Marvel Cinematic Universe

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One of the biggest issues with the Phase 4 / 5 stuff that didn't work is that it was soulless and felt lazy.

The Eternals was superhero stuff but boring as fuck. I remember at the time thinking it felt like someone making a superhero film who didn't really like superhero films, didn't watch many and was doing their take on what would be a better superhero film. It was just flat and meh.

People apparently liked Wandavision, I personally thought it was a mess. Assume people liked some of the ideas over their execution. I thought the old sitcom stuff was done poorly and felt written by people who didn't watch or appreciate old sitcoms. Which were actually clever and funny. Not just corny and shit.

So much of it was bland. Or if the interesting in premise fell apart. Moon Knight had potential but like almost every one of the shows I did watch in full. It felt like they went into production with a couple of decent episodes written. With out the rest of the season written then had to hastily try and quickly write the rest and it went off the rails.

I can't imagine that's what happened, surely they'd have the season all written out but it sure didn't feel like it. Maybe they just went nuts with dumb rewrites. I think Hawkeye was probably the better of the shows. Falcon and Winter wasn't terrible, but it felt like something went wrong with the writing. I have heard people suggest they had to cut plotlines and did reshoots because of pandemic, but who knows.

The Secret Invasion show really felt like a complete mess in the writing department. They also have the problem that these things often rely on stuff you don't really remember or care about. So I'm watching it thinking it's retarded that we're meant to sympathise with Skrull terrorists trying to genocide earth because Nick Fury didn't find them a planet. Yet they're the space faring advanced civilisation, which Earth isn't. I don't remember Captain Marvel. I didn't even remember Rambeau was in that. I can't imagine where this lands for even more casual fans than me. Which I assume would be the majority of people. It's just all non-sense.

Who is going to remember or care about Iron Heart when that show comes out? So in the Black Panther movie with out Black Panther that everyone forgot. She built an Iron Man suit and now the show is set after about her struggling to build a suit? Who gives a fuck. They could change the actress and personality and no one would remember enough to even notice.
 
The BIGGEST problems with Phase 4 and 5 was the bullshit activists that seemed to be permanently attached to these projects. I really, really hope Chris Gore is right and Marvel has cleaned house with these fucking morons.
 
The BIGGEST problems with Phase 4 and 5 was the bullshit activists that seemed to be permanently attached to these projects. I really, really hope Chris Gore is right and Marvel has cleaned house with these fucking morons.
DEI is a problem (and affects Wakanda the worst), but there are pretty significant non-DEI reasons why those two phases didn't work. I wouldn't call Thor 4 that woke, but it's certainly bad and didn't build up to anything. GotG 3 is considered the second best of the lot (No Way Home is considered the best), but a dead end. The only lesson they seemed to have learned is that the MCU needs real movie stars, which is why they brought back RDJ to generate some positive nerd buzz.

I find Gore optimistic in his assessment though, as woke activists are where they are because of ESG benefits and not solely due to being well connected. While it's possible that Vanguard and Blackrock are holding back on empowering shitty businesses to be shit, I find it more likely that they will continue to fund DEI projects, which the studios love as it's a guaranteed income earner despite the results on the ground. Sure, it's the same kind of reasoning as getting into accidents to bilk the insurance companies, but it generates more money than if they bothered to make good media.
 
No, he isn't. He is there just because he is pissed off some of his superiors with something completely unrelated to the girls.

To be fair, to him: He not as bad I made him sound in my earlier comment. I forgot that he kinda tries to apologize(?) throughout the movie; but the movie treats it as a joke and never let's him explain exactly what are his thoughts and feeling about the girls. He is not as bad as Milena (the scientist lady); but whatever guilt or empathy he might feel is purely implied because the scrip is so under-baked.

Black widow, to me, is very frustrating because, at the very least, the characters have potential, but they don't have anything else. Everything needed more time in the oven.
Fair enough about the reason he's in prison - like I say, not going to watch the movie a second time. And fully agree that their mother is way worse. Their father was merely dedicated to his country and a little naive about the implications. And especially naive about children. He thinks of Natasha as a fellow spy because she actually was trained in Russia before they left (unlike Yelena). He seems to genuinely not really get how young Natasha is or how they'll be affected. He's a bit of an ork, really - boisterous and a little unaware. The mother has a much better grasp on human nature.

Anyway, we pretty much agree that the film was half-baked in a tonne of ways. I was merely saying that in that film, I liked him and Yelena much more than anyone else.

This clip is great and really shows a dynamic of Harley and The Joker that people forget. Harley didn't just roll over and accept all the abuse given to her. She still accepted some, yes, but when pushed she snipped and snapped back at The Joker like they were an old married couple, and there was at least one occasion where she tried to kill him because he went too far. The tragedy was that every time she manages to get out and try to move on, he'd do something to pull her back in and she'd fall back into the cycle of abuse. Just like almost all the prominent figures in Batman's Rogues Gallery, she was as tragic as she was dangerous. She was manipulated, yes, but you can't say she was unaware of what she was doing or didn't enjoy it. She's a bad person that deserves punishment, not to have all her crimes shrugged off as the fault of her abuser and him alone.
Female villains always get redemption. I'm sure it's not a completely universal rule but I'm struggling to think of a counter-example. The sheer fact it's so hard illustrates my point. Both male and female writers (you might think it would just be the male ones) always grant them some form of redemption or at least the hope of it. I'm fine with her original version but they want their cake and eat it - make her and independent villain but still be redeemed. It doesn't work. Strip away the genuine victim element and she just becomes an awful person.

The version in the Injustice comics is the best redeemed Harley I've seen. Frankly, the best Harley outside of the original cartoons that I've seen. She retains her craziness but successfully moves on from the Joker and fights with the heroes. It helps that they don't try to do the "LOL! So Random!" idiocy with her but that she's genuinely funny. Like when she meets Alternate Universe Oliver Queen and tells him in her universe they were a couple. Like a third of her scenes are her just pranking Green Arrow.
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They have the opposite problem, actually. Phase 4 and 5 weren't building to anything. Stuff that happens in one show didn't affect each other in a logical way. Remember that in She-hulk, the Sokovia Accords were abolished. Aside from WHY?! It doesn't affect FATWS or Thor 4. Doctor Strange 2 could have really used help from other Supes, but Doc doesn't bother to call in Hawkeye and rather let a hundred mooks with the same kind of weapon defend the temple. Kang is strictly an Antman villain that got beat by socialist ants and the Marvels and the Guardians and the Celestials don't interact at all despite being cosmic characters. None of these shows and movies are thematically related to each other, nor do they build a bigger narrative or world towards anything.
Honestly, I would be fine with them not building to something in everything they do. Some low key stuff is good. The first Antman movie was one of my favourites because whilst there were certainly large stakes at heart it was about a dude trying to get back on his feet and get his daughter back. I liked that.

But they're just not very good at it. Like with the Eternals, one of the fundamental issues is that you see it from the inside. They're these secret beings that have existed through history and manipulated the course of mankind. Some of them are actually people of myth - at least I presuem Gilgamesh is supposed to be the Gilgamesh, and so on... That's a cool trope when you uncover the conspiracy, learn about it, etc. But it loses 90% of its story power when seen from the inside and your viewpoint characters are those secret beings.

I think they were also leading towards vampires in the MCU with the deviants having developed that energy drain mutation thing. But if they were it never went anywhere like much of modern media - they never stick with something if it remotely doesn't get applauded. Because Hollywood is obsessed with everything being lighting in a bottle mega success. It's like the old military maxim: There are good plans and there are bad plans. But not sticking to your plan can be disastrous. They jump around all the time and it makes it near impossible to have good writing.

The Eternals was superhero stuff but boring as fuck. I remember at the time thinking it felt like someone making a superhero film who didn't really like superhero films, didn't watch many and was doing their take on what would be a better superhero film. It was just flat and meh.
It's why one of the best received lines in DP3 is when he sees Logan's suit and exclaims: "Finally - someone not ashamed to be in a superhero movie." Or words to that effect.

I wouldn't call Thor 4 that woke, but it's certainly bad and didn't build up to anything
The superficial version of Woke is DEI stuff, but the underlying real reason is about undermining existing institutions and White Male self-respect. It's why nobody has a problem with Ripley despite that she ticks all the boxes of "Strong Indepdendent Woman" or that they race-change Nick Fury to Black. It's because Ripley isn't made great by humiliating the men around her, she's just great. Samuel L. Jackson isn't Nick Fury because he's Black, he's just Nick Fury because he's really good in the role. (Well, until The Marvels had him shouting "Black girl magic"). None of them are about humiliating White Males. Whereas Thor 3 and 4 and really do go down that path turning Thor into a joke over and over.
 
The version in the Injustice comics is the best redeemed Harley I've seen.
Honestly the best "redeemed" one to me is the one in the animated series's sequel series batman beyond, where without her original reason for turning to crime being gone she just kinda faded into normal society again and only shows up for an end gag. Everyone just assumes she's dead or something after what happened the night joker died but she's not, and not even going by another name or anything. It's kind of like how when batman's not in the picture joker finds committing crime fucking boring which kind of shows how she's got a similar way of justifying criminal shit going on as him.

The Eternals was superhero stuff but boring as fuck. I remember at the time thinking it felt like someone making a superhero film who didn't really like superhero films, didn't watch many and was doing their take on what would be a better superhero film. It was just flat and meh.
The eternals was literally a nameslap movie, worse than some nameslaps in film adaptations of media. If you look at the original comic's panels by themselves you can just straight up see how cool it'd look as a movie if they tried replicating that style but they just removed all soul from it and replaced the unique character designs with chrome cgi jumpsuits. A big criticism of the FOX X men movies was the outfits being all black with strips of orange instead of Blue and yellow, but the characters were still blatantly the characters, and the black suits still looked like the suits they wore in the comics kinda. Eternals is like if you made a "cyclops" and he had no glasses or visor at all or really anything that identifies him as making any sense to be called "cyclops" as his hero name.
 
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Isn't that where she helps The Joker nuke Metropolis off the map and gets away with it without proper punishment?
Um, well, ah.... You got me in a box here.

But it does show my point about how female villains always get redemption. Nuke Metropolis? Be part of a plot to kill Lois' and Superman's baby? Still gets a redemption. Joker gets his heart punched out.
 
:story:
ever heard of a little movie trilogy called star wars episode 7-9?
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I do wonder how much is true of them just making shit with no direction, scripts not finished. On one hand you hear they have everything as an animated storyboard before directors come on. On the other it's all a mess and figured out during production with the notion they throw shit at the wall, reshoot and rewrite until they find what works.

Something is broken but I don't think us normal people really know the true issue. They reshot the new Captain America film three times. How does that even happen if they have the film as a rough animatic before the first day of filming?
 
Something is broken but I don't think us normal people really know the true issue. They reshot the new Captain America film three times. How does that even happen if they have the film as a rough animatic before the first day of filming?
for star wars I assume jarjar pulled some mystery box bullshit for TFA, knowing he can fuck off afterwards and let someone else figure it out. KK hires roundhead because he's an "ally" and kinda hip huffing his own farts, he has the genius idea to ride the coattails for the biggest popculture IP for name recognition and easy paycheck while proving everyone what nerdshit it was so far by trying to be a brainlet "auteur" subverting expectations, nuking everything so hard disney gets so fucking desperate they re-hire the esteemed flaresmith (probably for a nice sum), who now not only has to deal with his own mystery box bs, but also the literal trainwreck of a cratered trilogy. cue bringing back palpatine for memberberries and endless reshoots trying to get the best version for maximum profit simply by what parts people like most assuming that will get the biggest amount of people into the seats. logic and coherence be damned, just enjoy the pretty pictures.

the new captain america probably got the same treatment as TROS after focus tests and early screenings showed the audience thinks it's fucking dogshit and they try to salvage it.
you have to remember it's not only a corporate environment which is always cancer for creativity, it's also fully ideologidly captured. where you previously had competent people trying to make the best of it, you now have activists getting hired depending on the amount of FOTM flags, pronouns and mental illnesses they have in their twitter bio.

same reason they brought back RDJ, memberberries (remember iron man!??) and probably one of the last few willing to get into that clusterfuck of the MCU for a hefty paycheck.
 
I think Hawkeye was probably the better of the shows.
Hawkeye still annoys me because it suffers from the standard phase 4 & 5 "retarded flashback syndrome."

Kate just can't be a girl who, like probably millions of children in the MCU, looks up to Hawkeye because he's an Avenger and saved the world. Nope, he had to personally save her during the battle of New York and that's why she became an archer. Its so fucking clunky.

Don't get me started on the Broadway play which depicts Endgame with cheerful singing and dancing less than a year after the single most traumatic period in human history (the snap).

And don't get me started again on what they did to Kingpin.

Goddamn I hate Hawkeye so much.
 
Every clip I see of Deadpool and Wolverine just makes me not want to watch it. It's an R rated that was written entirely for 12 year olds.
I mean the character is blatantly an immature goofball loser who's only really good at killing and knowing pop culture shit. You aren't gonna get shakespeare from a movie with a protag like that. Like the talk about the movie I've heard online the last few weeks it's like people don't get what Deadpool's deal is treating the new movie as if it's "disney getting desperate and trying to trick people into thinking they're self aware." You know as if the last two deadpool movies didn't exist and this is just some new MCU entry. I wish this was just some big fucking inside joke I'm not entirely in on, but no! The people doing that seem to be genuine, or at least "genuine" in the intentional scummy video essayist/journo ignorance kind of way. Difference is it's coming from normal people now so I guess "reddit/twitter mentality" would be a better explanation of it. "Ohhh but it's not labeled Deadpool 3 it's called Deadpool and Wolverine and it's supposed to be our intro to the MCU X men!" Motherfucker we've had weirdly titled and numbered media the last god knows how many decades and only NOW it counts? Seriously this shit with people is driving me fucking crazy lmao.
 
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for star wars I assume jarjar pulled some mystery box bullshit for TFA, knowing he can fuck off afterwards and let someone else figure it out. KK hires roundhead because he's an "ally" and kinda hip huffing his own farts, he has the genius idea to ride the coattails for the biggest popculture IP for name recognition and easy paycheck while proving everyone what nerdshit it was so far by trying to be a brainlet "auteur" subverting expectations, nuking everything so hard disney gets so fucking desperate they re-hire the esteemed flaresmith (probably for a nice sum), who now not only has to deal with his own mystery box bs, but also the literal trainwreck of a cratered trilogy. cue bringing back palpatine for memberberries and endless reshoots trying to get the best version for maximum profit simply by what parts people like most assuming that will get the biggest amount of people into the seats. logic and coherence be damned, just enjoy the pretty pictures.

the new captain america probably got the same treatment as TROS after focus tests and early screenings showed the audience thinks it's fucking dogshit and they try to salvage it.
you have to remember it's not only a corporate environment which is always cancer for creativity, it's also fully ideologidly captured. where you previously had competent people trying to make the best of it, you now have activists getting hired depending on the amount of FOTM flags, pronouns and mental illnesses they have in their twitter bio.

same reason they brought back RDJ, memberberries (remember iron man!??) and probably one of the last few willing to get into that clusterfuck of the MCU for a hefty paycheck.

What happened with the sequels is JJ came in and approached TFA like he would a TV pilot. People have the wrong idea that he's involved in many of the TV shows he did. Instead, he helped developed the ideas and then got the fuck out of the way for the actual creatives to manage. He was only involved in Lost for half a season. For Fringe I don't think he did much beyond the pilot.

KK in all her wisdom hired Round Head who just wanted to do a take on Star Wars. He had no experience or ability to take someone else's idea and run with it. So it cratered the story and the ideas that TFA was setting up. As JJ's experience was helping set up other creatives, he was leaving as much freedom as possible. Not expecting the next person to shit all over it. He expected them to take the batton and run. Not bury it and then piss on the shallow grave.

The reshoots with TROS is different than the Captain America ones. Going into TROS they knew everything was fucked. They just shifted ideas over to what they had left. Snoke as the bid bag in the Unknown Territories became Palpatine and the Sith Occultists. Adapting the ideas for the trilogy to what they had. A lot of the rewrites and reshoots were trying to find better versions of scenes. People like Doomcock made a shit tonne of videos that exaggerated the amount and extent of reshoots and versions of the film.

The Captain America reshoots from what I understand are a result of the entire path of the MCU changing direction. They make a film that is meant to tie into the direction of the MCU in two years and then that direction changes. They need to reshoot. There are lots of ripple effects in trying to make the film be more stand-alone than connected to everything. They ditch having Kang being the overarching villain and part of your film. They need to rewrite, reshoot and restructure. They had to break open the, Use Giancarlo Esposito for Emergency option. They also apparently have ditched the director for the reshoots and retooling.
 
Yeah, people liked Gambit but the Channing Gambit movie was just some goofy concept that floated around online for a minute. I don't recall anyone demanding a fucking Channing Tatum Gambit movie. I remember for years people thought (younger) Van Damme should have played Gambit, while everyone and their mother hated that retard in Wolverine Origins.
For what I've read around these days, Gambit movie was quite popular with his fans because it respected the lore and was made by people who knew the character: Tatum and Claremont.

Top of my head, it starts when he's kicked out the guilds and starts to work solo as a thief until he had to return to his family and is set up by Sinister. It was meant to be an origin story with action scenes, comedy and some spy shit and romance.

The reason it didn't happen wasn't bcuz it wasn't good but bcuz Fox got bought by Disney and Feige didn't know how to introduce the character and make him fit the MCU.

The Eternals was superhero stuff but boring as fuck. I remember at the time thinking it felt like someone making a superhero film who didn't really like superhero films, didn't watch many and was doing their take on what would be a better superhero film. It was just flat and meh.

Eternals is like if you made a "cyclops" and he had no glasses or visor at all or really anything that identifies him as making any sense to be called "cyclops" as his hero name.
The Eternals is what happens when the people working in a product hate to be there and wished they would be doing something more "artsy" and deep. They embarrassed to work making comic book stories and hope nobody notices. I'd say some of the actors feel the same, that's why they push for their characters to act in ways that don't fit the characterization.

People apparently liked Wandavision, I personally thought it was a mess. Assume people liked some of the ideas over their execution. I thought the old sitcom stuff was done poorly and felt written by people who didn't watch or appreciate old sitcoms. Which were actually clever and funny. Not just corny and shit.
The problem with Wandavision was that it was a show made for consoomers. The main audience was single liberal women and faggots who watched too much TV and recognised all the references. What shows did they reference? Bewitched, Brady Bunch, Full House, Modern Family, Malcolm. That's shows a woman, Wanda, would most likely watch. They really knew who the audience was.
 
Watching WandaVision live was funny. Not really because of the show itself but because the fanbase had convinced themselves that it was some sort of deep, complex David Lynchian type story wherein you needed a high IQ to understand what was really going on and you needed to pay close attention to decode all the various hints and secrets... then it ended with a lame CGI battle of two witches flying around casting spells at each other and all that supposed complexity was just people reading too much into Easter eggs.

Behind the scenes, I wonder how much the success of D&W is making people at Disney seethe. The MCU's only real successes since Endgame have been the Spider-Man films, GotG 3, and D&W, all written and directed by white guys, largely focused around white male characters, while all the DEI attempts have failed miserably.
 
Watching WandaVision live was funny. Not really because of the show itself but because the fanbase had convinced themselves that it was some sort of deep, complex David Lynchian type story wherein you needed a high IQ to understand what was really going on and you needed to pay close attention to decode all the various hints and secrets... then it ended with a lame CGI battle of two witches flying around casting spells at each other and all that supposed complexity was just people reading too much into Easter eggs.
I actually had some theories about where the show was going (can't remember at this point), but at the end, I realised not that my theories were too smart for the show or anything like it, but rather that the writers of the show had really no idea where they were going beyond setting up MoM and trying to add as many references as possible for dumb people to feel smart because they "understood the reference". That's pretty much all what post-Endgame Marvel has been, and that's why it feels so empty.

Behind the scenes, I wonder how much the success of D&W is making people at Disney seethe. The MCU's only real successes since Endgame have been the Spider-Man films, GotG 3, and D&W, all written and directed by white guys, largely focused around white male characters, while all the DEI attempts have failed miserably.
At least D&W was made with the intention of saying goodbye to the Fox universe and two beloved characters and actors, while also paying homage to the good (and bad) work made by the Fox crew and actors. You might not really like the style of the movies, but you can see the love put in them. You can feel how much Tatum, Snipes, Gardner, and Keen loved being part of those movies and how much they cared for their characters. That's why people were so excited over Gambit and Blade, because you could feel they were happy playing the characters and the script showed that as well.

You don't see that in current Marvel projects. And yes, they are seething because the plot of D&W is basically "let's just have fun with these two and whatever happens to them on their way until the end" and the audience was having fun with them. That's pure escapism that people need when consuming entertainment.
 
Behind the scenes, I wonder how much the success of D&W is making people at Disney seethe. The MCU's only real successes since Endgame have been the Spider-Man films, GotG 3, and D&W,
At least D&W was made with the intention of saying goodbye to the Fox universe and two beloved characters and actors, while also paying homage to the good (and bad) work made by the Fox crew and actors. You might not really like the style of the movies, but you can see the love put in them. You can feel how much Tatum, Snipes, Gardner, and Keen loved being part of those movies and how much they cared for their characters. That's why people were so excited over Gambit and Blade, because you could feel they were happy playing the characters and the script showed that as well.
That's actually an interesting point: No Way Home, Guardians 3, and D&W were all films where the actors were happy to have a (possibly) last chance to play the characters, and give them a heartfelt sendoff. You can feel that Holland loved getting to do the team-up, while Maguire, Dafoe, Molina, Fox, and especially Garfield loved getting to reprise their characters; the Guardians actors and Gunn for a while probably didn't expect to get the chance to close their trilogy together, and some of them explicitly didn't want to do it without Gunn, so the farewell to the team was real both for the characters and for them; and D&W gave a chance to these much maligned characters (or Gambit, that didn't get a chance to be) a shot at a dignified redemption (much like Garfield's Spidey at that), as well as a message of "being part of the MCU is not what makes these movies matter, they mattered on their own, and even when they sucked, we made them because we cared".
So everyone in these 3 movies was there because they wanted it, because they loved their characters, and wanted to give them closure and a dignified end (or at least, a suitable stopping point, god knows the door is open to keep milking them).
I get the same impression of love for the character, at the very least, in Hiddleston for Loki. And though I know opinions of the show vary, it's generally considered to be on the upper side of the post-Endgame stuff.

Meanwhile, things like Secret Invasion and The Marvels felt like most of the cast didn't want to be there. Or Love and Thunder, where you didn't get the same open disdain, but rather both Waititi and Hemsworth took it for granted and just cut loose, thinking they could do no wrong. Or Eternals, where everyone seemed to think they were doing something more transcendental than it was; we're too good for this, we've come to elevate this slop.
Disdain. Indifference. Lack of restraint. Arrogance.
Not love.

Huh? Tatum has never been in any xmen or superhero flicks afaik other than deadpool.
He was gonna be Gambit in his own movie (the whole reason he's in this one), which he tried to get made about as much as Reynolds tried to get Deadpool made. It didn't happen for him, but it doesn't mean he didn't love trying, and finally getting to do it here.
 
The superficial version of Woke is DEI stuff, but the underlying real reason is about undermining existing institutions and White Male self-respect. It's why nobody has a problem with Ripley despite that she ticks all the boxes of "Strong Indepdendent Woman" or that they race-change Nick Fury to Black. It's because Ripley isn't made great by humiliating the men around her, she's just great. Samuel L. Jackson isn't Nick Fury because he's Black, he's just Nick Fury because he's really good in the role. (Well, until The Marvels had him shouting "Black girl magic"). None of them are about humiliating White Males. Whereas Thor 3 and 4 and really do go down that path turning Thor into a joke over and over.
This is a general capeshit tangent but has anyone made a list of every beloved straight white male hero that has been removed and replaced with a woman or POC since 2000?

E.g. nick fury hawkeye wolverine thor ghost rider blue beetle green lantern spider man deadpool iron man
 
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