I remember when they had a big long-arc that was spread intelligently across all of the movies that built up to Endgame. I think they’ve forgotten this.
True, but that doesn’t fix their quality problem. Loki wasn’t bad but everything else since endgame has been unwatchable to boring and forgettable at best.
Guardians 3 was really good, but they just let Gunn do his thing and it wasn’t just trying to move the general plot along. I wish they had more stuff that was just doing it’s own thing.
I just saw Guardians three the other day finally. Did it feel to you like 20 minutes was missing out of the third act? It just suddenly stopped making linear sense.
Oh. Well that explains it I guess. It just seemed so hacked up, I can’t even watch it again because I noticed the first time, 2nd time the frantic pace won’t even mitigate
They completely glossed over how Warlock changed sides n why, and everyone was just running and changing scenes at such a frenetic pace that poorly hid the missing connector scenes. Plus that one all out fight scene and then bang they’re somewhere else for some reason
Phase 4 lost the plot. It’s like they didn’t know what to do after Endgame.
For the plot going forward, you have to see:
Wandavision (Disney+, Blu Ray this month)
Loki Season 1 (Disney+, fresh on Blu Ray)
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness
Ant-Man: Quantumania
Loki Season 2 (just finished)
I think you’ve put your finger on it. The shows didn’t exist prior to Endgame. Now, they’re doing the same nonsense as 90s/early 2000s Marvel where if you wanted to understand everyone in large events (which happened all the time) you really needed to read a bunch of different series.
But, watching a ten episode show is a time committment and there are so many actually worthwhile shows that one can watch…
I think the biggest problem is they keep hamfisting action and comedy where it’s completely unnecessary. If something is worth watching people will find the time.
But they keep making the same mistakes on most of their stuff, like Wandavision was pretty good up until they decided they needed a big fight scene for the climax. Quantimania, Falcon & WS, Captain Marvel were milquetoast. Then you’ve got Thor L&T and Secret Invasion which were handled badly. It was weird to get Sam Raimi back for a one-off but not branching into the supernatural side of Marvel.
That’s my point, you have to turn a hobby into a chore so that you can keep up.
It’s the same reason popular game franchises have also failed. 343i messed up the Halo franchise when they started putting plot critical events and information in side media like novels and comic books. The moment you cater to the hardcore fans who have no other interests, you alienate the more common fans that enjoy it but don’t make it their entire personality.
So now if you play Halo 5 you might be confused at what happened to the Didact, you know he survived Halo 4 but where is he? Oh. Right. He got killed in a comic book. Onto the next villain! Cortana took over the AI’s? Holy shit, this is going to fill up the whole next game! Just kidding, that conflict happened off screen and now you’re fighting the banished.
I feel like Disney already knew and was expecting this. The original Captain Marvel wasn’t very well received, and they seem to understand now that not everyone wants to consume every piece of MCU media all the time with the new “Spotlight” tag. I expect it’ll get a fast turnaround onto streaming.
I haven't gone to see any movies for a while now. The effort to go to a theatre and all that just feels not worth it. I'd rather wait for the films to be available on something I can watch at home.
I think the inference to take from their comment is that by extension others probably didn't like it either, and so there is less excitement for a sequel to a movie that wasn't as well received.
Right, they're inferring that their opinion was universal. There was a lot of controversy @urrounding the movie, but it had little to do with the quality and a lot to do with peoples inability to remove personal biases from their viewing experience.
For what it’s worth, I think this one is more fun than the first one. Or most recent Marvel movies except for Guardians of the Galaxy 3. And I haven’t even seen Miss Marvel.
I struggle to think of a less likeable main character that wasn’t some sort of anti-hero. It takes talent to be that smug and condescending for an entire movie.
How did Captain Marvel struck you as smug in comparison to the truckload of arrogant and full-of-themselves characters in the Marvel universe? Thor, Drax, or Iron Man who is basically a narcissist.
They’re supposed to be like that though, especially Tony Stark, it’s part of their character arc. With Captain Marvel, it feels like she was supposed to be likeable, but it didn’t work out.
I cant speak for this in particular (I gave up watching marvel halfway through endgame), but its very different if a character comes across as smug and all the other characters are saying “God isnt he smug but we need him” and having a character that comes across as smug but all the other characters love them.
Superhero movies are infantile comfort films, art is supposed to be challenging and interpretable. When you know the ending from the genre it's a bad movie.
Yet pseudo-nerds will sperg out over the meaningless cameos and "cannon implications."
This is literally the first I’d heard of the movie. If it’s anything like the other marvel movies, it’ll be overwhelmingly OK (not terrible, not great).
It was a legitimately awful movie. If you asked chatgpt to make you a superhero movie for teen girls and the plot didn’t matter, this is what it would be. I’m hoping that’s the audience they’re trying to pull into the giant universe, because everyone else is going to be left underwhelmed.
Other diagnostics on The Marvels: 65% male leaning, with 45% men over 25, 22% women over 25 (giving it the best grades at 82%), men under 25 at 20%, and women under 25 at 14%.
I think this highlights the issue well. Marvel continues to be popular with primarily men. Disney has tried desperately to attract women by killing off popular male characters and introducing young women. Unfortunately all they’ve achieved is mostly just alienating men. I’ve given up on Marvel entirely.
I want to see it, been looking forward to it, and will when it comes out for home viewing. But if already basically stopped going to theaters before the pandemic except for the biggest films, and the pandemic killed off the last interest I had in any of the disgusting expensive theaters near my home.
And now they’re raising prices for all the services… so we’ll see if when it gets to home viewing it it’s affordable enough to watch or not.
They keep trying to push Kamala Kahn, but I never found her to be a very compelling character. Even less so now that they changed her powers. I watch almost all the marvel stuff but I couldn't make it through that mini-series, and I'm not very interested in this movie either.
Maybe it was because I thought the examination of the American Muslim community was interesting and not something I’d really seen before, but I enjoyed it. It wasn’t the best show ever, but it was interesting. The examination of The Partition was also interesting.
Yeah, I felt like it was more about the American Muslim/Pakistani experience than it was about superheroing, which is why it probably wasn’t popular with some people like the person above. But I was fine with that because I was learning things about a culture I wasn’t very familiar with. But thinking on it, it’s kind of a departure from other Marvel stuff. A lot less action and mayhem.
Yeah the cultural exploration was probably the most interesting aspect of it, otherwise she just seems like a palette swapped Jubilee. They leaned pretty heavily into that. Honestly, I wish they'd just created a different Pakistani superhero to explore this, it might have been more interesting. Other countries should have superheroes too, right?
If I recall correctly, her original shape-shifting powers led to some interesting character development in the comics, which fit in with her thematically wrestling with her identity. That all got discarded when she got the power to summon purple glowing rock things instead, leaving behind the most interesting part of the character to me.
Also I recall there were a lot of "hello fellow kids!" cringeworthy attempts at appealing to zoomers in the miniseries.
As someone who comes from a Canadian Muslim family, that’s probably the thing that made me stop watching the show. It was just so over the top in terms of Muslim culture that it just seemed off. The way Islam was brought in to pretty much every discussion, no one actually talks or acts like that, at least no moderates. It’s no different from people of Christian backgrounds who I am sure aren’t talking about being Christian 24/7. It just felt like pandering.
Ms. Marvel is up there in terms of my favorite D+ series and what you mentioned had a lot to do with it. The end of the season felt extra corny and like some generic Netflix production but overall it was really fun.
Mostly because of her, I would like to check out The Marvels in theaters but I just don’t think we’ll have time and, realistically, it’s going to be streamable in, what, a couple of months? That’s probably the bigger issue - there aren’t really movies I’m so excited to see that I can’t wait that long.
Agree to disagree. I find the Kamala Kahn character to be an effervescent relief to a series that's taking itself way too seriously or trying too hard for slap stick. Does that make this particular movie great? No. The movie itself is a pretty flimsy plot. The main trope of the movie is someone makes a mistake, the group comes together to resolve the mistake, and develop themselves during that resolution. So with that said, it's not really good at delivering that, it's not Trolls bad (the original one which the plot sucks, the music is quite good) but yeah there was a lot of room for lots of character development that was just not included in what was delivered. To me the movie pulled its punches on what it could have delivered.
But in these kinds of tropes you see classic character stereotype traits, in this case Kamala Kahn plays the lighthearted comedic foil and does so quite well through the movie. Needless to say the Captain Marvel character is our person who brings the conflict to be resolved and towards the end you are left with a pretty unsatisfying result. Like the issue is indeed resolved, but it's about as exciting as how I might feel when I've completed my taxes. Hooray, I got that done. Maria Rambeau is our power character consistently pushing the accelerator for the characters to resolve the matter. And she's pretty good at it, but there was absolutely more opportunity for her to flesh that out that they kept sacking her personal past to keep that in check. Which at some point one might go, yeah we get it, she's troubled and doesn't want to talk about it. There's a degree of too much "I'm the aloof character in this movie". I will say the final fight scene is actually good for the level of just skirting the level of frenetic and follow-ability. I've gotten to a point where I just tune out superhero fights when it just becomes a lightshow and camera pandemonium (ala the most recent Ant Man movie).
Like I said, it's not a horrible movie. I went to the 10am showing of it on Friday (with one other friend) and that was $40 and that's where I would say "Do NOT go see this movie for $40". But I really enjoy the Kamala Kahn character and the level of energy the actress brings to the character. It reminds me a bit of how bubbly my twenty-two year old niece is sometimes and that serves as a nice refresher given the backdrop of generally everything else. So, I will acquiescence, there's a likely bias on my part for the character.
Again, absolutely not disagreeing with your position on the character. I think Marvel (and this touches just every so slightly on the superhero saturation) has gotten so big that not every character is going to be widely welcomed by everyone. I think there's a point that the Marvel Superhero movies get so numerous that you have to start considering sub-genres for the movies. And perhaps Marvel should pull back a bit on the distribution (it's their ship ultimately to sail and sink if need be). But I really enjoyed the Kamala Kahn character in the same way that I enjoyed the Katy character from the Shang-Chi movie. I good comedic foil is like pepper, you need just enough to flavor the food and not too much to over power the food and both of those characters have carried that role quite well thus far. But like anything, Disney has every chance to run that straight into the ground.
I’m guessing the fact that no one could even talk about the movie until like 5 minutes ago didn’t help. I had no idea it was even coming out until a couple of days ago because the SAG strike kept everyone from doing press.
There was an absolute fuckton of marketing for it at the start of the year, like every other Twitch and YouTube ad I got was about that movie.
Then, nothing, so I thought it had been released and people weren't talking about it because it's just a massive snooze (Like with the Eternals movie).
I had little affinity for the movie to begin with, so seeing there was little public response after all the marketing just had me go "seems this is one to skip"
And now it suddenly comes out with barely any marketing going on in the past few weeks?
Which still makes me feel it must be a snooze, both because it wasn't marketed for release and because of the residual feeling the initial marketing caused.
Besides that, even before the pandemic neither me or my wife were big fans of going to the cinema, the noise, the seating and the gauging with drinks and food is just meh.
During the pandemic, we invested in an 75" TV, 200" projector screen and 8K projector and setup 7.1 audio in the living room.
We got as much popcorn as we want, can drink whatever we want, including alcohol and the only person that can annoy us is us.
And with most movies being available from a streaming service within a few months of cinema release, there's not much of any FOMO either.
Going to see it this afternoon with the whole family. Looks like a good time. I’m glad that Kamala is a big part of it. The Mutant saga will likely be where box office reinvigorates. Having her be such a key figure in the early explorations of the X-Men is a perfect introduction. She could definitely be the Jubilee type character for the X-Men saga. If she heads to Xaviers school after Deadpool 3 id lose my mind.
Edit: I just finished the movie. Family had a lot of fun watching. Dynamic between the characters was good. Story actually progressed some of the MCUs overarching plot of incursions. I didn’t expect the post credit scene to bring in what it did, but I goes along with what I was hoping. If you are reluctant about seeing it, go to the adult parlor and have a drink. It’s worth a beverage and the ticket price. More Kamala is on the way and I’m hyped.
I saw the movie a few days ago and while I didn't think it was bad, I'll admit the script is a mess. Some parts are a little hard to follow or poorly explained. Someone either got a bit lazy with the writing or did a poor job cutting it all together.
It will be interesting to see how the post-strike/pandemic era of the MCU plays out. The 2007 strike made for like 5 years of shit movies. The pandemic and this strike were significantly longer and had a much higher toll on every level of movie making. I don’t harp to much on scripts from serialized content, but I do imagine it will get better in time for the X-Men and Fantastic era of the MCU.
It feels like an editing issue. The film was fast paced and a lot of scenes just ask you to assume that they make sense. In truth they probably do, but they need a little bit of explanation.
Let’s talk Flerkins for example. Early in the film Goose eats some bad guys, teleports to Kamala’s living room, then spits them out. No one really comments on it. No one found it weird. We just defeat the bad guys and move on.
Next Goose spits up some science equipment. We learn that they’ve been missing for a while. They look fine but no one mentions that they still work, or we’re otherwise still preserved.
Finally we have the musical Memory scene. Ignore for a moment the eggs that hatched. Ignoring for a moment it happens when they’ve run out escape pods. We have “kittens”, we’ve established that Flerkins can eat people and they can hold what they’ve eaten for a while. So while the solution makes sense, and on paper they’ve earned the moment, it takes a moment to really put it all together. As a result it feels rushed and instead of just enjoying the scene you’re left wondering if it makes sense.
We’re only talking about cutting a few minutes here and a few minutes there, but it adds up.
Do you know for a fact that it’s bad? Have you seen it? Or are you just making an assumption because it has low box office figures which you are extrapolating as meaning it’s a bad movie? It’s rated above a 6 on IMDB and above 60% on Rotten Tomatoes, so it sounds like a lot of people enjoyed it.
Based on the non-response from the person above, I’m guessing they haven’t seen it either. Most Marvel movies are mixed in terms of reception, and some men, whether they claim it has nothing to do with gender or not, will not go see a superhero movie where women are the heroes. They don’t even hate the idea, they just don’t see “woman movies.” There are an unfortunately large number of men who feel that way.
But then, despite all of the people, all seemingly male, who told me that She-Hulk was terrible and it wasn’t about gender, I thought it was terrific. So what do I know?
Hey you get my upvote. I had a blast with She-Hulk. A lot of Marvel is uneven but enjoyable. I like how, even after the show called out big CGI battles, Marvel still pumped out big CGI battles. Was wildly self-aware and yet… here we are!
There is no Marvel fatigue. There is no superhero saturation. What there is, is simply trash. Make a shit superhero movie and the movie will just be shit. It has nothing to do with there being superheroes.
Hollywood doesn’t get it. People don’t seem to get it either. But these phases are just repeating itself. It used to be cowboys. It used to be cops. Then pirates. It used to be sword and sandals.
Cowboy movies are fun. So are pirate movies and superhero movies. If they’re made well!
The moment some execs look at a bunch of numbers and think “Oh, people will pay money to see X”, THAT is when things go wrong. No, people pay to see good movies. And Marvel used to be hype when they made good movies.
That’s what I’ve been telling people. My friends and I would religiously go the theatre nearly every Friday as adults. Pandemic hit and we obviously stopped, but once stuff started opening again, we went to see a couple movies but the quality has drastically dropped. We assumed it’s because we were coming out of the pandemic and stuff had been put on hold. In 2023, that excuse shouldn’t still hold up. Good writing didn’t stop during the pandemic, just production.
Youre mostly right but personally there is definitely superhero fatigue. I used to watch most marvel movies but nowadays the formula is sort of played out.
For me it isn’t superhero fatigue as much as “oh, I’ve seen the same story a dozen times now” and “I don’t even know this superhero, why does he need a Netflix show?” fatigue. The writers seem to run out of ideas and just milk the same formula again and again.
And at the same time you get something like the new animated Spiderman movies which are a dope, super fresh new take that is oozing creativity out of every frame.
they also do some of the shenanigans that made people annoyed back in my comic book days. My brother saw the iron man movies but not the avengers. So he was lost at what was going on with stark in the movie after the avengers. So because he had not seen another movie it made that one bad for him.
Not to mention every tv show thus far has basically been 10 episodes of padding, and 1 or 2 important plot points for future experiences. I won’t watch Echo, but I’ll look at the wiki afterwards to see what I missed. I watched episode 1 of Loki s2 and I’m considering doing the same now that the finale has aired. They’re all unimportant drivel, coasting off the brand name.
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