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Spoilers What If...? discussion thread

When I think of Lake Bell I think of that old show Surface. Anyone remember that? A boy made friends basically with a little sea monster and then it grew up.
 
Weird that Surface is the first thing I associate Lake Bell with too, even though I didn't watch it long and didn't like it. But it's the first place I ever saw her, and I was struck by an ocean-centric show having a lead actress named Lake, so it stuck with me.

Looking at her filmography, it looks like I haven't seen much of her in live action, but have heard more of her voice work than I'd realized. She was Vanessa Fisk in Into the Spider-Verse, for one.
 
I remember her as being the star, writer and director of the criminally overlooked movie called In a World…

That and Children’s Hospital.
 
I mainly remember her for her spell on Boston Legal (reprising a role she originally played in The Practice) but it seems I’ve probably heard her more than seen her over the last decade or so.
 
The last couple episodes wre great.
Loved all the ways T'Challa changed things as Star Lord, I think my favorite was probably god guy Thanos.
This last episode was great, loved the way they played with the events from the different Phase 1 movies. Hulk popping like a balloon was definitely the most memorable death.
 
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I liked it, and I was very happy with the ending in that Loki STILL conquered Earth after killing Hank Pym (so yes, at least he didn't turn it to ash and ice; but the result is not what Fury expected) - so yeah, I was happy to see Fury USED the pager to summon Captain Marvel back AND found Captain America.
^^^
I assume we'll see a continuation of all these stories in Season 2. :)
 
I assume we'll see a continuation of all these stories in Season 2. :)

We don't need to in every case. Sometimes it's enough to see a story end with a new beginning, with the heroes going forward to face a new challenge. Casablanca ended with "the beginning of a beautiful friendship" as Rick and Renault finally resolved to join the fight against the Nazis; but we've never needed to see a sequel showing that fight, because their decision to begin it was itself the endpoint of the film's story.

Besides, they only have so many slots for season 2. If they devoted every one to a sequel to a season 1 episode, we wouldn't get any new alternates.
 
When I think of Lake Bell I think of that old show Surface. Anyone remember that? A boy made friends basically with a little sea monster and then it grew up.

I loved this series. It was an eighties throwback to Spielberg movies. I had known Bell from Boston Legal prior to this show. Surface came out the same year as invasion and Threshold--all of which had great promise but didn't survive long enough to really find their time to shine. But that's a different thread.

I liked her voice work on this episode; but I do find it jarring that we have some characters voiced by the original actors and others who are not.
 
I liked her voice work on this episode; but I do find it jarring that we have some characters voiced by the original actors and others who are not.

I guess I'm used to that in animated adaptations. It's rare to get the entire cast back from the live-action version, due to actors being either unavailable, uninterested, or unaffordable, and it's common to just recast everyone. So from my perspective, it's impressive that they've corralled as many of the original actors as they have, especially big-name actors like Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Douglas. Even Star Wars doesn't manage that. It's notable that the actors they haven't been able to get are mostly the A-list celebs like Downey, Evans, and ScarJo, so we're probably in "unaffordable" territory here.

Plus the impersonations are pretty good. I honestly couldn't tell that was Josh Keaton rather than Chris Evans as Steve Rogers in the first episode. And Mick Wingert's Robert Downey, Jr. impression is solid enough to pass muster in the brief Stark scene we got. The only fill-in actors so far that I could really tell were not the real deal were Fred Tatasciore as Drax and Lake Bell as Black Widow.

Interesting that they went with Wingert and Tatasciore, who play the same characters in the Marvel TV cartoons on Disney XD. Although Laura Bailey plays Black Widow on those shows. At least the initials are the same...
 
I watched all three episodes in one go last night. I liked the first one the best. Plus, I think the Fleischeresque art style fit it really well And I really hope we get to see live action shredded Carter at some point. You know ... for reasons.

It was wonderful to get a bit more time with Boseman (which was a total surprise to me), but the context just didn't appeal to me much. I did have a few laughs. And using Green for Howard was inspired.

I thought the third one was the weakest. It was kind of slow and the whole plot felt really trite and obvious in a 'low-hanging fruit' sort of way. SLJ and Gregg was definitely the highlight of the episode and I hope we get more of that in the future. Bell did a great job, but I couldn't not hear Ivy.
 
When I think of Lake Bell I think of that old show Surface. Anyone remember that? A boy made friends basically with a little sea monster and then it grew up.
I enjoyed that show, giving up on Threshold after a few episodes and never getting into Invasion. Who didn't like Nim? I was really hoping we'd see in season 2 the changed world that the cliffhanger season finale set up.

What If? is getting better for me. Didn't care for the first episode, but these last two are good. The only thing that's still unchanged and grating for me is the Watcher's voice. Sounds like the actor is auditioning for a villain role with his breathy, throaty whisper. I know it would be cliched, but I always think of the Watcher having a deeper voice with impeccable enunciation. Take a Frasier-era Kelsey Grammer, throw in some reverb and it would have been great.
 
I loved this series. It was an eighties throwback to Spielberg movies. I had known Bell from Boston Legal prior to this show. Surface came out the same year as invasion and Threshold--all of which had great promise but didn't survive long enough to really find their time to shine. But that's a different thread.

I liked her voice work on this episode; but I do find it jarring that we have some characters voiced by the original actors and others who are not.
Yeah, that's been weird for me too, for most of these kind of show's I've watched, it's all different actors or all original actors. The only one I can think of that also did that was the Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie, which brought back Christopher Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Daniels, and Matthew Wood, and then everone else was different.
 
Yeah, that's been weird for me too, for most of these kind of show's I've watched, it's all different actors or all original actors.

Really? I can't think of an animated TV series adaptation of a movie that brought back the entire original cast. Most in my experience are all recastings or a mix of original and recast actors. For instance, Big Hero 6: The Series brings back all the movie cast except Damon Wayans, Jr. and T.J. Miller, while Dreamworks Dragons brought back Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and (oddly) T.J. Miller from How to Train Your Dragon but recast everyone else. At the other end you have something like Kung Fu Panda, where the TV version has only Lucy Liu and James Hong returning from the movies, or Godzilla: The Series, which brought back only two supporting actors from the 1998 movie, Malcolm Danare and Kevin Dunn, while recasting everyone else. (It always surprised me that they didn't get Hank Azaria back, at least, since he's done a lot of voice work, and the series even had an executive producer in common with The Simpsons.)

The only instances I can think of where the entire core cast is brought back for the animated adaptations are TV series like the Arrowverse's Vixen series (though Freedom Fighters: The Ray recast Green Arrow, the Flash, and others), the animated Star Trek (though it left out Chekov), and that animated movie based on Hercules/Xena. All of them recast supporting characters, though. So I'm curious what examples you're thinking of.


The only one I can think of that also did that was the Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie, which brought back Christopher Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Daniels, and Matthew Wood, and then everone else was different.

And then they replaced Lee and Jackson in the series that followed.

I've always found it remarkable how consistently Anthony Daniels has stuck with playing C-3PO in virtually every spinoff and adaptation aside from a few video games, even when most or all of the other roles were recast. For instance, Daniels, Mark Hamill, and Billy Dee Williams were the only cast members to reprise their roles in the NPR radio adaptations.
 
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