I guess since we've stalked to talk about the episodes themselves in here we might as well keep this as the "talkback" thread too, rather than make a new one.
I thought the opening two episodes were a great, solid start to the show! I'm invested *enough* in the human family drama so far to be interested in seeing where it goes, and of course the monster scenes were awesome. For sure I'd have liked more of them as well, but I'm keeping my expectations in check on that front purely because, even though this is clearly a big-budget show, they still likely can't afford to be giving us the same amount of monster action as the movies have per minute. Though that could change when we get to that one that looks like it's in a snow setting and seems to be menacing characters directly.
I'm also loving the scope and scale it has. Flashing back not just to one period in time, but multiple years is really cool. Not only does it help flesh out the characters a bit more, but also the world. And I've always been a sucker for world-building. So having them travelling the globe searching for monsters in various different countries and giving us an expanded look at the history of Monarch is exactly the sort of thing I want to see! The second episode seemed to retcon some things we learned in Skull Island, but not in a way where it *directly* breaks those previously established things.
And for sure it feels really cinematic. Like you said Dai, you can tell they actually went to these locations and didn't just greenscreen it all (well, except for some of those sadly slightly too obvious Skull Island shots
).
I'm also liking how Monarch as the "bad guys" in the (not) present day stuff is being handled too. They're not an *evil* organisation, so I don't think it would have felt right if they'd been pulling guns on people trying to get their files back or anything like that. Even the "retirement home" we see Shaw in isn't really set up like a prison or anything, just somewhere they've obviously stuck him and said "you'll be staying here, yeah?" And I liked how even though they still had the obligatory scenes of characters doing dangerous things they shouldn't be doing, they at least had they *say* as much and all get on the same page about how dangerous it was (as opposed to "hey look; space cobra!"). Just taking a few moments to acknowledge the danger really can go a long way to convincing an audience that your characters aren't idiots.
And of course Kurt and Wyatt Russell were both great. Mostly Wyatt just because we've only had one scene of Kurt so far, but it was still an awesome moment when he finally showed up. Can't wait to see more now that he's properly in on the action now too.
So yeah, overall I thought this was a really good start to the show, and I can't wait to see more!
