What If...?

spronk · Aug 4, 2021

3.50 star(s) Rating: 3.50/5 2 Votes

Title: What If...?

Genre: Animation, Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

First aired: 2021-08-11

Creator: A.C. Bradley

Cast: Jeffrey Wright

Overview: Taking inspiration from the comic books of the same name, each episode explores a pivotal moment from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and turns it on its head, leading the audience into uncharted territory.

spronk · Aug 4, 2021

Marvel's What If animated series begins August 11th (wed) and will run 10 weeks, 10 episodes.

It will be considered canon within the MCU and expands phase 4, namely the multiverse and alternate versions and worlds of characters we are familiar with. Some controversary as original voice actors were not even asked to voice their animated versions, like Drax (Bautista), but instead cheaper VA's.

spronk · Aug 4, 2021

Gravel · Aug 4, 2021

Well shit...

Seananigans · Aug 4, 2021

spronk said:

LOL HEY GUYS WHAT IF ALL THE DUDES WERE CHICKS?!

Actual What If comics tended to be much more interesting and expansive premises. This is garbage.

Brahma · Aug 4, 2021

There was a What If where Conan was thrust into modern times. Was a good read.

TomServo · Aug 4, 2021

what if was a fantastic series. if the comics were used as source, great. if not fuck em.

Angerz · Aug 4, 2021

Seananigans said:
LOL HEY GUYS WHAT IF ALL THE DUDES WERE CHICKS?!

Actual What If comics tended to be much more interesting and expansive premises. This is garbage.

I think its just an issue of what they have to work with.

There are 150-ish What If? comics, spanning 60 years of marvel comics, generally exploring an alternate choice that could have been made

list

List of What If issues - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The MCU doesn't really have that. Many of the sidekicks are women, so all the of the "what if soandso became" will result in a female lead. They don't have mutants, so that whole branch of What if ""X team" instead of "Y team" became/did/died/whatever" slate of books is mostly out.

Plus, it isn't like the MCU is full dynamic and fully fleshed out villains to explore in other ways (what if they won, what if someone joined them instead of helping). We already got a Loki TV show to look at him, we could get some Thanos/Cosmic stuff or maybe some Ultron stuff, but most of the other villains exist to just get beat up by the end of the movie.

The comics have dozens of crossovers and special events to explore alternate endings of, the MCU has the Infinity Gauntlet and Thanos.

They are making 10(20?) shows based on 24 movies, so its a much smaller pool of interesting things to choose from.

meStevo · Aug 4, 2021

I think what most don't realize yet is these won't be one-off stories like the comics largely were.

They've confirmed this will all be canon, and we'll see some of these animated alternate characters show up in the live action MCU, so for example I'd be surprised if they don't use this as an opportunity to reposition Killmonger for a bigger role going forward, starting with Wakanda Forever. Charlie (below) says Captain Carter is expected to appear in a live action project of some kind beyond the animated series.

Qhue · Aug 11, 2021

First episode was, as was indicated in the trailer and advance materials, Captain Carter. Very well done as an alternative history, very cool that so many of the original voices came to play...makes me wonder why Chris Evans, of all people, chose not to.

The animation, however, is what I want to really talk about as it is amazing. It's not the highest 'frame rate' I've ever seen, but the choices of angles, dynamism in the movement etc is damn near perfect. While this is the first project for the Animation division of Marvel Studios (not to be confused with Marvel Animation) all the actual heavy lifting was done by a couple of job houses in Australia and Canada. This is, as a result, almost pure 'western style' animation in the classic sense without a legion of asian/south-asian in-betweeners.

I don't think we've seen such a thing before and the result is just damn impressive.

meStevo · Aug 11, 2021

Yeah, the quality of the animation on it's own will get me to watch this a couple times before the next episode.

Mahes · Aug 11, 2021

Good episode. Only thing that kind of threw me off was right at the beginning. The man that had the lighter bomb. Did he not wait until he saw the test work before he went to steal the formula by using the bomb as a distraction? Had that happened it would have remained the same.

Harshaw · Aug 11, 2021

Mahes said:
Good episode. Only thing that kind of threw me off was right at the beginning. The man that had the lighter bomb. Did he not wait until he saw the test work before he went to steal the formula by using the bomb as a distraction? Had that happened it would have remained the same.

The Nexus event here was Carter staying for the procedure. Everything after that starts skewing in the timeline.

spronk · Aug 11, 2021

I wish it had skewed more, trying to compress a 2 hour movie into a 22 minute TV episode seems ludicrous. Everything felt like it happened way too fast with zero connective tissue. I also didn't understand how Captain Carter "knew" the allies had won the war at the end. Just a whole lot there felt like shit writing held up by great animation.

It also sucks that Daddy Stark used the tessaract as a power source for Hydra Stomper suit instead of just using it as an charger/transfer like Red Skull did in CA1, but because they had to quickly transfer the stone back to red skull that was the (stupid) plot device.

hopefully the other episodes are better, this was a 6/10 at best.

Cybsled · Aug 11, 2021

I liked it. Presented a reasonably plausible alternate timeline based on Carter getting the serum.

She probably knew they won the war because if Nazi Germany had won, Fury would not be speaking with her and certainly not in English lol

Mahes · Aug 11, 2021

Harshaw said:
The Nexus event here was Carter staying for the procedure. Everything after that starts skewing in the timeline.

So, I went back and watched the scene in Captain America and the scene in What If...

In Captain America, she is sent up to the booth with the guy that blows it up, sitting right behind her. The proximity is the same. The guy made no indication of attempting to blow it up until after the experiment was a success. This makes sense, since the spy wanted to determine that it worked first, so that he knew he was stealing the correct formula. Even if she had remained in the lab next to Steve Rogers, the experiment would have still gone off and Steve Rogers would have still been Captain America.

In What If, Agent Carter chooses not to go to the booth. This event somehow caused everybody else to also not go to the booth and for the spy to blow the bomb/distraction up before knowing whether or not it truly worked. The Serum could have failed making everything he had done pointless. I fail to see how Agent Carter's choice of not going to the booth would have sudden relevance to what all the other men did.

That could have been worked better...

Gravel · Aug 11, 2021

Seems like not very much changed. Essentially replacing Rogers with Carter, and adding the Hydrastomper. But otherwise it was damn near identical. Same rescue scene, same train scene. Really had hoped for more changes.

Hopefully future ones vary more than just swapping one character for another.

Attog · Aug 11, 2021

I loved it, haven't enjoyed a show that much in I don't know how long. Had a big stupid grin on my face. But I'm a sucker for anything WWII related and most things alternate history related, so when you combine those two things, you got me.

Valderen · Aug 11, 2021

I loved it, it was really fun. The animation was amazing.

Looking forward to more.

Randin · Aug 11, 2021

Played it a bit safe in how little things actually changed, but hopefully they'll get a bit wackier on that front as the season goes on.

Even with that critique, it was an entertaining episode, and yeah, the animation style was great.

So I'm not the only one whose mind went to Shuma Gorath when the tentacle monster showed up, right? Wonder if that's going to be foreshadowing for the next Dr Strange movie.

What If...?

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