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.
Last time I did it was for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and honesrly, I’ve seen Everything Everywhere all At Once before that and I was shocked how lame Dr Strange wad in comparison with the idea of the multiverse.
One of those two is an indie movie, the other one a blockbuster. Really shouldn’t shock people that blockbusters are lazy.
I’m not sure what your point is since the multiverse is based on comics that came out way before Everything.
Being based on something means nothing. They don’t take a comic book to set to film, they write a script.
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Marvel movies suck, no one should be allowed to watch them
lCan’t wait for the neckbeards to blame the show being about de wimmens as the cause rather than increasingly nonsensical oversaturation
de wimmens lmfao
goe wok go brork
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).
I saw it today. It was fine. It’s far from “the worst movie in the MCU” like some reviews I’ve seen. And I didn’t watch Ms. Marvel or Secret War, either. Still followed the story fine (I am a casual comics fan so I’m already vaguely familiar w/ Ms. Marvel and the Kree/Skrull war, in fairness).
Biggest contributor to the low B.O. in my opinion was the studios dragging out the writers & actors strikes and not being able to mount any publicity for the movie. I only remembered it was opening this weekend when I saw all the negative headlines about it coming out.
Ms. Marvel was pretty good. The villains were entirely forgettable, and some of the CG was phoned in. But the heart of the show, the main characters, and the humanity of it were all pretty good.
Ms. Marvel was fine, but it was, basically, a Nickelodeon kids show and most adults aren’t going to want to sit through that.
I get what you’re saying, but there have been some excellent Nickelodeon kids shows.
Yeah I really loved Ms Marvel but damn the ending was rushed.
Just like every marvel show the ending was rushed. That’s the only thing it suffered from.
The villains were entirely forgettable
As most of the Marvel villains, sadly.
Ego, Killmonger, Blonsky, Loki, Thanos, Klau, Grandmaster, Zemo, they’ve had some great roles and better actors. They’ve had as many wasted opportunities as home runs, but I wouldn’t say “most.”
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’ll take that $47M if they don’t want it
Or, realize that after 33 films, we have superhero-fatigue.
I’d love a second Batman movie, or a good Green Lantern one etc. Couldn’t care less for this one
A second Batman movie?
And NOW you are telling me???
I think it’s obvious what I mean though…
Having grown up with the Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher Batman movies and having enjoyed the Dark Knight trilogy, no, I honestly do not know what ‘a second Batman movie’ is supposed to mean. But admittedly I also haven’t really kept a close eye on what DC and MCU have been up to the past few years.
I mean the extremely popular and successful Batman (2022) movie with Pattinson
Thanks, I actually managed to completely miss that one. 😅
Personally I loved it. Much different to the Dark Knight trilogy, closer to the comics, pretty dark. Check it out sometime
Hmm, almost every story type has been done to cliche. Having a superhero flavor makes no difference, at least to me. I don’t know much about the hero so I don’t have much interest in this instance.
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.
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.
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
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.
I don’t understand this criticism at all.
First of all, it was Wanda who had Thanos almost beaten, which is why he had his ship fire on the ground. So Wanda presented a greater threat to him than Captain Marvel did; so great a threat that he was willing to sacrifice his entire army to try to take her out. I think it was Feige who said, around the time of Endgame or maybe shortly thereafter, that Wanda was the most powerful character in the MCU. But people don’t criticise Wanda for being overpowered and making all the other characters pointless.
Second of all, while Danvers did take down one ship (not two, not that it makes a difference), they could have found ways for several other characters to do the same (eg Doctor Strange via illusions, Wanda or Thor through sheer power, Iron Man through nanotech magic) - they just wanted Captain Marvel to make a big entrance because she had been teased at the end of Infinity War (and then also in her own movie prior to Endgame), and we hadn’t really seen her manifest her full power earlier in Endgame.
But the whole point of that her late intervention in the final fight was that Captain Marvel was NOT the overpowered deus ex machina that many fans falsely deride her to be. Because in a one-on-one fight with Thanos, Thanos disposes of her easily - they trade a few punches, he throws her into the ground. She comes back, and he punches her out of frame and out of the film (until the epilogue). The final fight came down to Captain America, Thor and of course Iron Man, which it was always going to - those being the three keystone Avengers of the MCU.
That’s also why all the founding members of the Avengers went unsnapped at the end of Infinity War. Markus and McFeely and the Russos knew they were making an Avengers movie, not a Captain Marvel movie. Markus and McFeely knew that fans would have felt rightfully betrayed if a character, who had only been introduced to the MCU a year or so before, had swooped in and saved the day after a decade-long build up. So they made sure she didn’t. But more fool them - they still cop the same criticism.
And I say all this as someone who thinks that both Captain Marvel movies (and most of Larson’s performances in the MCU) have been decidedly mediocre, though not for any reasons related to her power level.
Wanda wasn’t an issue because we seen her grow overtime with her power. She started off with simple tricks then demolished a large number of enemies when her brother died then showed she could hold her own against Thanos. That was a character with growth.
Cpt Marvel never showed growth. It was overpowered from the get go. They showed her overpower Thanos as well until he blasted her into the next scene.
But you bring up a great point, the Wanda/ Cpt Marvel sequence was a massive middle finger to anyone that wanted something great from a decade of world building. The whole female sequence was a “hey, we have strong… females too, but we don’t give a shit about them.” Most of the female characters are a joke because either they are overpowered or underpowered. Wanda is the best flushed out one. All the others are a " we had to hire them" vibe. I always believed they should have divided up the characters into different worlds for better stories.
“The final fight came down to … It was always going to be”
But there was no reason too. The problem wasn’t that they created an overpowered character who saved the day, it’s that they created an overpowered character who couldn’t save the day because the weaker popular characters had to.
To build on this now we also have a Super Skrull with capt Marvel’s powers and those of a several other superheros/villains.
(Or was I the only one able to make it through Secret Invasion?)
Also, I never watched the Ms. Marvel show, so I have absolutely no opinion or frame of reference for that now supposedly marquee character so I’m just not all that drawn to watching it. Plus… super hero fatigue
Pretty sure you and maybe one other person made it through secret invasion.
Ms. Marvel was fine but it felt like a Disney XD show and not part of the MCU of the last decade. I’m still fine with that. You need younger people to watch and not just older ones. Fox did a lot of ahit wrong but the one thing that was great was Logan. It dealt with serious shit and was more realistic. Not like Deadpool which was dick and fart jokes with violence.
I would still love a dark marvel. More realistic and violent with serious stories. A light marvel for younger kids and families. Last an Average marvel, the big over the top combination where nothing really matters.
Ms. Marvel was good, you should give it a go if you have the chance. I agree it felt a little …how do I put this…for the kids(?)…but it’s heart was absolutely in the right place and it made this straight old white guy feel things, which is always the mark of a good story in my humble opinion.
I saw the movie with my kids and they really enjoyed, but I completely agree with you on all points. I stay up with all MCU releases because I enjoy them, but Captain Marvel has the same problem DC has with Superman: they’re virtually invincible. There’s no real physical struggle and therefore the fights are just eye candy with nothing really on the line.
So now the writers have to figure out how to make them vulnerable and it’s always personal moral conflict or relationship challenges. Those can work if the writing is actually deep and developed, but not when the core expectation from audience is action and explosions. There’s just not the time to develop the story.
100% agree. When you have to create a new character to kill your op character, that’s just bad writing.
They should go watch One Punch Man to understand how to make these characters work.
Agreed. One of the tropes I like in OPM is that he’s never called to any of the fights and only shows up for the final fight. Until then all of his friends and colleagues are fighting for their lives. They kind of did that a little with Endgame, which was a really badass moment for Captain Marvel imo.
Maybe they could go more towards the other trope of being so powerful they’re bored, but that would be quite a bit against the grain for Captain Marvel’s character.
I think in general audiences are just bored with the all powerful, strong moral backbone super hero. That’s why OPM, The Boys, and Invincible are popular.
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.
Look, I just don’t feel like sitting in an enclosed space for a couple hours breathing the same air as a bunch of randos these days.
Also, fuck Disney.
@neme I remember the advertising for The Marvels was pretty bad. You had commercials that felt like advertisements for the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general. One ad I got was like “Remember when Tony Stark built his first suit and became Iron Man? The Marvels, in theaters this November”
I think I saw one trailer months ago that I looked up on YouTube. I’m pretty sure I never saw an actual ad for it. The first I heard it was out this weekend is articles like this. Doesn’t that lack of advertising usually mean the studio has already written it off?
Where I live I was inundated with Marvels advertising, it’s been everywhere.
So a couple of points…
Marvel has really felt like it’s lost it’s vision since Endgame. Everything from Iron Man forward had been building to that point and once they hit it, it’s like they forgot what they were doing.
The current big bad didn’t get introduced until Loki, a Disney+ show, and if you look at the properties:
Endgame - 4/26/2019
Spider-Man: Far From Home - 7/2/2019
Wandavision - 1/15/21
Falcon and Winter Soldier - 3/19/21
Loki - 6/9/21That’s a full 2 year gap and three properties before anyone gets a sense of where the next phase is going. Then:
Black Widow - 7/9/21 (unrelated flashback)
What If? - 8/11/21 (unrelated)
Shang Chi - 9/3/21 (unrelated)
Eternals - 11/5/21 (unrelated)
Hawkeye - 11/24/21 (unrelated)
Spider-Man: No Way Home - 12/17/21Using Spider-Man to crack open the multiverse first announced in Loki 6 months previously was a good idea, but there was no mention of Kang or what threat he represented. There were also FIVE unrelated properties between Loki and Spider-Man making it easy to forget Kang was even a thing, assuming people even caught the Disney+ show in the first place.
Moon Knight - 3/30/22 (unrelated)
Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness - 5/6/2022A direct follow on what was done with Spider-Man, 5 months later, again, no reference to Kang.
Ms. Marvel - 6/8/22 (unrelated)
Thor: Love and Thunder - 7/8/22 (unrelated)
She-Hulk - 8/18/22 (unrelated)
Werewolf By Night - 10/7/22 (unrelated)
Wakanda Forever - 11/11/22 (unrelated)
Guardians Holiday Special - 11/25/22 (unrelated)Phase 5:
Quantumania - 2/17/23First film in Phase 5 makes it clear (finally) that Kang is the next big bad, almost 2 years after the character was introduced in a TV show, but it’s not the years that were the problem…
It was the hours of unrelated content spread across 11 movies and TV shows, 14 if you count What If, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange hitting the multiverse angle but failing to mention Kang.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 - 5/5/23 (unrelated)
Secret Invasion - 6/21/23 (unrelated)
Loki Season 2 - 10/5/23
Marvels - 11/10/23 (unrelated)And here we are…
I haven’t actually seen Marvels yet, so I don’t know how it fits in to the overall plot.Alternate universe hole. No Kang. I’ve heard rumors of an X-Men stinger similar to what they did with Xavier and Reed Richards in Doctor Strange.2 and a half years of churning out unrelated properties after having three phases of tightly integrated continuity is NOT how you keep your existing audience.
So all of that being point 1.
Point 2 is this… In the comics nobody really cared about Carol Danvers. She didn’t become interesting until the modern Captain Marvel reboot in 2012. In fact, they replaced her a couple of times. Before that, her major story arc was getting her powers stolen by Rogue who would later join the X-Men using both her own power stealing mutant abilities and Carol’s flight, invulnerability and super strength.
I’m sure it has nothing at all to do with them being shit movies.
Some of them were worse than others (cough, Eternals, cough). But Shang Chi was fine. Wakanda Forever was in a tough spot since Boseman died, but it was fine.
The plot of Wakanda Forever was pretty sus too, though, African black folks vs indigenous South American folks (sure they live underwater, and except for Namora their skin is not a standard human hue, but like, still)
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I think if the movies and shows were better, no one would mind the lack of direction. I didn’t see anyone complaining about “the big picture” with WandaVision or even Falcon & The Winter Soldier (which I’m seeing people souring over now but I kinda liked it, despite its ill-advised Israel vs. Palestine analogous plotline). No one complained about it with Black Widow, Shang Chi, or Hawkeye either.
It’s where the movies include Kang or the Multiverse but rules are different or there’s no sense of progress on Kang’s part like we saw with Thanos, where the real Multiverse Saga problem exists.
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I think the problem is not that they didn’t have a clear direction for the big bad (look back at the Infinity Saga, Thanos is barely spelled out and there is very little overarching continuity towards leading up to IW/EG) I think the problem is that most of what you listed are just mediocre to not good. Out of all of those, I would probably only count the following as being good to great:
- Spider-Man: Far From Home
- Wandavision
- Loki (both seasons)
- Shang Chi
- Spider-Man: No Way Home
- Werewolf By Night
- Ms. Marvel (on this one, I might even be fudging a little just because I love Iman in the role)
- Guardians of the Galaxy 3
- Marvels*
Out of roughly 22 on the list there, that’s a just impressively bad hit rate. Not everything I left off of my list is “bad” per se, but it’s mostly just mediocre and I have about a zero percent chance of rewatching it (Falcon, Ant-Man 3, MoonKnight, Dr Strange, Wakanda, etc.) compared to the Infinity Saga, where I’ve seen just about everything multiple times. And then there is the problem that quite a lot of it is bad (Eternals, Thor, Secret Invasion…) I think doing this much TV really hurt them as quite a lot of the TV properties were poorly thought out and didn’t have 6 hours worth of good story.
I don’t think that the idea that having all of the tie-ins really hurt them as much as the perception that all of the tie-ins were required watching hurt them. For example, The Marvels you can totally go in without having watched either of the TV properties, or probably even Captain Marvel. The movie guides you through what you need to know, which is very little, but that is a theme on basically any comment page or article when you talk about the film’s box office draw. I mean, we’re not talking about Breaking Bad or the good seasons of Game of Thrones where if you didn’t watch from the beginning you’re going to miss big moments.
and re: your point 2, this is also the case for the MCU Carol. The movie was among the worst in the IS, and while Brie Larsen is a fantastic actress, we’re several outings in before you can even kinda care about Carol in the Marvels. Ironically, I counted this as a plus for the movie when I was telling my buddy if he should go see it. I saw Endgame opening night, and the audience was right there for all of the big moments, which you can tell they intended Carol’s destruction of the ships to be, and while it wasn’t quite crickets, you could tell that didn’t hit the way they wanted it to. Even this movie, I went to see in spite of it being a CM movie if anything.
* This one might be recency bias or maybe just that the MCU has been so disappointing that I’m grading on a curve a bit, but I would give this one a solid 3/5.
I think instead of “bad”, I would just call them “filler”.
Moon Knight was very good, but it does nothing to move forward the overall story of multiverses and Kang.
Yeah, that’s probably fair, or at least close to what I was getting at. Personally, I could give a shit if they do some stuff that has no major bearing on the overall story, but I personally found it to be basically filler material still. It’s fine.
Like I know it’s unlikely, but I would not mind at all if for example the next Spider-Man has almost no connection to the overall MCU given where they’re at in the story, as long as it’s good.
Maybe is a good time to go back and get good stories scripts and hire good directors.
That’s just putting a bandage on a bigger problem. They need to get rid of “the Marvel method”. Changing entire scripts in post production doesnt work anymore, Marvel isnt some small studio like in 2008.
I didn’t know they did that, it sounds pretty crazy. Almost amateurish tbh.
I don’t understand that to begin with. They tout the whole “connected universe” angle but then if you look even slightly behind the curtain it’s obvious there’s nobody overseeing the lore between projects. Not when one is beginning while another is undergoing reshoots and rewrites. It’s not possible and it shows, just like how Tiamut has been sticking out of the ground in universe for like 2 years and all we’ve gotten is a joke reference in She-Hulk lmao.
Good. Less marvel movies, the better.
Fuck these comic book/super hero schlock.
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…
Where I live there were ads everywhere and on tons on TV.
I haven’t watched broadcast or cable TV in over a decade.
All the MCU marketing I’ve gotten has been through hype, and after dozens of films the hype just isn’t there anymore.
Though I think what really killed it for me was the Disney Plus shows. It started to feel like homework just to watch Marvel stuff.
Yeah, I watch basketball, so I see tons of movie ads still.
And agreed, I’ve given up on MCU shows and Disney+
much less what its even about. pass.
Right?
I have a few Capt Marvel fans in the house and if they’d invested in any kind of pre-release promotion I would probably have gotten release weekend tickets.
Writers strike and actors strike, meant that only minimal promotion was possible
studios should’ve caved faster
True
Wrong. It was absolutely possible. Just not possible while sacrificing absolutely everything for their profit-focused timeline. I want movies to be profitable, but most studies won’t accept anything lower than “wildly popular with opportunities for sequels and spinoffs”.
