Marvel Cinematic Universe

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xXx: State of the Union said:
I've had people try to reason that if you didn't watch Dr. Strange, you wouldn't understand Infinity War because you'd have no idea who Doctor Strange is, and trying to explain to them that you don't need to know his backstory to understand within one minute that he's a fucking sorcerer who uses magic just makes them freak the fuck out. (This isn't even getting into how if you're that desperate to understand what's been up or who a character is you could just take a 5-10 minute look at a fucking wiki or youtube video to get caught up to speed.)
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This is narrowly true but misses the big picture, I think. Back in the heyday, Marvel movies weren't just movies, they were events that happened a couple times a year. Everyone watched them to as to be abreast of [the current thing] and frankly it was fun to make water cooler conversation about them- coming up with theories about where the story was going, looking for Easter eggs and references, and generally doing all that common culture stuff that extremely popular fiction engenders. It was called "the world's most expensive TV show" for a reason.

Then Endgame happened, D+ started shitting out significantly less expensive TV shows (and seems to have dragged the movies down with them) and the whole thing segued into the multiverse... thing, it's more of a conceit than an actual story right now. And frankly the multiverse even at it's most basic is much harder to follow than "bad guy wants 6 macguffins." So you have a lot more content, of much lower quality, making a lot less sense. So the Marvel spell broke now with a bang, but with a "meh."
 
I believe the issue with Marvel is that it’s over. The story completed with Endgame, so why care. I get the reasonings listed here, but I think this reason killed the universe. People hated entries of the MCU before, but you slogged through the mediocre to bad to get to the end with Endgame, but now it’s here, no reason to keep up anymore.

Iron-Man and Cap being gone really sealed the deal on the MCU’s fate. Those two were the only true characters in these films. They got archs and were the focal points for the audience, but now they are gone with no one to replace them. All the other supers were side characters to their narratives, with maybe Guardians being the exception. In many respects, this universe coasted on Cap and Iron-Man being well liked and the dangling keys of a conclusion. Now with all that gone, they really don’t have a hook anymore besides being the only blockbusters out anymore.
 
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I got conned into seeing Ant Man...god what a boring sack of shit that was. The only entertaining part was that they Deepfaked George Floyd as the bad guy
 
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Call me paranoid, but I don't think a nearly 70% second weekend drop is very good news for Marvel. That's a worse hold than Batman v Superman.
 
Modok looked so unbelievably fucking stupid. I still can't believe that was the final design they went with.
 
How are they going to bring in She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Kate Bishop, Doctor Strange, America Chavez, Ironheart, Echo, Marvels, etc. together when the Kang Wars happen anyway? They all seem so separated right now, so many people to juggle and the vast majority of them haven't even interacted with each other yet and there are no plans to.

One of the things that was good about the previous team was that they developed some camaraderie and rivalry that was sprinkled between Iron Man and Avengers: Endgame/Spider-Man: Far From Home. But with how complicated and bloated everything's becoming, I don't have faith that their current slate of writers can pull this off.

Basic Blond Boy said:
Iron-Man and Cap being gone really sealed the deal on the MCU’s fate. Those two were the only true characters in these films. They got archs and were the focal points for the audience, but now they are gone with no one to replace them. All the other supers were side characters to their narratives, with maybe Guardians being the exception. In many respects, this universe coasted on Cap and Iron-Man being well liked and the dangling keys of a conclusion. Now with all that gone, they really don’t have a hook anymore besides being the only blockbusters out anymore.
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Unlike these new characters, there's a clear development with both Stark and Rogers. Stark was a billionaire jackass who ends up caring for people after seeing the damage his involvement in the nuclear weapons industry was doing. Rogers was a patriot who ended up being jaded and disillusioned by the very government he sought to defend. That contract in Civil War was actually built up and was really good. Again, I don't have faith that the writers can do anything like that anymore, given that a lot of our current slate is very...unlikeable.
 
Sniperwoof said:
Modok looked so unbelievably fucking stupid. I still can't believe that was the final design they went with.
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MODOK is like Mojo in that the design can work really well with stylized art to give it that uncanny valley/body horror vibe. In photorealism it just looks dorky outside of some very creative art design.

(Also, bringing back the least memorable character from Ant-Man as the secondary villain? Fucking why?)
 
Sniperwoof said:
Modok looked so unbelievably fucking stupid. I still can't believe that was the final design they went with.
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Yeah, he should've been much grodier. The idea of how he was created ties in nicely to the MCU as a whole, but the actual execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed said:
How are they going to bring in She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Kate Bishop, Doctor Strange, America Chavez, Ironheart, Echo, Marvels, etc. together when the Kang Wars happen anyway? They all seem so separated right now, so many people to juggle and the vast majority of them haven't even interacted with each other yet and there are no plans to.
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They're probably stressing over that right this second. They can't put out too many films per year, so the TV shows will have to do the heavy lifting with cameos for now.
 
Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed said:
How are they going to bring in She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Kate Bishop, Doctor Strange, America Chavez, Ironheart, Echo, Marvels, etc. together when the Kang Wars happen anyway? They all seem so separated right now, so many people to juggle and the vast majority of them haven't even interacted with each other yet and there are no plans to.

One of the things that was good about the previous team was that they developed some camaraderie and rivalry that was sprinkled between Iron Man and Avengers: Endgame/Spider-Man: Far From Home. But with how complicated and bloated everything's becoming, I don't have faith that their current slate of writers can pull this off.


Unlike these new characters, there's a clear development with both Stark and Rogers. Stark was a billionaire jackass who ends up caring for people after seeing the damage his involvement in the nuclear weapons industry was doing. Rogers was a patriot who ended up being jaded and disillusioned by the very government he sought to defend. That contract in Civil War was actually built up and was really good. Again, I don't have faith that the writers can do anything like that anymore, given that a lot of our current slate is very...unlikeable.
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Aside from Ms Marvel, the rest of the spin-off characters are probably gonna stay just that - spin-off characters that never interact with the Avengers outside of their own shows, if at all. That’s how the old Netflix series and Agents of Shield treated things.

If the Disney+ shows had been successful, it’s certainly possible that they would’ve tried to integrate them better into the MCU proper, but at this point it’s pretty clear that Disney+ as a whole is a complete disaster, and that expecting movie audiences to have watched the shows to understand what’s going on in the movies has flopped entirely.
 
Monica Rambeau and Ms. Marvel are going to be in the upcoming Marvels and She-Hulk is supposed to be part of the new Avengers lineup. Matt Murdock even showed up in Spider-Man. WandaVision tied directly into Multiverse of Madness, and the Falcon & Winter Soldier show is getting a film follow up. Rhodes and Riri are supposed to be in Armor Wars. Clearly they don't mind integrating the D+ shows and the movies.

I'm actually curious as to why Agents of SHIELD is treated as an alternate timeline now. Unlike the Netflix shows, it was developed directly with Marvel and ABC is part of Disney. I've heard that despite initially helping to develop it Joss Whedon ultimately didn't like the idea of bringing back Agent Coulson, so I wonder if he sorta blackballed the show back when he was a major part of the franchise.
 
Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed said:
Unlike these new characters, there's a clear development with both Stark and Rogers. Stark was a billionaire jackass who ends up caring for people after seeing the damage his involvement in the nuclear weapons industry was doing.
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Stark was only a jackass to friends and work associates. As for everyone else i.e. the average Jane and John Doe, Stark was extremely well behaved around and to them. Stark tech is based on arc reactor not nuclear technology. Daddy Stark was the one who worked on atomic and nuclear tech during and after WWII before switching over to arc reactor tech.

Edit: Agents of Shield haves Joss Whedon's taint all over it.
 
Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed said:
Unlike these new characters, there's a clear development with both Stark and Rogers. Stark was a billionaire jackass who ends up caring for people after seeing the damage his involvement in the nuclear weapons industry was doing. Rogers was a patriot who ended up being jaded and disillusioned by the very government he sought to defend. That contract in Civil War was actually built up and was really good. Again, I don't have faith that the writers can do anything like that anymore, given that a lot of our current slate is very...unlikeable.
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The main thing I hated about these two was that there really wasn't a payoff to Civil War and how the two were treated in general. Iron man always gets thrust into the wrong, while Cap always seems to be right. It angers me a bit as Stark was the only character who ever seemed to have any plans dedicated towards 'ending the fight' or just long term security. Cap's freedom shit is always boasted as better, yet never has an argument for it as Cap conveniently gets to battle a Nazi as his opponent or Stark spergs out over something unrelated to the topic. By the end of Civil War, there was no argument, it just ends because Stark has a Martha moment and everyone just forgets about the Accords as it would be inconvenient to the larger plot to bother with it. The set up to these characters was decently handled, mainly Stark's, but the payoff was nothing as they didn't have any way to actually depict a debate.
 
Uranus Pink said:
Stark was only a jackass to friends and work associates. As for everyone else i.e. the average Jane and John Doe, Stark was extremely well behaved around and to them. Stark tech is based on arc reactor not nuclear technology. Daddy Stark was the one who worked on atomic and nuclear tech during and after WWII before switching over to arc reactor tech.

Edit: Agents of Shield haves Joss Whedon's taint all over it.
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Damn, my Marvel knowledge is rusty already.
 
MODOK having a random change of heart because Scott’s suddenly hyper-competent daughter said “lol maybe don’t be a dick”, suicide-bombing Kang so a bunch of time-travel accelerated evolved ants can kill-but-not-really Kang, and then MODOK having a slow death, coughing up blood and trying to be happy that he did good in the end, only for the scene to have constant “lol he’s a dumb big head guy who thinks he’s an Avenger now lol” is just….I don’t know what the movie wants me to feel with any of this.

It feels like they filmed an entire movie, then rewrote the entire thing and tried to use everything they filmed to tell the new story, intercut with a bunch of random new lines and scenes. It’s bizarre.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
Doctor strange in particular is useless since he doesn't work on any logic but plot logic. There is no magic system or even characterization and every scene with him is "I can do it since I'm a wizard".
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This is the problem with 99% of comic book heroes. Writers have completely given up on consistency, hard rules and power levels because they're hard to write and anyone can basically do everything as long as the plot demands for it.

There's literally 0 stakes or risk to anything the heroes do and no real surprise or moment of ingenuity because they only solve problems with asspulls and inconsistent powers.

The most egregious examples of this imo isn't doctor strange, its antman. Nobody cares because antman is a minor character but his powers literally work completely differently in every single instance he uses them even within the same movie because the writers forgot what conservation of mass is.

The third movie doesn't even make sense, characters still have the same atoms in the same size, just closer toogether, how can they go subataomic?

There's never going to be a "bloodbender" moment in the MCU because there are no rules to work around to surprise the audience with. No bending sweat to break out of jail, Iroh waterbending flames, Zuko redirecting lightning, etc.
 
Oilspill Battery said:
This is the problem with 99% of comic book heroes. Writers have completely given up on consistency, hard rules and power levels because they're hard to write and anyone can basically do everything as long as the plot demands for it.
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Consistency is nearly impossible when you have different writers. Hard rules, yeah. And power levels were and will always be bullshit.
 
‘Quantumania’ Writer Implies There’s No Real Plan For Phase 5 And Beyond: “We Are In The Process Of Figuring That Out” (Bounding Into Comics)
https://archive.ph/wip/yrToN

Really great to hear the guy writing the new Avengers is like "lol I haven't figured it out yet, not really writing much on the Avengers script yet."

Tor Lugosi said:
I'm actually curious as to why Agents of SHIELD is treated as an alternate timeline now.
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It was always treated as such by everyone except the marketing department.

IIRC Agents of Shield was an Ike Perlmutter thing which is why it was always ignored by the film division.
 
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