have to look out for Attuma's style in my rewatch, but Namora did feel distinctly sadistic.

Namora is actually my chance to talk about my one wrinkle that feels a bit false ahead of the "main event" himself. So I super dig the change to make Talokan the MCU's Atlantis, modeled after Mayan tribes and lore. It's a genius move that makes "Atlantis" feel more unique, resonant, interesting, and sympathetic than traditional vaguely Greek/Roman interpretations of the civilization from Comic Books (and from Aquaman over in DC's corner of the woods). K'uk'ulkan taking the name from a priest's curse, "Nino Sin Amor", feels a bit cheesy but works well and drives the duality between him and Shuri very well for a movie built around grief, loss, vengeance, and finding a way to make a new life...

Except I then struggle to understand why, if Namor is only what his enemies call him, "Namora" would become a name in their culture? And his iconic "Imperius Rex" makes like zero sense in context too. Basically, there was just a bit more work needed to adapt ALL of Namor's comic lore to the brilliant new adaptation they'd put together.

As to the larger thing you observe - yeah, it's felt lately like nothing has consequences. The Sokovia Accords are dismissed in a few throw-away lines in She-Hulk when it feels like they should have been a bigger deal. She-Hulk also makes jokes on the fact that a literal Celestial God emerging in the Indian Ocean and then getting turned to marble happened and...like...nothing on the news there (see Eternals). Or Egyptian Gods reawakened and devoured the souls of a bunch of poor Egyptians; no SHIELD response for that I guess. Is the world so desensitized to nonsense post-Snap that no one worries about that stuff anymore?

That's really the problem of all Phase 4. From the first post-credit scene in MCU History ("Mr. Stark. I'm here to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative"), stuff in Phase 1-3 generally had a sense of connectedness and momentum, and even when a film's post-credit sequences were less explicit or went nowhere (see Spider-man Homecoming, Dr. Strange, GotG II) fans could make clear connections based on us knowing we were heading towards an Infinity Gauntlet situation by the end of the first Avengers film. In Phase 4 almost nothing connects to anything else. The only things that have any sense of momentum are Wandavision into MOM, and Phase 5 doesn't seem to be changing that any time soon. That'd be great if Phase 4 really leaned into the aftermath of the Snap + Blip and the Sokovia Accords, but to your point it all feels a bit like lip service and half-assed references instead of really digging in deep to the consequences of Phase 3.

I can understand where ya'll are coming from in wanting to see the Worldscape and its shift. But look at the polarized views on She-Hulk. A lot of people enjoyed it, a lot of people didn't. The shifting focus to worldscape will have a bigger reaction in the same way and lose audience. "Its supposed to be about the super heroes, I dont wanna see the political intrigue." is an argument I can see people making to not see further movies. Hell, look at the "F#$@ WOKE DISNEY" crowd and you can see the smaller version of the impact there.

That's a good point about Damage Control in the Disney+ shows. Their actions -and Ross' actions- seem to be the closest we've seen to enforcement of the Sokovia Accords, and as you say, always in the interest of American fascism.

Haha It's a tragedy that I'll never hear Arnie talk about his favorite Talokan.Haha you're right; very little of the classic Namor trappings gel well with this version of the character. "Imperius Rex" didn't sound right coming out of this guy. I also think it's funny that he was like, "My enemies call me Namor," and that's what the Wakandans call him for the rest of the movie.

You're very right about the lack of things flowing together. I chatted with my coworkers about it, and in Phases 1-3, the post-credits almost always eluded to the next MCU movie, even if it was literally just lifting a scene from it, and/or hinted what the next film in that character/team's franchise would be. Funny thing is, I've often heard it said that Phase 1-3's post-credits were very spur of the moment in a lot of cases; not something that had been consciously planned, with a few notable exceptions.

Meanwhile, Phase 4's offerings don't seem to have any post-credits that point in any meaningful directions apart from BLACK WIDOW's setting up a Thunderbolts... something and LOKI's finale pointing to the Phase 6 Avengers movies. Everything feels like it's spreading out in tons of directions without having a lot of focus or clear momentum. We'll get into this a hair more later, but I feel like that's the result of (now former) Disney CEO Bob Chapek's edict to make as much content -movies and TV shows- as possible, faster than Marvel Studios ever had before. It's obvious that there were many pain points there, especially in narrative planning, movie and show scripts, and VFX work.Oh, no doubt; there's a whole cottage industry of bigots being s***y to superhero films that dare to cast anyone who isn't a straight White male. It's goddamn ridiculous

You raise some great points here. I've heard that Phase 1 didn't lock in an Avengers villain until late in the game-- it literally could've been anybody until they saw how well Loki had been received in the first THOR film. The idea is that if something isn't working, you retcon it and you leave yourself enough wiggle room to adapt as needed. I wonder if having only token changes to the worldstate is in that vein-- that by not changing who's in power, what the world conditions are, etc. they don't have to lock themselves into greater continuity issues, especially since we know Phase 4's slate shuffled order significantly.

I also think that the RT scores for ETERNALS and QUANTUMANIA are significant here. Both were very out there films-- not expressly space operas, not expressly superhero films, but movies that required audiences embrace the inherent weirdness and Big Ideas of their conceits. Critics rejected both, and I genuinely wonder if it's brand backlash and subverted expectations. They expect Marvel films to be superhero movies with clear conventions or space operas. Anything requiring more thought and investment than that raises the specter of "superhero fatigue" (and I personally don't buy that even exists).

True to form, I got this far without talking about what I liked about the film: almost everything. I thought the whole movie was solidly constructed, and despite the aforementioned plot bloat, it was beautiful, thoughtful, and inspiring. I loved M’Baku becoming a surrogate brother figure for Shuri, Ramonda being a boss at every opportunity, the Okoye vs. Attuma and Shuri vs. Namor fight scenes (two brutal mixed gender fights, which you almost never see!), Namor’s retconned origin, and how insanely Jack Kirby Talokan was. I also LOVED that this was a more serious Marvel movie. I’ve gotten pretty burned out on “Marvel humor” and how many of their projects have leaned into comedy lately, so this was a breath of fresh air.

I did think that Ross & Valentina should’ve been saved for the post-credits instead of being woven into the film, and I thought that Ironheart, while fun, contributed to the bloat. During my screening, I began to think my theater’s bulb was dying, as everything looked dark and somewhat out of focus. When I rewatched on Disney+, I discovered that it was still dark and out of focus…

…because Marvel Studios is abusing VFX studios. The exploitation of VFX houses has been an ever-worsening issue in Hollywood, but the MCU’s breakneck pace of development and Marvel Studio’s well-documented habits of incessant changes to scenes, changing deadlines, forcing 80-hour weeks, and blacklisting VFX houses that can’t keep up has turned an issue into a crisis. It’s ghastly, exploitative behavior, and it’s also why Marvel’s recent films have looked less and less believable.

And Quantumania only looked worse.



#174 Namor
Real Name: King Ch'ah Toh Almehen
Team: No Affiliation
Range: 0
Points: 100
Keywords: Talokan, Ruler, Warrior, Past

9 11 18 4

8 11 18 4

8 11 17 4

7 10 18 4

7 10 18 4

6 10 17 3

6 10 17 3

6 10 17 3

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

Strengthened by Water: Namor has +1 Combat Stats if he begins his turn in Water Terrain.
Ankle Wings: , Charge, and Flurry.
Namor's Trident: 5, Super Strength, and Precision Strike.
Talokan Emperor: Leadership, and if Namor succeeds with it, he may instead generate a Talokan Warrior or Siren on Click #5 or #11. Characters generated this way cannot be healed this game.

The post-pandemic (we’re still in it; wear your mask, kids) market hasn’t been kind to most movies, but WAKANDA FOREVER did pretty well, despite not playing in China. It made over $858 million and soared atop positive reviews.

But you know what’s striking? Ryan Coogler has a bulletproof movie resume, but didn’t get an Avengers movie. SHANG-CHI’s director, Daniel Dustin Cretton, gets KANG DYNASTY and SECRET WARS, and while he’s just as capable, it’s surprising that Ryan Coogler hasn’t gotten that chance.

Hopefully someday that changes.

That’s a very nice Namor dial, that looks suitably powerful.

I quite liked what they did with Namor in this film. I particularly appreciate that they took the ankle wings seriously, and made him feel intimidating with them.

The whole plan to dry him out was also fun, and reminded me of his appearance in the old cartoon “Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends”, where Chameleon tricked him into drying himself out in a pool of alcohol.

I wish he had used “Imperius Rex” as a call to arms more consistently throughout the movie. That would have made it work better as a defiant line in the final battle. As it was, the line seemed to come from out of nowhere, so only comic fans would understand its significance.

Many thanks, friend! Glad this feels appropriate. Haha I’m the cold light of day, I think I might’ve undercosted him. Guess I’ll have to think of him as a Chase unless I bump him up 25-50 points.

Yeah, I was impressed to read that Coogler wanted Namor to feel very faithful to his comic book self and fought to use him and to keep the winged ankles. It always feels great to see a faithful version of a character in a great movie.

I agree, I would’ve liked to have seen a more fiery Namor and for him to use the call line at least once more, maybe during the attack on Wakanda’s capital (come to think of it, weird that we don’t know the names of any cities or towns in Wakanda. “Wakanda” is just a catch-all. See also: Latveria [I think]). I do like that Namor was silent during the attack on the battleship. Added an extra level of fear to a great action-horror setpiece.

Holy crap, ANT-MAN & WASP: QUANTUMANIA looks bad.

Like, I’m used to folks on twitter reacting to fresh-on-streaming MCU films with shock because, surprise, surprise, the CGI is incredibly apparent on motion-smoothed TVs (turn off that setting. It’s just hurting you), but QUANTUMANIA was the first time that it looked that bad in theaters.

The problem is multifold.

As I mentioned earlier, because Marvel Studios is abusing VFX studios. One of the results is that VFX companies literally don’t have the time or resources to make MCU movies look good when Marvel Studios’ requests are unreasonable. QUANTUMANIA’s VFX team literally got moved to work on WAKANDA FOREVER because that movie got priority, for some reason.

Another factor is that Marvel films most of their movies with green screens –almost the entire movie sometimes. Behind the scenes footage shows token sets amid towering green screens, if props exist at all, and movies QUANTUMANIA appear to have been shot with JUST green screens and costumes. That means almost nothing on location, no animatronics, no practical sets, and nothing to hide that these are actors in front of a screen, reacting to stuff they have to imagine. It’s borderline GREEN LANTERN (2011) bad-looking.

Lol, it doesn’t help that Cassie Lang’s actress, Kathryn Lang, is so bad that f***ing MODOK is more believable than her.



#175 Ant-Man, Wasp, and Cassie
Real Name: Scott Lang, Hope Van Dyne, and Cassie Lang
Team: No Affiliation
Range: 0
Points: X
Keywords: Avengers, Quantum Realm, Celebrity, Scientist, Animal

7 10 19 1

7 10 19 1

KO KO KO KO

9 11 18 2

9 11 18 2

KO KO KO KO

8 11 17 2

8 11 17 2

KO KO KO KO

5 12 17 3

5 12 17 3

KO KO KO KO

How do they even change sizes in the Quantum Realm?: Ant-Man/Wasp/Cassie cost increments of 25 points. For each 25 points, place a Size-Change Token on their card. They may start the game on any of their starting lines. When they would be KOed, remove a Size-Change Token and turn them to any starting line. FREE: turn them to any starting line. // (+5 Points):
Size-Changing Discs: FREE: Destroy a square of terrain within 4 squares or generate a 1x1 square of Blocking terrain with "Range/Giant Reach: 4, 2/+1, 3." // POWER: Telekinesis, but only to move generated Terrain.
Does shrinking make sense in this context?: & Stealth.
I guess normal size makes sense: & Precision Strike.
And I guess I can buy slightly larger-size...: & Invulnerable.
But wait, wouldn't going colossal-size push them out of the world?: & Quake.

I combined these characters into a single dial because if the movie can’t see fit to differentiate their abilities, I don’t see why I should.

I have no idea what this means, but I suspect that was intentional?

Snide aside (that's fun to say), this looks like a fun dial to play, hopping FREE-ly between the 4 sizes, and with the optional for Wasp. I probably wouldn't mind having 3 copies of this on a team to represent Scott, Hope, and Cassie. The scalable point value is nice, too, and reminds me of aiG001 Giant-Girl.


With regards to VFX, I usually don't notice how bad it is, unless it's really bad. It took me several rewatches to notice the bad VFX in Green Lantern and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, since I was distracted by the story the first time.
Maybe the same thing will happen, if I rewatch Quantumania some day.


Initally, I did also question how their size changing was seemingly completely unaffected by them now being in the Quantum realm, but I thought about it, and I guess it works.

The fact that they can change size at all is fine. If you just think of Pym particles as a size multiplier (up or down), then it should work relative to whatever size you already are. And I imagine that each layer of the Quantum realm has a range of sizes that fit within it. If you shrink or grow beyond that point, you get pushed to a different layer.
So our crew just stayed within that range, mostly through luck (but not unreasonable luck, since the range is probably far wider than the spread of sizes they used).

The bigger question, is why all their strength and momentum stuff worked exactly the same at this completely different scale. I guess if this realm has gravity relatively comparable to Earth's at this scale, then Ant-man and Giant-Man would feel more or less the same, as well.

But it would have been nice if Hank or Janet had at least brought that up and explained it.

Also, I never understood why Scott suddenly couldn't grow inside the time sphere without unravelling himself. What was that all about?
But hey, that scene is another great use for this dial. A bunch of 25-point Ant-Men!

That is a fun dial. I really like how you've chosen to do the size changing.

I think you've given Hope more thought on this dial than they gave her in the movie.

Many thanks, friend! Haha this whole dial was a last-minute change. I'd made a comparatively simple dial, and it just didn't look or feel satisfying. Glad that this one feels like it could fill a ton of roles!

So those stats are the new Terrain/Object values.

4 is the maximum range and/or Giant Reach distance.
2/+1 is how much damage is dealt for range/close.
3 is how much damage is needed to break the object.

Every object Terrain these days will have its own dimensions, set of stats, and type of Terrain.

Haha so I guess I stealth-introduced the new rules to the set with WAKANDA FOREVER's posts!

I think you've got a great breakdown of how quantum science works here! Thankfully, these questions didn't get in my way of the enjoyment of the film, but I did find myself asking them while they happened. I took it that they'd shrunk so small that they'd reached an entirely separate universe with its own laws.

I thought the Time Sphere made an interesting setpiece with Scott infinitely splitting off into different probabilities of himself, but yeah, in some ways, it felt like a pointless sidequest. That said, I like how it tried to play with the movie's half-baked themes of Scott's egoism getting in the way of progress. It isn't until he makes a call that his duplicates get their s*** together.Many thanks, friend! Glad this feels right! I was pretty happy with it when it all clicked together.

Haha yeah, Wasp had nothing to do in this movie beyond just kinda... be there. I know that writer Jeff Loveness wrote out a subplot involving her child to keep things succinct, and that was probably the right choice, but it sure didn't feel like she earned second-billing.

Honestly, I started to wonder if she'd had such a reduced role because A) they were setting up Cassie to replace her and Scott and B) because Evangeline Lilly has been making increasingly far-right comments like being pointedly anti-vax and supporting the Canadian trucker convoy.

Ooooh! Right, that makes sense. I'm not used to the new rules yet, so I thought you were trying to describe the range within which to generate them. Combined with your flavour text for the sizes, I thought you were making it intentionally convoluted as a joke.

I’m going to say some very hurtful constructive things about QUANTUMANIA in my next few entries, so let’s start with the positives:

1. It’s better than THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER. QUANTUMANIA knows it wants to be STAR WARS by way of RICK AND MORTY, and it has a consistent tone and plot-logical series of events that keep its narrative understandable and stakes/consequences clear. LOVE AND THUNDER did not have those things. I’ll give that one consistent tone, maybe.

2. QUANTUMANIA is also visually interesting, owing to zany sci-fantasy designs coming from the RICK AND MORTY ooze-and-orifices school of worldbuilding. Your mileage may vary on if you’re sick of that style of humor, given that Dan Harmon’s team has been writing MCU movies since DOCTOR STRANGE.

3. Jonathan Majors is superlative as Kang, making a meal out of a role and dialogue that would’ve been generic from any other actor. His Kang feels grandiose, Shakespearean, tragic, and menacing (most of the time tee hee), and I love that his suit is very Jack Kirby. Could’ve done without the Blue Meanie mask, but what’re ya gonna do.

4. I also like that someone at Marvel clearly wanted to adapt the Micronauts comic, as the Quantum Realm was their thing and the Micronauts was a beloved 80s comic… but given that Hasbro got the rights back, Marvel Studios was forced to invent a bunch of stand-ins for them. I don’t think any of them are interesting, memorable, or particularly funny, but it’s so delicious that Marvel Studios had to make such a compromise that I decided to dial them all anyway.

…and that’s it for the positives.



#176 Hank Pym
Team: No Affiliation
Range: 0
Points: 25
Keywords: Quantum Realm, Scientist, Animal

4 9 16 1

4 9 15 1

4 9 15 1

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

I Like Ants: Leadership & Telekinesis, but only on characters with , who have the Animal keyword, or who are understood to be Ants of some kind.

#177 Socialist Ants
Team: No Affiliation
Range: 0
Points: 50
Keywords: Quantum Realm, Animal

9 11 18 2

8 10 17 2

8 10 18 2

7 11 17 2

7 10 17 2

KO KO KO KO

3 11 18 3

3 10 18 3

3 10 17 2

3 11 17 2

3 10 17 2

KO KO KO KO

"I know Socialism is a loaded word, but...": Socialist Ant begins the game on Click #1 or Click #7.
Giant Socialist Ant: Cannot be countered or ignored. // 6

These dials seem fun and fitting. Hank could maybe do with an effect for the Pym discs (maybe targeting animals?), but he's good enough as he is. I love that he's all about ants.


I quite enjoyed Hank Pym in this movie, more so than in the previous installments.

I think it's because he didn't need to drive the plot forward or provide as much exposition this time, so he just got to be an ant-obsessed science guy. I loved his entrance in the final battle and how proud he was of his ants.

I reconciled the size changing thing with this thought-

Suit is meant to function on Ratio of size change within its own parameters. The reason they couldn't just "grow" out of the quantum size is because their initial size change going into the quantum realm wasn't a function of the suit but of the signal that pulled them there. Once they're in the quantum realm, their suit functions as normal, allowing them to shift to certain ratios.