My Mom finally convinced me to watch a Marvel movie after Endgame. It was called Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.

I didn’t like it overall because of how every character apparently has to make constant Dad-jokes like Tony Stark now to kill the mood of every supposedly-dark scene. If the characters can’t take the potential demise of several universes seriously, then why should I? This particular Marvel movie also confirmed what some fellow casual MCU fans have warned me in that the movies are basically just like the comics now in that you have to watch EVERYTHING Marvel puts out to understand even one thing Marvel puts out now, when in the past I could just ignore, say, Ant-Man and the Wasp and still easily follow the latest Avengers movie. In particular, this movie punished me greatly for not watching Wandavision and What If? the same way Kingdom Hearts 3 punished me for playing every game in the series up to that point EXCEPT the crappy mobile game that actually ended up being crucial to understanding what was going on in the final battles.

That said, I was ready to turn off the movie in the first 2 minutes, but it did have some absolutely-fascinating VFX and fight scenes that I truly appreciate as an aspiring CG animator and apparently that alone kept me interested enough to at least watch the entire movie until the usual post-credits scene. So as usual, animators are the TRUE superheroes and corporations that treat them like expendable “resources” are idiots who don’t know what their own audiences want (cough HBO Max and Netflix).

My Mom, on the other hand, was absolutely caught off-guard by all the R-rated demonic imagery and couldn’t even wrap her head around the movie’s concept of Multiverses or how there are a bazillion other versions of all the other characters. Shame she didn’t find any enjoyment in it at all despite being the one to recommend it, but at least it answers the question I’ve had for a while about whether I should introduce her to Evangelion like I was apparently able to successfully do with my Dad and even my younger sister. Of course that franchise would only confound her more.

My two major animation projects are going swimmingly btw, basically the only reason I need to suffer through a thankless and weirdly-political service industry job in between those much-more-desirable jobs is because I’m over the age of 26 in the United States and thus need to get health insurance from that job. It’s still going to be a while before I finish either, though, so I just thought to share some random update as proof that I’m not dead in a ditch somewhere. My Mom had a much more enjoyable experience watching Sonic 2 (the Movie) with me the prior Saturday.