WTI: $111.11 — Sunday Evening Opening — May 15, 2022

Up from $110.50 at close on Friday.
Shanghai, China, to start re-opening tomorrow, Monday.

Did President Xi get the memo?

Back to global oil, link here:

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Marvel Cinematic Universe

Streaming: link here. Streaming wars.

Link here. 

Is DIS a buy?

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them.

From The WSJ weekend edition:

How many superhero movies do you need to see to fully process what’s happening in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”?  

Marvel’s latest blockbuster isn’t just a sequel to a “Doctor Strange” movie from six years ago. It’s a concatenation of storylines, characters and references that tie back to at least a half dozen other movies and TV series. 

Want to know how Stephen Strange started messing with the parallel dimensions known as the multiverse? Watch last year’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” 

What about why an all-powerful witch named Wanda is wreaking havoc? Her motives are explained in “WandaVision,” a nine-episode Disney+ series released in early 2021. For extra credit, refer to 2015’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” 

Fully understanding Doctor Strange’s emotional baggage, meanwhile, requires you to know what he did in a 2018 “Avengers” movie that caused half the population to vanish. Even grasping the significance of certain cameos requires adding the animated “What If…?” TV show to the syllabus, Marvel completists might suggest.

This canon has fired a debate about how much prerequisite viewing Marvel releases actually demand, and whether the studio should cater to audiences who haven’t done the homework. 

Since its launch in 2008 with “Iron Man,” the Marvel Cinematic Universe has expanded to 28 movies. Next up in July: “Thor: Love and Thunder,” the fourth movie dedicated to the hammer-wielding god (not counting his starring roles in other big releases). The MCU’s interconnectivity of plots and characters helped it become a huge force in mass market entertainment. 

Some releases do work as standalones, including three Disney+ series in a row with new characters, starting with the recent “Moon Knight.” And with an opening-weekend haul of $450 million worldwide for the new “Doctor Strange,” the Marvel juggernaut shows no signs of slowing, especially as non-franchise titles often struggle at the box office. But if future installments  grow more and more self-referential, do they risk alienating people who don’t keep up?

I normally don't like sort of stuff, but I thoroughly enjoyed the "first" Dr Strange. 

Folks may want to take another loook at Disney+ and DIS. 

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Spider Man

Tonight, Spider Man is all over Hulu. LOL.

Is Spider Man part of the MCU?

You had to ask.

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Loki

Link here.

Disney+. Again.