Cup of Coffee: July 29, 2024

Good morning!

The trade deadline is tomorrow but the deals have been happening at a healthy clip over the past few days. I have a lot of verbiage about all of that but also a fair amount about “Deadpool & Wolverine,” the latest big Marvel reveal at ComicCon, and of course a political item so let’s get going into today’s 5000+-word newsletter.

And That Happened 

Here are the scores. Here are the highlights:

Rays 2, Reds 1: Hunter Greene tossed seven shutout innings while allowing just two hits while Elly De La Cruz had three hits, four stolen bases, and made a fantastic catch that saved what was then Greene’s in-progress no-hitter. But the Rays won because the ghost of Tungsten Arm O’Doyle is a free agent now, baby, and it can strike at any time.

Guardians 4, Phillies 3: Steven Kwan hit a solo homer and Jhonkensy Noel hit a three-run shot. Kyle Schwarber hit two dingers in a losing cause. The Guardians take two of three in a matchup of the two best teams in baseball.

Orioles 8, Padres 6: The Orioles are the third best team in baseball and in this one they snapped the seven-game winning streak of the hottest team in baseball. The O’s scored six runs in the third, when their first six hitters reached base and Cederic Mullins hit a two-run double. They almost blew that lead but Ryan Mountcastle’s second two-run single of the day in the eighth gave Baltimore some breathing room.

Blue Jays 7, Rangers 3: The Jays are selling at the trade deadline but they’re also winning at the trade deadline, having swept Texas in the three-game set and winning four of five overall. Daulton Varsho and Vlad Guerrero homered. It ended up being an impromptu bullpen game for Texas as the scheduled starter, Jon Gray, left the game after feeling discomfort in his right groin while warming up for the bottom of the first.

Atlanta 9, Mets 2: The good news for Atlanta was the win to earn the series split, powered by homers from the suddenly not-dead Matt Olson, Austin Riley, Orlando Arcia and Ramón Laureano. Also, they had a big enough lead to where they had some time to play some grab-ass. The bad news was starter Reynaldo López leaving the game due to forearm tightness and then hopping a plane back to Georgia for an MRI. The last thing Atlanta needs is another pitcher on the shelf but it looks as though they’re gonna have another pitcher on the shelf.

Twins 5, Tigers 0: Bailey Ober was fantastic, tossing eight shutout innings, allowing just one hit, and striking out 11. Willi Castro and Manuel Margot each had three hits for the Twins, who could’ve scored way more than the five runs they got given the traffic they put on the bases, but they were only 2-for-15 with runners in scoring position. They take the series two games to one.

Cubs 7, Royals 3: Pete Crow-Armstrong went 3-for-4 and hit a go-ahead RBI single in the sixth. Patrick Wisdom homered as Chicago put up three in the ninth to pull away. Chicago takes two of three.

Dodgers 6, Astros 2: River Ryan — which either sounds like a place you build a bed and breakfast for romantic getaways or where they found bodies dumped by the Provisional IRA in the 1970s — allowed one run while pitching into the sixth and the mostly gassed Dodgers bullpen held. James Outman, Gavin Lux, and Teoscar Hernández homered. Los Angeles avoids a three-game sweep.

Mariners 6, White Sox 3: Garrett Crochet has been mentioned prominently in trade rumors given that (a) he’s good; and (b) the White Sox are not, but he didn’t have a good day here, giving up five runs — three earned — in only three innings. Bryce Miller was better, pitching into the seventh and allowing only three. Cal Raleigh homered for the second straight game. Seattle sweeps the Sox who are just 3-19 in July. It’s a month that has felt like it has lasted for six months but it probably feels longer for the White Sox.

Cardinals 4, Nationals 3: Washington took a 3-2 lead in the sixth but John King, Andrew Kittredge, and Ryan Helsley tossed three innings of scoreless relief and the Cards tied it in the seventh. Then Paul Goldschmidt hit a walkoff homer to end it to help the Cardinals avoid being swept.

Brewers 6, Marlins 2: Jake Bauers hit a two-run shot in the first, Jackson Chourio homered in the fifth, and five Brewers pitchers combined to scatter seven hits and strike out 11 to help Milwaukee avoid the sweep.

Giants 5, Rockies 4: Is a four-game sweep of the Rockies enough to give the the Giants front office confidence that this team is a contender? Will they thus refrain from trading away the highly sought-after Blake Snell? They probably should’t believe they’re a contender but people do weird things all the time.

Angels 8, Athletics 6: The A’s took a 6-0 lead by the third inning, the Angels cut it to 6-3 by the end of three and then Taylor Ward hit a grand damn slam in the fourth that put the Halos over for good. The Anaheimians avoid a four-game sweep.

Pirates 6, Diamondbacks 5: The Snakes a Bucs combined for five hits and only three runs through eight innings, with Arizona leading 2-1 into the ninth before Pittsburgh tied it up on a Joey Bart double to force extras. They took the lead on a wild pitch in the tenth and then added a run on a bases-loaded hit-by-pitch and a two-run single. Eugenio Suárez and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. homered in the home team’s half but fell just short. Pittsburgh avoids a three-game sweep.

Yankees 8, Red Sox 2: Carlos Rodón was useful, working into the seventh and allowing just two runs. Judge and Gleyber Torres hit RBI singles in the firs that staked the Bombers to a 3-0 lead and a couple of fourth inning Sox homers notwithstanding, they were never really challenged. The Yankees take two of three.

The Daily Briefing

Trades, Trades, Trades

Over the past several years the trade deadline has been Snoozeville. To the extent there were deals they clustered right at the last minute and there weren’t that many of ‘em anyway. That’s certainly changed this year. We still have all day today and most of tomorrow for deals to go down, yet players have already been changing clubs at a pretty damn fast pace. So let’s run ‘em down. At least the deals that have happened up until I went to bed last night:

Rays trade Isaac Paredes to the Cubs

The Trade: The Chicago Cubs acquired 3B Isaac Paredes from the Rays for utilityman Christopher Morel, righty Hunter Bigge, and righty Ty Johnson.

Quick Take: The Cubs aren’t exactly in “win in 2024” mode, but with the Rays selling off parts it makes sense that they’d go for Paredes, who is under team control through the 2027 season. The 25 year old has no small amount of pop, and was hitting .247/.355/.438 (127 OPS+) with 16 homers and 55 RBI at the time of the trade.

Morel can be useful but he’s pretty inconsistent. Bigge was a 12th round pick in 2018 and has only pitched in four big league games, but he went to Harvard and that’s fun in a weird sort of way. Johnson is a 22 year old down in A-ball.

Rays send Jason Adam to the Padres for a good prospect and some pieces

The Trade: The Tampa Bay Rays have traded setup man Jason Adam to the San Diego Padres in exchange for pitching prospect Dylan Lesko, catcher J.D. Gonzalez, and outfielder Homer Bush Jr.

Quick take: Adam, one of the game’s top setup guys who has, on occasion, closed, will bolster the Padres’ somewhat less-than-reliable bullpen, joining Robert Suárez, Jeremiah Estrada and Adrian Morejon in the late-inning mix. As far as his arm goes, he’s a nice pickup. I feel it necessary to note, however, that Adam was the spokesperson for the three Rays pitchers who ripped the rainbow patch off their uniforms during Pride Month two years ago and whose back the league and the team basically had because they are spineless, so screw that guy.

Lesko, 20, is the main piece going back. He was the Padres’ first-round draft pick in 2022 but he only began pitching this year due to undergoing Tommy John surgery before he was selected. His numbers have been lackluster so far but he has mid-90s stuff and is projected to be a mid-rotation starter someday. Barring more major injuries to Lesko in the near term I suspect the Rays will eventually be seen to have made out like bandits here.

Yankees get Jazz Chisholm From Marlins

The Trade: The New York Yankees acquire Jazz Chisholm from Miami for three minor leaguers: catcher Agustin Ramírez and infielders Jared Serna and Abrahan Ramírez.

Quick Take: Chisholm rubs people the wrong way — and one wonders how he’ll do in the Yankees’ famously anti-individualist clubhouse — but he certainly improves a lineup that is overly-dependent on Aaron Judge and Juan Soto. Chisholm is not gonna hit like an MVP but he plays multiple up-the-middle positions — and can handle third base — while hitting at a league-average clip at worst with some pop. And he’s moving to a more hitter-friendly park. He’s a fun player who will be an improvement for the Yankees at any of the 3-4 places they could play him.

Agustin Ramírez, 22, has hit .269/.358/.505 with 20 home runs while splitting the season between Double- and Triple-A. That’s great, but it probably says something that the Yankees have been using him as a first baseman in the minors. Serna, 22, has hit .253/.341/.444 in 88 games at High-A this season but, again, there are some defensive questions. Abrahan Ramírez is still a teenager playing in the Florida Complex League. When Peter Bendix was with the Rays he had a knack for identifying good young prospects so you figure he likes what he sees here, both in Ramírez, the other Ramírez, and Serna. Overall a good trade for both teams.

Oh, and Chisholm is wearing number 13 for the Yankees. In case you were interested in the vibes of it all.

Mets pick up Jesse Winker from the Nationals

The Trade: The Mets acquired outfielder Jesse Winker from the Washington Nationals in exchange for pitching prospect Tyler Stuart.

Quick Take: The Mets lineup has been pretty damn great of late and Winker’s patience and power — .257./.374/.419 (130 OPS+) with 11 homers — bolsters it even more. He joins Brandon Nimmo, Jeff McNeil, Tyrone Taylor and DJ Stewart in the Mets outfield mix. They’re missing Harrison Bader and Starling Marte, who are on the injured list, of course.

Stuart, 24, was a sixth-round pick of the Mets in 2022. He’s 6’9” so that’s fun. He has been pitching at Double-A Binghamton this season. He strikes out a lot of guys but has given up more than a hit an inning this year which is not what you want. Because of that, and because he’ll be at least 25 before seeing any big league action, he’s not considered a top-10 or even top-20 prospect in the Mets system according to most evaluators.

Mariners acquire Randy Arozarena from Tampa Bay

The Trade: Seattle gets Rays outfielder Randy Arozarena in exchange for minor league outfielder Aidan Smith and minor league righty Brody Hopkins.

Quick Take: Arozarena, famous for his October heroics, started really slowly this year before righting the offensive ship. If he keeps his June/July production up he might be the most consequential pickups this deadline.

Smith, a center fielder, has only played at Low-A, but he’s been pretty fantastic on both sides of the ball and has a big league future. Hopkins was a two-way player in college but has been a starter in his first professional season, showing good stuff at Low-A though struggling at times with command. A tale as old as time.

Angels trade Carlos Estévez to Philly for prospects

The Trade: The Los Angeles Angels traded their closer, Carlos Estévez, to the Phillies for pitching prospects George Klassen and Samuel Aldegheri.

Quick Take: Estévez is in his walk year but he’s a legit closer for a team that tried to get by with some smoke and some mirrors at the back end of the bullpen. He has a 2.38 ERA (180 ERA+) and 20 saves on the campaign. His best traits are that he throws hard and doesn’t walk guys. Pretty much what you want in a closer.

Klassen is a hard-throwing 22 year-old with an injury history who some projected as a reliever but who will be one of the Angels’ stop starter prospects now. Aldegheri, also 22, is from Italy. He’s not a hard-thrower but has a nice mix of pitches. In deeper systems he might get buried but the Angels do not have a deep system so he’ll likely get every opportunity to show he can be a big league starter in the next couple of years.

Red Sox get Danny Jansen from the Blue Jays

The Trade: Boston gets catcher Danny Jansen from Toronto for three minor leaguers: infielder Cutter Coffey, shortstop Eddinson Paulino and righty Gilberto Bautista.

Quick Take: Jansen is scuffling this year but he’s a good receiver and was pretty dang productive over the previous three campaigns, showing a lot of pull power. The Sox have had a decent catching combo this year with All-Star Connor Wong and backup/jack-up Reese McGuire, but Wong was hitting over his head in the first half — his offense has cratered of late — and is a poor framer. McGuire is a fairly bog-standard backup with not much upside. Or I should say he was a fairly bog-standard backup, as he was DFA’d yesterday. Jansen is a big improvement as a backup and, if Wong doesn’t regain form, he could very well be the starter for much of the remainder of the season.

As for the fellas going back to Toronto: Paulino, 22, is hitting OK but with not much power at Double-A. Coffey, who just turned 20 a couple of months ago, has a lot of power, and is slugging pretty admirably at High-A. Bautista, who is just 19, has only pitched in the Dominican Summer League and Florida Complex League.

Rockies send Nick Mears to Milwaukee

The Trade: The Colorado Rockies sent righty reliever Nick Mears to the Brewers in exchange for righties Yujanyer Herrera and Bradley Blalock.

Quick Take: Mears, 27, strikes out a lot of guys, walks a lot of guys, and gives up a lot of hits but he throws gas and you figure the Brewers will be better able to harness that than the Rockies ever would.

Herrera, 20, just got to High-A where he’s had success and has shown good stuff. Blalock, 23, had a brief cup of coffee with the Brewers but has otherwise spent all of 2024 at Double-A. He’s probably organizational depth.

Blue Jays send Nate Pearson to the Cubs

The Trade: The Jays send Nate Pearson— once considered among the top pitching prospects in the game — to the Cubs for minor league outfielder Yohendrick Pinango and minor league shortstop Josh Rivera.

Quick Take: Pearson has struggled in the Toronto bullpen this season, posting a 5.63 ERA and letting everyone and their mama get hits off of him, but he’s still just 27, still has a great fastball, and dudes with his pedigree always get second, third, and sometimes fourth chances. A change of scenery candidate for sure.

Pinango, currently at Double-A, has pop, but he’s already considered a 1B/LF/DH type at age 22 so don’t plan on his ass aging like fine wine. Rivera, also at Double-A, profiles as a solid defensive shortstop but he’s been lost at the plate so far. Projects, both of them.

Mariners send Ryne Stanek To Mets

The Trade: The Seattle Mariners traded reliever Ryne Stanek to the Mets in exchange for minor league outfielder Rhylan Thomas.

Quick Take: Stanek, an eight-year veteran, had a 4.38 ERA in 46 outings at the time of the trade, having struck out 44 batters over 39 innings. He’s one of the hardest throwers in the game year-in, year-out. Thomas, 24, has hit .265/.318/.387 with five homers in 74 games at Double-A and Triple-A this year. He’s a marginal-at-best prospect.

Mariners get Yimi García From Blue Jays

The Trade: The Seattle Mariners acquire reliever Yimi García From Blue Jays in exchange for minor league outfielder Jonatan Clase and minor league catcher Jacob Sharp.

Quick Take: García, 33, missed roughly a month due to right elbow ulnar neuritis but he’s been solid as hell otherwise, having posted a 2.70 ERA with a good strikeout and walk rates in 30 innings. He’ll help form a solid setup team alongside Gregory Santos. They’re both righties but García is hard on lefties.

Clase, 22, is fast and has power but he hasn’t figured out how to really hit yet. Sharp has been at Low-A and has hit serviceably while showing a good arm behind the plate. Still a long way away, though.

Orioles trade Austin Hays to Philly for Seranthony Domínguez and Cristian Pache

The Trade: the Orioles sent outfielder Austin Hays to the Phillies in exchange for righty Seranthony Domínguez and outfielder Cristian Pache.

Quick Take: Hays gives Philly the right-handed bat they needed — at least they hope — and opens up more playing time in Baltimore for Heston Kjerstad and Colton Cowser. Domínguez is a better arm than his numbers show this year. Pache will always be a defense-first outfielder. This trade is mostly notable for containing all major leaguers and involving two top contenders, which doesn’t happen too much these days.

Kodai Senga is done for the regular season

Mets pitcher Kodai Senga made his 2024 debut on Friday night after finally having recovered from a right posterior shoulder capsule strain. His 2024 season lasted less than six innings, however, as he suffered a high-grade calf strain in the sixth inning of the Mets win over Atlanta. The club says that Senga might be available if the Mets make it to the postseason but that his 2024 regular season is kaput.

The injury occurred when Senga moved off the mound to field an Austin Riley popup. When he did so he grimaced, grabbed his left lower leg and began hopping on his other one before falling to the grass in pain.

With Senga out Tylor Megill was called up from Triple-A Syracuse on Saturday to start against Atlanta. He allowed four runs in six innings and took the L as the Mets were shut out 4-0. New York will likely try to land a pitcher before 6pm tomorrow.

Red Sox players tried to rush the Rockies clubhouse

Remember last week when Rockies pitcher Cal Quantrill instigated a benches-clearing incident during a game against the Red Sox after yelling “you jacked off in a fucking parking lot, you dumb fuck” to Boston catcher Reese McGuire? Turns out there was more to that story. From MassLive:

Multiple Red Sox players, speaking anonymously, confirmed Saturday that the fourth-inning benches-clearing incident between the teams nearly restarted after the final out of Colorado’s 20-7 win. In an incident that caused stadium security to briefly get involved . . . one prominent Sox player [was] so incensed that he started asking stadium personnel where he could find the home clubhouse, where the Rockies were packing up for a road trip to San Francisco. Red Sox players were spotted waiting out by Colorado’s team bus at one point as well.

I get that players like to have their teammates’ backs and everything, but I find it rather hilarious that they’d be willing to risk massive suspensions and potentially criminal sanctions to defend the backup catcher who got busted for jackin’ it in the parking lot of a Florida strip mall and then got DFA’d less than a week later. Does no one pick their battles anymore?

Other Stuff

That’s a hell of a trick

An ABC/Ipsos poll came out yesterday which, while not containing a head-to-head Trump/Harris question, did question participants on the favorability and unfavorability of Trump, Harris, and. J.D. Vance. The jump between the last such poll, conducted on July 19-20, and this one, conducted on July 26-27, is fairly remarkable:

The vice president's favorability rating has jumped to 43%, with an unfavorability rating of 42%, according to the ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel. In an ABC News/Ipsos poll released a week ago, Harris’ favorability rating was 35%, while 46% viewed her unfavorably . . .

. . . Trump's favorability rating dropped slightly from 40%, measured in the week following the attempted assassination and the Republican National Convention, to 36% in the most recent poll. Trump's favorability rating among independents also saw a drop in the last week. Twenty-seven percent of independents have a favorable of Trump, which is down from 35% last week.

I get Harris’ favorability going up. In the space of a week she went from the relative obscurity of her mostly innocuous Vice Presidency to the top of the ticket on the back of what was a pretty damn well-orchestrated rollout. And her numbers no doubt capture the exhale of relief many Democrats enjoyed after Biden stepped back. It’s almost like she got a mini-convention bounce due to the news of the past week.

But Trump’s drop in favorability is a hell of a thing. He’s essentially lost any bump he got from (a) nearly being killed in an assassination attempt; and (b) the Republican National Convention. That Trump went backwards despite those things happening within the past two weeks is not the sort of thing one would expect.

One has to wonder what, if anything, could give Trump a boost going forward. And that’s before one appreciates that as we get closer to November he’ll be forced to be out in public more than he had been in the previous several months and, usually, the more Trump talks the worse things get for him.

I mean, this poll likely doesn’t fully capture his Friday night speech in which he promised Christian voters that “In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.” It occurred during the polling period but the national media only really began focusing on that yesterday and it’s not gonna play well once people who don’t live on social media start to think about it. Oh, and on Saturday night he promised to eliminate federal funding for virtually all public schools and to bring back the mumps. It won’t be covered that way but that’s precisely what he promised. There’s virtually nothing Trump can say that makes anyone go “ah, yeah, I think I like him better now.” To the extent this race is close is because, until last week, no one was particularly enthused about the Democratic ticket either and the numbers were reflecting pan-political spectrum despair. That, it seems, is breaking up.

Then there’s this:

Trump's running mate JD Vance saw no change in his favorability rating in the last week, but the proportion of Americans viewing him unfavorably has increased.

The Ohio senator's favorability rating is 24%, similar to his 23% rating in last week’s poll. But the proportion viewing him unfavorably has increased from 31% last week to 39% now, according to the poll.

I’m guessing Vance’s favorability reflects people that already knew him and liked him. I’m also guessing, given how little juice and charisma he has and how little of his odiousness was known by the general public before this past week, those unfavorable numbers will only go up. He’s super exciting to hardcore partisans who were already gonna vote for Trump anyway. Those noxious sorts of conservatives who have spent the last decade or so marinating in that weird, unctuous right wing online echo chamber in which they all know each other's inside jokes and references and do not realize that normal people think it's all inscrutable, weird and off-putting. He’s going to turn off anyone who was on the fence to begin with, however. He already is. He’s already a campaign anchor that will only get heavier and heavier.

There’s still a long way to go, of course. At some point the new car smell of the Harris campaign will wear off, she’ll, inevitably, make some unforced errors, and external events can always shake things up. But I can’t remember a presidential campaign changing so radically in so short a time so late in the game as this one has.

RDJ is Doctor Doom? OK.

I went and saw “Deadpool & Wolverine” on Saturday. I won’t share any spoilers or discuss its plot, but I will say that it was entertaining enough. There were some fun cameos. There were multiple laugh-out-loud moments, though it was not as consistently funny or as transgressive as the first couple of “Deadpool” movies. It may simply be a function of the schtick getting a bit old. I also feel like Ryan Reynolds seemed a bit muted compared to the previous two movies. Disney edicts? The fact of the writer’s strike preventing him from re-writing/ad-libbing during filming? My mood? I don’t know.

I was nowhere as into the X-Men movies as I have been the MCU so Wolverine’s return wasn’t some “OMG!” thing for me. Hugh Jackman was good and was game and most of the best humor of the movie revolved around him, either as the target of jokes or because he had a bunch of good lines himself. Maybe he had the (relative) novelty factor going for him in that we hadn’t seen Wolverine for seven years and we hadn’t seen him in a proper comic book movie for even longer (“Logan” aspired to be and achieved much more).

Overall I give the movie positive scores, but it was pretty forgettable. Which, given all of the talk in the runup to this being some Big Event/reset that merged the Fox Marvel franchises with the MCU proper, was sort of surprising.

I had hoped that “Deadpool & Wolverine” would do away with Marvel’s fixation on the multiverse which has been a creative dead end over the past four years. But some knowing meta jokes about the multiverse’s shortcomings aside, “Deadpool & Wolverine” leaned on the crutch that is multiverse storytelling just as much as any of the other recent Marvel movies and TV shows have. As for tying things together: honestly, I can’t see what this movie does going forward other than give us the chance to see Deadpool in a regular Marvel movie at some point. Maybe they pick up some threads here for future films, but it seems like this movie could be wholly ignored by the MCU going forward if they chose to and they wouldn’t have to explain anything.

As I drove home from the theater on Saturday evening I couldn’t help but think that a big problem with a movie featuring Deadpool and Wolverine is that both of them are basically indestructible (“Logan” notwithstanding). I realize this is an issue for all superhero movies to some degree, but normally someone in the main cast can be hurt or killed. After nearly two hours of low stakes the writers added in the requisite Giant Glowing Thing which momentarily created a threat, but Deadpool’s earlier meta comment about the Giant Glowing Thing being a “MacGuffin” rendered it even less dramatically important than usual. Of course, before my drive was over I said to myself “it’s a Deadpool movie; it was funny and there was some bad taste sight gags and what passes for ultraviolence in a superhero flick, so you got what you paid for.”

But then on Saturday night this happened, and it made me fixate on that stuff all the more:

This year’s Marvel Studios panel at San Diego Comic-Con may not have been overflowing with new reveals and announcements, but there was one huge shocker to cap off the evening. We learned that Avengers 5 has now become Avengers: Doomsday, and none other than Robert Downey, Jr. has been cast as iconic Marvel villain Doctor Doom.

Marvel fans are still trying to wrap their heads around that announcement. It’s a big deal that arguably Marvel’s biggest and most important villain is finally going to make his MCU debut. But why is he being played by Downey of all people? Is Doom an evil variant of Tony Stark?

My first thought was the same as everyone else’s: Marvel now realizes how much of the goodwill for the 2008-2019 era was based on the actors they hired so it makes sense that they’re willing to give Downey a gabillion dollars in an desperate effort to recapture that. Hey, fair. They’re not idiots.

My second thought was that a lot of people who are irked or confused by this are probably unaware of the fact that, in the comics, no one stays dead except Uncle Ben and that weird crap like this ALWAYS happens. Hell, Tony Stark has already been Doctor Doom in the comics in some one-offs and speculative titles. Basically everything you can imagine has already happened in the comics and, by their very nature, superheroes are supposed to be ageless and immortal. It’s all fair game.

Except this isn’t the comics, right? They’re movies based on the comics. And while I understand how blurry that distinction can be, there are still important differences. A movie audience is not just getting its enjoyment from a story being told and the visuals that accompany it. Moviegoers also interact, on some level, with the actors involved. It’s tricky to get one’s mind around that given that it’s all fictional and the actors are assuming characters, but it’s true. If it wasn’t, all the big parts would be paid by unknown stage actors whose craft is unassailable. But that’s not what happens. There is a technical baseline which must be met, of course, but we also like movie stars for their presence and looks and sometimes even their past roles or their real life personas which can impact how we receive a performance, if only on a subconscious level. It’s an alchemy of sorts unique to the big screen which is wholly irrelevant in the comics or in novels.

All of which is to say: while no one ever really dying in the comics is fine, it’s a bit more problematic in movie or TV versions of comics. At least it is to me. Iron Man can die on the page and come back a couple of years later, but Robert Downey Jr. dying as Iron Man on the screen — in what was the emotional apex of 11 years of movies - and then coming back, somehow, in another movie feels off. And yes, I say that even if I know I’ll go see the movie and hope that it’s good.

Maybe it’s simply about the investment one makes in a movie vs. a comic book. If I read a comic book it’s a fairly impulsive act and whatever happens in the story it’s gonna be added to or transformed or whatever a dozen times a year, rendering it sort of disposable. Like a soap opera or something. A big event movie, however, now comes with months or sometimes years of hype and anticipation and its makers hope for it to live on in the culture for a very long time. When you apply comic book rules to movies the balance is all off and it’s hard to give them the mental investment movies usually command. Why should I care if Logan dies if Logan is gonna come back due to some multiverse shenanigans? Why should I care if Tony Stark sacrifices himself to stop evil if evil is not stopped and Tony Stark isn’t actually dead?

Or maybe I’m just getting tired of ‘em. I dunno. Ask me when I see the new movie in 2026 or 2027 or whenever the hell its supposed to come out. Because I’m still a mark, and I’ll probably still go. And I suppose that’s as deep as the Disney calculus is really going here.

Have a great day everyone.

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