I was part of the hardcore build it yourself crew for years and years, but I find now that for the last 10 years or so now, and especially with the death of places like Fry’s and all the bullshit Newegg pulled, it’s way easier and cheaper to buy a pre-built box that’s maybe 90-95% there, then tweak what you need to tweak.
Get that manufacturers warranty and forget trying to part it out yourself.
Now, when it comes to “Marvel regurgitation”, yeah, they could, and should, be doing better. They essentially re-use the same basic plot over and over again and will keep doing it until they hit one that doesn’t make a billion dollars.
I’m a lifelong comic book fan and I love that nerd culture is finally taking over, but I swear to god, I don’t need another superhero movie where the hero and villain have a joined origin story and the villain is just a bigger, badder version of the hero.
Seriously.
Iron Man - Iron Monger
Incredible Hulk - Abomination
Iron Man 2 - Whiplash
Thor - Loki (both sons of Odin)
Captain America - Red Skull
Avengers - Loki + Alien Invasion
Iron Man 3 - Extremis
Thor: Dark World - Dark Elf invasion
Captain America: Winter Soldier - Bucky
Guardians of the Galaxy - Ronan - First one to break formula.
Avengers: Age of Ultron - Ultron joined origin with Vision.
Ant-Man - Yellow Jacket
Captain America: Civil War - Avengers vs. Avengers
Doctor Strange - Kaecilius
Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 - Pete’s Dad
Spider-Man: Homecoming - Vulture, Pete’s girlfriend’s dad.
Thor: Ragnarok - Hela, evil firstborn sister.
Black Panther - Killmonger
Avengers: Infinity War - Tying it all together.
Ant-Man and the Wasp - Ghost, a victim of Pym tech.
Captain Marvel - Yon-Rogg
Avengers: Endgame - Tying it all together.
Spider-Man: Far From Home - Mysterio (Stark Tech villain vs. Stark Tech hero)
Back when television got big, cinema had to evolve to survive. The aspect ratio went wide.
This Is Cinerama was more of a tech demo than anything else in 1952, but it was followed by widescreen movie, movies in 1953 with “The Robe” being shot and shown in Cinemascope.
Technicolor too gave a more vibrant color scheme even than previous color film processing that actually came a generation prior, in 1932.
But the widescreen/Technicolor combination provided a must see experience that were the event films of the era and they couldn’t be duplicated at home.
Roll forward 50 years… home theater technology has evolved to a point where theater has to compete with 65" 4K television displays and 7.1 Dolby Atmos surround sound. People need a reason to leave their homes and deal with noisy, disease infected, crowds, high concession prices, expensive tickets, and annoyances like having to pre-pick your own seats instead of just walking in and sitting down.
Streaming is keeping people at home, being able to binge long form content, pausing when necessary. Cinema can’t provide that experirnce.
So it’s going the other way, the “theme park ride experience”. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the first Pirates of the Carribean movie hit in 2003, pre-dating the wave of comic book movies by, what? 5 or 6 years? 50 years after the first Cinerama movies?
But even that has roots going back to Jurassic Park (1993), Star Wars (1977), and Jaws (1975).
Now, don’t get me wrong, I dearly love “small” films like Scorsese’s After Hours, or even modern stuff like Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, but there is ZERO compelling reason to see them in a theater. I can get the same experience viewing them on my home theater setup without, you know, blowing $50 to sit in a noisy, uncomfortable theater.
To do THAT, I NEED a spectacle. I need to see something that demands I see it right away, in a theatrical environment. It needs to be a theme park ride.
If your end goal is to make a tight knit drama full of people in rooms talking to each other, well, Downton Abbey and Bridgerton are over there ->
I’ve been playing it back and forth with Baldur’s Gate 3 (Baldur’s Field!) and I have to say, I’m enjoying it more than BG.
Things like combat are just so much easier than in a turn based game controlling multiple characters. I get EXHAUSTED playing BG3. Starfield I can plug in for hours and not really think about it.
If I could tune the other characters in my party in BG so they could run autonomously and all I had to worry about was my character, it would be a lot less tiring.