Can't wait for the neckbeards to blame the show being about de wimmens as the cause rather than increasingly nonsensical oversaturation
literally my dipshit friend's Letterboxd was 'straight guys enjoy something not about them challenge: impossible' and I just had to roll my eyes. I don't take his opinions on movies seriously (besides a tiny niche).
Are these newer movies really that much worse in general or has the audience just finally gotten tired of the entire MCU? I saw every single one up until the second Spider-Man flick and many of them were just sort of lame. Movies like Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel and Black Panther and the Ant-Man movies which all released in the MCU's most dominant period leading up to and in between the Thanos movies were pretty bad and they still made a lot of bank.
I watched all those mid movies because I was invested in the shared continuity and wanted to see the different branches of the universe collide with each other. When they finally did, that investment just kind of dissipated, but I think the final nail in the coffin for me was when they announced the Disney+ Marvel shows at which point it just became too much of a time commitment to keep up with.
They're bad. Multiverse of Madness was alright. The Spider-Man movies are pretty fun. Everything else since Endgame has been utter shit, though I will say the end of Loki season 2 gave Loki a great "out" as a character, despite being dumb for two seasons, and its a shame they'll definitely not just let him go.
its a double edged sword, re: shows.
like on the one hand, i think if they had just done spin-offs, people could decide what they were into or not. but on the other hand, they NEED to have everything tied deeply together, or else no one but the actual die-hards would actually watch the shows.
like it was so frustrating watching the third Guardians movie (snuck into the theatre screening, didn't pay for that shit), and literally was like 'who the fuck is that?' 'i thought that person died' 'etc'. and it's like... oh right, didn't watch this or that season of this or that show, or special or whatever.
I honestly believe Captain Marvel was the start of the downfall of Marvel. Not because of the cast, sex, or anything along those lines.
I believe they over did the character. They made her way to damn strong which made all the other characters pointless.
Remember when a literal god, the most advanced mech, and the super soldier with all the stats struggled with Thanos? Then Cpt Marvel swoops in destroys a couple of ships and takes one on the chin like nothing, that was the moment. The first movie benefitted from a month release from Endgame. Everyone thought it would have something major in it.
The movie wasn't horrible, it followed most of the other mediocre movies. Origin story where we meet a villain that we will never see again and some powers we will never see again. The acting and the cast were good but it was just ok.
There is zero consistency in powerscaling even scene-to-scene within a single movie. I appreciate a good galaxybrain take but I think you aren't correct here.
Remember Strange participating in a ~5 v 1 vs Thanos and losing before going one on one and almost drawing? Absolute "conservation of ninjutsu" shit. That's without even considering the fundamental brokenness of the Time Stone, which he never properly uses in Infinity War, but Thanos actually does use it somewhat properly to basically negate a third of the movie.
Personally I was done at the scene in winter soldier where Nick Fury digs a tunnel and gets away in a cut away that takes less than a second. The movie then expected me to take it seriously after it used the narrative get out of a looney toons cartoon
Were they trying to keep the movie release a secret for a reason?
Seems like a lot of us had no idea it was coming out this weekend…
Writers strike and actors strike, meant that only minimal promotion was possible
I wouldn't personally say that it has anything to do with fatigue or oversaturation. I think the reality of it is that the majority of these movies have no heart, feeling, or direction. The obvious counter example to this trend is the Guardians of the Galaxy films, all of which are dripping with heart and are obviously thoughtfully crafted, and are all around good moving despite being in the MCU. If this universe of films were all given the same amount of care and thought as those films, I think they would all be successful. But alas, capitalism.
I think the fatigue is a product of the fact they have no heart or feeling
irony is fun and all but ultimately people want sincerity. Irony and wit are like icing people like them but there has to be something more substantial there or you just walk away feeling unsatisfied and slightly sick
Terry Pratchett's work is a good example of how this can work he's very ironic and uses a lot of witicisms but underneath it all there is a clear depth of feeling and the books are also full of profound and sincere statements and moments
I don’t even want to go see a good Marvel movie in the theater. I’m certainly not going to go watch some mid bs.
People already didn't care for Captain Marvel, so it'd have to be a really good movie to convince people to watch it. The fact that it's even worse and more generic than that is the nail in the coffin. I'm surprised it managed to get almost $50 million at all.
I think they’ve just gone back to the well too many times and it’s starting to run dry. Prior to Marvel reinventing the genre, I was never a big fan of superhero movies. Other than the occasional ones like Watchmen or Unbreakable, I found them formulaic and vapid. The MCU combined a sense of humor with outstanding sfx and excellent casting. I think I’ve seen all of them, many multiple times, and I own most of them.
For me, the Avengers conclusion was disappointing. It wasn’t as bad as GoT S8, but it really felt like everyone just wanted to be done with it. It’s kind of ruined the franchise for me, but honestly I was probably getting close to done anyway. I did think the new Guardians was okay, but the rest of them have once again become vapid and formulaic.
It has nothing to do with wokeness. I think Our Flag Means Death is one of the greatest tv shows of all time, and I’d rather watch Barbie again than those last few Marvels - I actually enjoyed that one.
I'm a fan of Alan Moore's comments on superhero media's relation to fascism. Quoted bit below:
And he now looks with dismay on the way the superhero genre in which he once worked has eaten the culture. “Hundreds of thousands of adults [are] lining up to see characters and situations that had been created to entertain the 12-year-old boys – and it was always boys – of 50 years ago. I didn’t really think that superheroes were adult fare. I think that this was a misunderstanding born of what happened in the 1980s – to which I must put my hand up to a considerable share of the blame, though it was not intentional – when things like Watchmen were first appearing.
The relevant bit in bold:
He thinks that’s not just infantile but dangerous. “I said round about 2011 that I thought that it had serious and worrying implications for the future if millions of adults were queueing up to see Batman movies. Because that kind of infantilisation – that urge towards simpler times, simpler realities – that can very often be a precursor to fascism.” He points out that when Trump was elected in 2016, and “when we ourselves took a bit of a strange detour in our politics”, many of the biggest films were superhero movies.
Chuds are going to make so many videos about this and why it supposedly failed
I don't think so, I just think these movies have largely not been very good. Like, I really liked Loki S2, have rewatched NWH a hundred times, I liked the Marvels, etc. The problem isn't superheroes, you can use that as a backdrop for just about any type of story you want to tell and it can be great. For example, WandaVision tells a very different kind of story than anything else and it was really good. But of course, Marvel decides (I'm guessing late into post-production) they're going to fuck up all of that character development in a post-credits scene and then ignore it entirely in the next movie.
I think they're going to have to get a lot more creative about what types of stories they want to tell and what themes they want to get after and stop making them feel like cookie cutter properties. The early phases I think managed this a little better. Like, I remember walking out of TWS and thinking "damn, that was a really good Bond film with a Captain America skin on it" which is a compliment. Somewhere in there the whole thing got really generic.
Isn't $47 million dollars for one weekend pretty good? What did they spend to make the movie?
Everything costs over 100M these days and usually much, much more. I heard someone say The Marvels was $250M
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