Hello there boys and girls.
Uncle phett's here to sh*t on MCU phase four... again.
In case the structure of this post feels off, that is probably a result of this being the review I posted on google with some slight tweaks.
the original what if comic series took advantage of the fact that it could do whatever the heck it wanted and made some awesome and crazy stories. The crazy crap it came up with was well thought out and fun. I honestly didn't expect anything from this series other than fun. I'd be fine with the writing itself as long it was just at MCU spider man level. In other words: not that bad, not that good. Just give me a good time. Anything more and I'd be genuinely impressed.
Somehow, however, it ended up being the marvel equivalent to force awakens, except at least force awakens was a little more entertaining. half of the episodes in the show don't take any chances, however. of all the projects that could've played it safe, they decided that they should sit back on this one. the first one is literally just a redo of the first avenger, except captain america is a girl and steve rogers pilots a mech suit. the second episode is basically just taking a big ol turd on star lord by making t challa into space jesus. not to mention that the fast pacing made the show less coherent and harder to keep up with. certain moments seem to go to fast because the writers didn't take the time to make the scenes designed in a way that would make the fast pacing less jarring. this is coming from someone who likes fast paced movies.
one of the most infamous examples was thanos versus ultron. just imagine how cool it would be for the two avengers villains to duke it out over who gets the infinity gauntlet. it would've been cool just to see 30 seconds of a fight. they could've given the fans what they wanted. HOWEVER, since the episodes have to be so fast paced, ultron just cuts thanos in half vertically and gets all of the infinity stones.
mind you, not even iron man, the guardians of the galaxy, doctor strange and spider man could stop thanos when he had 4 stones. you're telling me that ultron did what those heroes couldn't in just a second? oh but it's more realistic that way. right, like how thanos burnt insides don't show when he gets cut in half, or how his body weighs the exact same on both sides. I would ignore this if there weren't people like my trusty strawman who use that defense. then there's the fact that thanos didn't even start collecting the stones until 2018. that also means that somehow thanos broke into the soul sanctum and stole the eye of agamotto, raided knowhere for the reality stone, broke into the nova corp and stole the power stone, and somehow got the tesseract from asgard? there's not a mention of thanos once and yet somehow he has all the stones 3 years in advance. it was obviously a quick and easy way to give ultron all the stones in a short scene despite how cool it would've been to see him steal from the soul sanctum or send his robot army to fight asgard and take the tesseract or see him fight against the guardians of the galaxy and the nova corp for the time stone. it isn't just disappointing, it feels contradictory. especially considering how much of a beating iron man had to dish out just to give thanos a scratch. and thanos didn't even give a monologue. I know monologues are kind of annoying, but isn't it pretty in character for thanos to explain why he needs the stones and ask for them before using force? At the very least, he wouldn't just stand there like a chump with his guard down.
the episodes in between the first two and the last two are fine, I liked the one where dr strange goes evil, and the zombie episode was ok. The episode where the avengers were killed was pretty creative, but each one seemed to go out like a chump. And hank pym was the most boring twist ever. I didn't expect it, but I also didn't care. but nothing really stood out and felt enjoyable.
the animation is bland and a little stiff. I can tell they were trying to give it a comic book feel but they just failed and made this yawn inducing art style. and like I said before, the animation felt a bit stiff. some of the action looks pretty dynamic, but overall it fails at giving the show that comic book feel. spider verse was 20x better at this and made the animation and artstyle feel like a comic book. What if looks like it took notes and then proceeded to do what spiderverse did but without any effort whatsoever.
overall, a 4/10. I have low expectations for season 2.
But please, tell me what your rating of what if is in the reply section, I would love to hear your perspective.