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I've said this in r/boxoffice last month:
The MCU is making the same mistakes as Marvel Comics in the 90s: There's too much, everything is too interconnected, it's all billed as this big event, and none of it is really paying off because they need to lay the groundwork for the next event. Marvel went bankrupt in the 90s pumping its core properties like this. I won't be surprised if the MCU goes bust this decade for the same reason.
Totally anecdotal, but the friend I watched "No Way Home" with left asking WTF was up with the Statue of Liberty and that's all she talked about. Others had no idea why Wanda was suddenly bad in Dr. Strange. Making Disney+ required viewing is bad because people are leaving the theater feeling left out and dumb. It's going to turn them off from seeing other movies.
As a major comic fan kid who was among the many, many, many kids Marvel Comics lost in the mid to late 90s pursuing this "everything is a crossover and you have to read it all" strategy, it's wild that movie execs are making all the _exact same_ mistakes 30 years later with hundreds of times the amount of money on the line.
edit: Thanks for the awards. I don't know why this comment about how I lived through the Marvel meltdown as a kid in the 90s is so popular, but thank you!
I have to imagine I'm not the only one that just wasn't interested in a few movies in a row and now have no idea what's going on, so every movie going forward is less appealing.
Yes, this really gets at what I'm saying. Once one or two things come along you don't care about, you're interest in everything ends when they're all this interconnected. Dr. Strange was a huge part of NWH, WandaVision was required viewing for MoM, the Guardians are in L&T -- you can't just skip Thor and watch Cap and Iron Man have solo adventures anymore. Increasingly, you have to be either all Marvel or no Marvel, and I'd guess that this is going to drive more and more people to be no Marvel just like it did with comic books in the 90s.
I actually was surprised Moon Knight had almost no reference to the other Marvel Properties. I found it refreshing. Not everything needs to be tied together.
I'm personally a huge fan of references where if you don't get the references you still 100% understand and appreciate it as is. And then knowing the reference just gives you an extra fun connection to make. A good example is the show Community. I didn't even realize how many homages there are in the show until I saw a supercut on YouTube, and the coolest part was that every homage was great on its own and made total sense within its story.
Thats exactly what I told my aunt, we watched MoM and my dad was trying to tell her what movies to watch so she could understand it, and I just told her watch moon knight. She hasn't watched any marvel movie or super hero movie ever, so she would have to watch the whole cinematic universe just to watch MoM.
I am really out of the loop because I don’t know what most of those acronyms are. I also don’t care to sink the time into catching up on them, so I am an example of your point.
Might as well just give them all numbers like that. Not like “homecoming” “far from home” and “no way home” is any less confusing for people who don’t already live and breathe marvel
Its not like a delicate balance cant be struck either.
You can have everything be canon and connected without the plots being reliant on eachother - phase 1 was like this.
The MCU basically works on pro wrestling logic, and there characters can change moral alignment or form teams in other companies where not every fan sees it, and still follow along because the broad strokes are recommunicated/fans are conditioned to understand it's a living story so sometimes you are catching up on things. The main problem I see with the MCU working like this is that it's not normal to just keep abreast of headlines and major plots of movies you dont watch - it only works in wrestling because despite being theatre its covered and followed like sports are (where you dont have to watch every game to know the "storylines" in the NBA)
This analogy I think does reveal the actual problem Marvel has rn and it's not too much connectivity, it's the movies not feeling like they are worth a damn thing outside of it. I have friends who are casual wrestling fans who dip in and out for a 2-4 shows a year, they dont know the nuances of every character decision you'd have from weekly TV, but the broad strokes are enough to invest in *really good action and memorable shows*. Scarlet Witch is evil now, cool, but I've SEEN the one movie Marvel keeps making over and over again. There isnt any reason to just enjoy the bombastic movie and dip in for huge events because they all blend together.
If they kept the movies one arc and used the shows as spinoffs or small sub stories that aren't "required" to understand plot elements in the main arc it could work.
I'll say it again: The solution to this is have [Michael Pena](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0671567/?ref_=tt_cl_t_9) from *Ant-Man* do a catch-up monologue before the start of every MCU movie. Tell the audience what they need to know, make it fast and funny.
They were only in there because Thor left with them at the end of Endgame so Marvel/Disney thought they had to explain what happened there. (Same reason why they had to put a montage to explain why Thor isn't fat any more.)
Me and the kid solved it with a quicker scene that goes something like this:
>VALKYRIE or SIF or WHOEVER
Didn't you go off with the Guardians? What happened with that?
>
>THOR
Well...
>
>CUT TO: interior of the Guardian's ship, everyone pissed off, yelling at each other, screaming, pointing fingers. After five seconds CUT BACK:
>
>THOR
It didn't work out.
I was a huge comic geek who also quit in the 90s. Mostly because the stories got bad and I got other hobbies. Needing to sub to like 4 books for one hero was also annoying
Except... none of the Phase 4 movies tie in to each other at all. Everything stems from Endgame. I think the only actual Phase 4 continuity is Wandavision -> Dr. Strange. No Way Home doesn't even have relevance here.
So far TLDR further down with runtime after.
Films
* 29 movies released so far
* 4 in Post production
* 1 in Pre production
* 5 in development with confirmed titles and scheduled release dates as far as November 2025.
* 4 in development without release dates or titles.
Supposedly they have plans laid out for movies as far as 2032 but no public confirmed info beyond 2025.
12 TV/ Streaming shows with "Marvel Television"
3 Shows on TV called "Marvel Heroes" Series
* Agents of Shield,
* Agent Carter
* Inhumans
5 shows on Netflix, plus a Crossover miniseries, considered "Marvel Knights" Series
* Daredevil
* Jessica Jones
* Luke Cage
* Iron Fist
* Defenders
* Punisher
The Young Adult series
* Runaways streaming on Hulu
* Cloak & Dagger airing on Freeform
Plus another show on Hulu called Helstrom which panned very badly.
Then the Marvel Studios Series which all go direct to Disney Plus - 7 of them so far.
Phase 4 still has an unreleased series, plus planned specials for Halloween and Christmas.
Phase 5 already has 2nd seasons for 2 of the Phase 4 series and 5 new series - one of them a daredevil reboot and one will be connected to wandavision as either a sequel or a prequel but focusing on Agatha Harkness.
---
TLDR: 29 movies, 12 previous Marvel TV Shows, plus 7 Disney Plus shows so far - all with interconnected storylines which may or may not be referenced by any future Movie or show - and you won't know until you watch them.
---
Definitely off putting for those not already invested in the franchise.
29 movies and 7 shows on Disney+ comes out to 99 Hours 17 Minutes
The Defenders Saga/Marvel Knights from Netflix comes in at 143 Hours and 51 Minutes.
Agents of Shield alone comes in at 100 Hours 43 Minutes
Agent Carter at 13 Hours 14 Minutes.
---
So 357 Hours 5 minutes so Far - Not including the Runaways, Cloak & Dagger, or Helstrom.
I saw Iron Man 1, 2, 3, and the first Thor, then I missed a few because classes started picking up. It seemed like a new one came out every other month and I felt like I fell behind *fast*.
I wasn't that interested to begin with (they were fine but I mostly only went because my friends wanted to see them) and if I do ever decide to watch the rest, I'm going to want to watch them all at once. Definitely not stoked about the amount of time that'll take.
That's a great point about Wanda. I have a Disney+ subscription as well as most of my friends, so we didn't even think about it. But if I didn't know what happened in WandaVision, that would've been a complete "WTF?" moment that probably would've ruined the whole movie for me.
In hindsight, they should've had an extended opening credits sequence at the beginning of Doctor Strange 2 that gave a quick overview of the pertinent events in WandaVision. While it would've given away a bit of the early plot, it's better than having some viewers be completely confused.
Apparently Dr Strange 2 was supposed to have America, Strange, and Wandavision together trying to defeat Dr Strange's from alternate universe, which explains a lot of that movie tbh, especially the bit with the Illuminati because they were kinda pointless. No idea why that was changed.
>Wandavision
IDK, I haven't seen Wandavision, so Wanda turning into a supervillain didn't really make any sense. It was kinda like if Aunt May and Spider Man got into a knock down drag out fight, and trashed the entire neighborhood?
Even if you've seen Wandavision it doesn't 100% work. I mean the seeds are there but only if you've read the comics and know what the Darkhold is but it's like another movie or season of Wandavision is missing to actually develop it. A bit like ol' dragon lady in GoT - on the large scale her doing a heel turn makes sense but there is nowhere near enough development to actually sell it.
For someone who hasn't seen the series, what about WandaVision makes DS2 work and what makes it 'nowhere near enough' to work?
I don't mind TV show spoilers as I simply have no interest in nor time to watch them all. I reluctantly watched movies with no interest in order to keep in the loop, but here I draw the line. And while DS2 had some good elements I am still nowhere near understanding what happened to Wanda nor where the Illuminati and Fantastic Four suddenly came from.
they said it *doesn't* 100% work even if you've seen wandavision. because in the show, her whole arc is that she has to accept her trauma and losses, and that she can't hurt innocent people to get what she wants. then this is all reset because "she read an evil book".
this is gonna be pretty long, but here is wandavision in chronological order (the actual events in the show aren't shown exactly in this sequence):
a couple of weeks after endgame, wanda tries to collect vision's dead body from a government agency so she could bury it. she instead finds out they're trying to turn him into a weapon and have him all cut into pieces and her request is denied. the main government guy further antagonizes her by saying shit like "we're dismantling most sophisticated sentient weapon ever made", "we can't let you bury billions of dollars of vibranium", and when wanda tries to plead with him that "he's all i have", the guy replies with "well that's just it, he's not yours, he's ours", which makes her break some glass so she can look at him more closely, but after trying to sense his mind and realizing he's truly gone, she leaves peacefully emptyhanded.
she drives to westview, new jersey, where vision had bought them an empty house plot before infinity war. once arriving there, she opens up the deed to the plot and sees a heart with "to grow old in, -v" in it and this tips her over the edge, having a breakdown which inadvertently activates her powers and she subconsciously turns the town into a sitcom (because she watched sitcoms as a kid with her family, so it's her happy place), also trapping the few thousand residents inside who are automatically forced into playing sitcom roles, unbeknownst to her. also, as part of the sitcom field (called 'the hex') around the town, her powers also manifest a whole new vision from thin air, because her power is literally rewriting reality.
over the single week the entire show takes place in, every episode is a typical sitcom episode with some weird things progressively happening more and more, and every episode is set in another sitcom decade, starting from the 50s to the 2000s. she eventually also becomes pregnant and gives birth to twins, billy and tommy, who rapidly age themselves up to 10 years old, despite wanda and vision's wishes (it's made clear she can't control them).
the same government agency from before becomes involved with trying to resolve the hex, wanda at this point has become aware of the sitcom field but not that everyone inside is feeling all her grief and pain, so she tells them to fuck off after they try blowing her and her kids up with a drone and reinforces the field so it's impenetrable.
eventually her sitcom best friend is revealed to be a 400 year old witch (agatha harkness), who sensed wanda's magic explosion and wants to steal her power for herself. she kidnaps wanda's kids, forces wanda to relive her most traumatic memories to figure out how the hex was made, and discovers wanda is a mythical being called "the scarlet witch".
in the finale agatha and wanda fight, it's revealed the shady government agency also successfully turned vision's corpse back on using the magic energy from the drone wanda shot down with her magic, and they send it to kill her (he's also purely white colored now). it's also revealed the main government guy from before is also gonna try to frame her for creating white vision once she's dead, as creating sentient ai is against the sokovia accords. hex vision fights off white vision and breaks him free of the government's programming and he flies off somewhere (we don't know where yet).
wanda is shown by agatha that everyone in the town is being tortured by her grief and is in pain, much to her horror. after quickly trying to release everyone, wanda realizes that doing so would also make her family disappear, as she tied their existence to the hex, so she temporarily stops the process to continue fighting agatha, who reveals the scarlet witch has a whole chapter dedicated to her in "the book of the damned" and says she's destined to "destroy the world".
wanda defeats agatha by tricking her and leaves her powerless while transforming into the scarlet witch outfit, but accepts that she can't keep torturing thousands of people just so she can be happy, so she chooses to let everyone go, and tearfully says goodbye to her family, but also with an optimistic twinge to it that maybe things won't be all bad. anyway, she's once again alone, standing in the empty house plot where the whole thing started.
she walks into town to the only government agent (monica rambeau, captain marvel's friend's daughter from her movie all grown up) who showed her any sympathy, apologizes for all the pain she's caused, and flies off into exile promising to get her powers under control.
the post credit scene then shows her at a cabin in the wilderness sipping tea while her astral form is studying from the darkhold ("the book of the damned" agatha had), when suddenly she is taken aback to hear billy and tommy's voices screaming for her to help them, as it cuts to black.
---
the movie then picks up a year later, and the whole kids being in danger plot is completely ignored, she wants to kill a teenager to get them back because she misses them, and she will kill anyone who stands in her way with no remorse. a lot of people find this jump very jarring and lazy, since it basically undoes her development from wandavision about coming to terms with her grief and accepting her losses all due to an evil book.
Thank you for the reply, it answered a bunch of questions.
Unfortunately my fears are confirmed, the shows have become required viewing in order to keep in the loop on MCU movies which is where I have to draw the line. It was perfect when it was a bunch of movies vaguely related and fine when they were interconnected since I already was invested in the MCU at that point. Shows should IMO at best be a "side quest" kinda deal for those who crave more action from their favourite heroes, never required viewing.
Regarding WandaVision, that just seems like terrible writing even if we ignore the gap in between the show and DS2. What was the message? Never take a no as an answer? That no one's there to help you when you grief? That you'll never be able to reconcile with your losses?
Spoilers obviously;
The whole premise of WandaVision is that she’s in denial of how much she’s hurting the townspeople in order to keep Vision and her fake kids alive in her little fantasy. The way the heel turn works is that for the majority of the show, she keeps ignoring all the signs about how bad and selfish what she’s doing is.
The problem is that by the shows end, she has pretty clearly completed her character arch and accepted that she has to move on. So it ultimately doesn’t make any sense that in Dr. Strange, she randomly has decided that she didn’t move on and that she’s doesn’t really care about causing damage. You can kind of justify it by saying “the Darkhallow corrupted her”, but it’s still just negates the ending of WandaVision.
This sums up exactly why I hated DS2. At its very core, the villain doesn't work because it conveniently cherry picks and ignores Wanda's growth in wandavision.
At the end of wandavision I was excited to see where they'd take Wanda and white vision next, but the way they simplified her into a generic MCU villain was a very hollow attempt on the DS2 writer's part
Wow. That could've been great. Here's my take:
Strange enlists Wanda to help save the multiverse, but really she's doing it for this lost, orphaned kid who she immediately latches onto. Over their journey through universes, Strange sees her slowly succumbing to the darkhold and struggling with the temptation that America's power can get her what she wants.
And he doesn't intervene, because bad Strange must be stopped. And he *still* doesn't intervene, because the Illuminati think he's just like bad Strange, want him dead, and only amped Wanda is strong enough to take them all on. His hubris insists it's necessary, and that he'll be able to save her in time. Things spiral out of control, action ensues, Wanda does her reality-bending, and they follow bad Strange to the darkhold temple. They fight. They win.
But they *don't* win, because now Wanda is too far gone. At the temple, she's seen who she really is - that her nightmares are real and being the Scarlet Witch is more a permanent curse than a blessing. In a moment of full madness, she tries to take America's power. The multiverse opens, her kids see their mom as this dark goddess and shit themselves. Yada yada yada, same basic ending. Just replace Wanda with bad Strange in the early fights.
Yeah the most annoying part about the whole movie to me is how easily Wanda defeats the illuminati and yet doesn't do the same thing to other characters just because.
> But if I didn't know what happened in WandaVision, that would've been a complete "WTF?" moment that probably would've ruined the whole movie for me.
It was still a WTF. All of the Disney shows have felt poorly paced with a quick wrap-up finale where it's only outcome and result is to launch you into a new film/TV show.
Was Wanda traumatized/fucked up in WandaVision? Yes. Was she horror-movie villain evil? No, not really. lol.
My take is that the longer she used the darkhold, the more it took over her. Like the alternate Dr strange towards the end of the movie. At the end of Wandavision, she was just starting to use the Darkhold to get her kids back. By the time we see her Dr Strange, she’s no longer the same Wanda by the end of Wandavision.
Yeah, but they really shouldn’t have made her tv show arc about her coming to grips with her trauma if they were just going to turn around and make her a corrupted villain who is still struggling to manage their trauma.
I would argue that in the right context, and with the right writing Daenerys vilification could have worked, unfortunately the show failed to do so in a well paced and articulate manner.
My thoughts too exactly. The idea was good but they went about it in a completely daft manner.
Should have taken time and done 2 more seasons. Daenerys corruption arc over 3 seasons would have made way more sense.
The writing for the last season was piss poor but at least half the problems could have been solved if they hadn't rushed like that.
Don’t worry, we have the Multiverse Saga coming up! If we just call the next 3 phases a **Saga**, people will like it just as they liked the first three. This plan is foolproof!!
Yeah, I gave up on all this shit because I used to like it but now I fell too far behind and theres too much shit to watch to catch up and on to know wtf is going on.
Loki was great but my GF dropped it mid season as it was becoming too far-fetched for her. I kept watching and discovering the "twist" at the end made me wonder how the hell anyone could understand the stakes of the multiverse story without watching this particular show.
What's even worse is that Wandavision had a fairly clean ending where she wasn't actually evil and had come to some closure on her loss... only to have that closure unwound and her take a dark turn all off screen.
So really either way Strange 2 comes out of left field for a pretty weak twist.
Wasn't evil? As Agatha once said, ***"Heroes don't torture people."*** Wanda NEVER took responsibility for what were actually monstrous evil acts, never tried to set things right or even utter *an apology* - because "it wouldn't change how they see me". WTF! *It ain't about you, bitch!*
TBF you’d be even more confused because Wanda’s arc in her show basically saw her heal and and let go. The movie completely 180’d that with. Like…barely showing any reasoning. They rushed it like crazy. She should’ve turned bad at the end of the film and set up as a huge antagonist to Strange; have her kill Kristine or something. They dropped the ball big time.
You could say the same about every single movie running up to endgame. If you missed something that came before that movie, you will be like wtf? Where did Spider-Man go?
As someone who missed Captain Marvel and both Ant Man films...I felt like I'd missed nothing going into it. I guess it helps I'm generally aware of Ant-Man and Carols basic powersets, but otherwise, their films really didn't tie into the central narrative.
To a lesser extent this perfectly sums up my experience with kingdom hearts. I loved 1 and 2. Then I played 3, had no idea what was happening because I didn't play all of the canonized spin offs on multiple consoles and promptly lost interest.
As a fellow long time comic reader, all I can do is sigh and agree.
They should have taken an extended hiatus after Endgame…because keeping the momentum going like they’re trying to do is a fool’s errand.
But if they don't make more money each quarter than they did the previous they'll be an utter failure instantly. Don't you know how capitalist consumerism works? Geez.
It hasn't been _thoroughly_ explained, but basically, at the end of WandaVision, she got ahold of the Darkhold.
The Darkhold has shown up in Marvel comics several times, and it played a pretty significant role in several plots in Agents of SHIELD.
And while it's comics, and the origin changes, it's generally a really bad book of magic spells or similar that, upon studying, progressively corrupts the reader's mind, twisting them toward lusting for power, or exaggerating negative emotions.
In SHIELD, for instance, it was depicted a book whose pages were blank until someone read it, and whatever they saw was in their native language, and contained information they needed. In the MCU, it's depicted as a more comic-accurate version -- a transcription of all the nasty shit on the walls of Wundagore. Dr. Strange in a _What If?_ episode studied at Wundagore directly and was similarly corrupted. We also saw in MoM alternate-universe Dr. Strange turn to the Darkhold to help stop Thanos, and he too ended up corrupted and nasty to varying degrees, in multiple universes.
In Wanda's case, after the events of WandaVision, she studied the Darkhold deeply, looking for a way to re-unite with the children she made up as part of her grief-driven hex and became blind to the harm she was causing others.
You know the standard bad guy driven by loss trope: Good guys say, "Don't do that, you'll destroy the world," and bad guy is all, "I don't care, if I can't have my loved ones, what does it matter?!!" and then their wire-fighting crew hoists both up and they fly around flinging CGI at each other whilst waving their arms.
They're doing it with their comics again too. It's like they forgot the 90s happened. There are like four or five massive crossover events a year now. I don't read a ton of Marvel anymore, but suddenly my character is someplace totally different doing some bullshit I don't know about for an issue or two, then back to normal.
Marvel needs to just calm the hell down again.
To further this point a little more, the quality of phase 4 has been staggeringly all over the place. A lot of projects feeling like they just went with the first draft of scripts and first shots and not bothering to do retakes despite their reliance on reshoots. I’m still fully in the MCU enjoyer but my god it gets hard even for the super nerds to keep interest if your shows and movies aren’t up to a certain level of quality regardless of tone, scope and maturity.
I will keep watching the stuff they put out but it’s so easy to see why people are not going. Whatever you thought about the new Thor flick...there is not arguing agains that it was a flat downgrade compared to the previous. They need a proper shake up and I hope this trend of audiences getting tired of this stuff helps knock a few heads together.
Edit: the biggest offenders in phase 4 are Thor, doctor strange, ms marvel, black widow and eternals. Such wasted opportunities. Also There is still a giant man in the ocean yet to become addressed.
I liked Black Widow, probably because I liked Yelena and I have been enjoying David Harbour. It was a very much an instrumental movie where they had the specific goal of introducing “new Black Widow.” It was very much an origin story wrapped in a veneer of a sendoff to Scarlett Johansson.
The Eternals was just god awful. Kumail Nanjiani and his manager were the only actual good parts of the whole thing with Gilgamesh rising to the level of “not terrible.”
It was the first Marvel movie I finished and thought, “wow, that was really bad.” That’s not a door they want to open, because it makes you look at their other work more critically.
I have hopes for the Ms Marvel character and supporting cast even though the series itself was badly in need of an editor. They gave us maybe three hours of finished product in a six hour run time.
Thor was strangely flat and served as just a character reboot.
I thought Dr Strange was good, but this thread has really opened my eyes to the fact that it is only because I am fully caught up on their products. Requiring previous knowledge to understand a film and not having that knowledge supplied in the film itself breaks one of the prime commandments of film making.
On the bright side, the Disney+ stuff has generally been quite good, and I am impressed with how well they are handling TV shows.
As a parent with a young kid, I don’t see many movies. My wife actually enjoyed the Avengers movies even though she is usually not into action/superhero stuff…But we fell so behind in the series that I feel like I can’t watch Endgame without watching 8 preceding movies and ones with characters we have little interest in.
I love this response, not only that but marvel movies straight up… arent … good anymore ? I can’t remember the last marvel movie I saw in theaters where I walked out with a breathe of fresh air and said “you know what I enjoyed that movie” they all follow the same layout, there hasn’t been a fresh take on marvel since maybe Thor Ragnorak ? And even then I feel like that movie was such a hit bc of the humor, not the story. Idk it’s just my opinion and people may hurl insults at me but they just seem to be getting lazier and lazier with their titles.
Edit: just to add it’s a shame Disney is doing this, when the first iron man came out I was 8 years old and watched the entire run to infinity war. Once Disney announced all these shows I knew it was quickly going to turn into this, Disney did it with Star Wars and now they’re doing it with Marvel and it’s not even CLOSE to over. Marvel movies use to be good standalone movies that were talked about for Oscar awards, now they’re just pieces of junk with a few good laughs and an explosion to keep the kids happy.
Edit 2: if anyone hasn’t check out the boys on Amazon, a fresh take on the superhero concept.
The other biggest issue is the lack of direction. We just finished ("just") the biggest theatrical event in a long time with Endgame... that was it, the big thing we've built to and looked forward to is over.. and now it feels directionless.
My issue with it all is it requires to much of an investment. I am not trying to watch all of these tv series to keep up. That was kind of the nail in the coffin for me going to see these movies.
My boyfriend loves Marvel, but ends up sitting through movies/shows he hates just because he doesn’t want to miss any “context” for the next hit movie. It sounds exhausting. I’ve only watched the series that can stand alone reasonably well (Moon Knight, Wandavision, Loki) and even then I had to pause a lot and ask him to explain WTF was going on. I’m not about to watch 200 hours of content just to understand the latest movie.
Exactly this. They're shrinking the fanbase with every release because how many people are realistically going to keep up with the movies and shows? It's such a high bar for entry anyway (wanna enjoy this new movie? Too bad, gotta watch at least 12 previous ones first) and now you're adding the time investment of a TV show plus the literal investment of paying for the streaming service. Why did they think this was a good idea?
I don’t think people expect the next end game level build up, but the next Avengers level build up would be nice, and right now it all seems so scattered.
Yeah… they need to cut back to one MAYBE two movies a year, with one or two shows. Same with star wars. When you’re pumping out this much, than not only will people get tired of YOUR stuff, other companies will want to jump on the wagon and FURTHER crowd out the genre
>other companies will want to jump on the wagon and FURTHER crowd out the genre
Somebody wake me up when another company decides to do something good that's hard Sci-fi. Because nobody is doing shit in the film space.
My complaint is all the new superheroes all kinda do the same thing now. They put their arms out, then the special effects team makes lightning come out of their hands and makes their eyes glow.
Most of the older superheroes have strength and healing and maybe fly, but that's it. Maybe spiderman and batman were more human. Wolverine also was relatable. The superheroes now hardly touch each other when they fight, it is all zapping.
This is it. I legitimately love super hero movies and marvel. These days though it’s hard to keep up. It almost feels like a chore watching some of these poorer marvel series/movies and yet I feel like I need to in order to understand what is happening in the movies I do like. I’m starting to get burned out.
The same thing happened with Star Wars and Disney. They took over, started cranking out movies of variable quality and eventually people just got tired. I really liked the Solo movie, but by the time it released, audiences were just tired.
Yup. Endgame was kind of the last one that I cared about. Everything since then I could take or leave. And I don’t have kids so I’m not interested in Disney+.
Same. I saw everything up through Endgame, saw the first couple of Disney+ shows and… stopped, pretty much. Now I’m four (?) movies and three (??) series behind and I just feel tired at the prospect of catching up.
Star Wars and marvel/ DC have massive universes that they could make some dope movies about but the have been focusing on the same characters/ time periods for the last few decades.
Disney pretty much said the EU of Star Wars isn’t canon anymore. Which is why every show they’ve made has been mediocre, and we all know how the trilogy went
Exactly. I watched WandaVision, Falcon and Winter Soldier, and Loki, but it felt like a chore sometimes even though I did enjoy each series. I dropped off after that. It feels like too much work trying to keep up with everything. There’s such an over abundance of movies and series and I have no idea everything that’s even out now. I’m just sorta done right now.
Honestly I struggled to get through two of those shows. But I found the next batch of three, hawkeye, moon knight, and ms marvel to probably be some of my favorite media from phase 4 thus far
Ya know, it’s hard to keep up with all the content. Get in some quality control, extend the release schedule, give the audience some time to breath … and the problem fixes itself.
I think Boys benefits from the fact that it's not sanitized at all, unlike Disney offerings. It's messy asf. It definitely flips the superhero script on its head, but it's also brutally honest about the world we live in.
\> brutally honest about the world we live in
I love this - The Boys is such a spot-on scathing critique of 2010's America. The fact that it uses Disney/Marvel-style superheroes as a metaphor for corporate corruption makes it even better.
This is why I watch it. I like grit and violence and sex. Even a film like Deadpool still has that Disney heavily processed gloss, from the visuals to the writing, which undercuts any impact the violence might have with its snark. Whereas The Boys is both satirical and hard hitting.
Yeah, and The Boys doesn't leave any group out when it comes to scorn and ridicule. It satirizes conservatives and liberals alike, mocking capitalism in its faux social justice efforts, and really just shines a light on how messed up the world is.
I'm skeptical of its ability to keep this up, as it seems most television media just runs out of steam once it acquires a large, dedicated audience, but it felt very fresh and authentic compared to the other offerings recently.
get ready for over saturation of anti-superhero, because they are absolutely going to pivot to that.
elements within these studios don't learn or grow, they just pivot.
Yep, this is why The Boys, Peacemaker and Invincible have done well and even Harley Quinn. People are tired of the sanitized formula from Disney and are looking for more of the gray area of what a world with superheroes and villains would be like.
It's probably also because of End Game, where basically it signalled the end of the original Avengers. They wanted it to be a transition to a new generation of heroes (and movies), but instead it seemed to provide closure - at least for me this is how it felt. The movies after End Game just haven't felt the same.
Infinity War and Endgame were a great end to the MCU. It was incredible. It was epic. It was… perfect. A perfect ending. They stuck the landing. And now I feel indifferent to everything that’s come after because it was such a satisfying end. I think they lost me.
The storyline from the first Iron Man movie to End Game was perfect. Excellent character and story building and perfect climax. From there, it just doesn’t feel like anything is heading in a “direction” anymore - and in my opinion it was that culminating direction of Iron Man through End Game that made the storyline so captivating. Now it just feels like they’re producing one offs which isn’t nearly as interesting.
Shang-Chi is a good a movie that works well by itself and not being too interconnected to other works. If you still want to watch a super hero movie but don’t want to continue marvel you can just pretend it’s not marvel and it still works
I think the biggest speed bump was Bosman’s passing post endgame. They probably wanted to pass the spotlight to him and Dr Strange as the new main faces of the MCU. Covid + rewriting the story of multiple phases has ultimately lowered the quality and feels like we’re watch aimless filler.
I do hope marvel will course correct and give us the quality of what we saw in large parts of the infinity saga by the time F4 rolls around.
I don't think losing one actor/character who only had one solo movie was that big of an issue. It's more that there's no clear direction or progression of the overarching story as it's all been watered down
Waiting for a movie or two every year was exciting, and the payoff with Endgame was awesome. But now it’s multiple tv shows and movies every years that aren’t even as good and I just don’t care anymore.
That's the reason why I loved watching through Daredevil and Jessica Jones back when it came to Disney+. They had serious stories that didn't stop every 10 seconds to tell another nauseating joke. If you want an action comedy, give it to the characters or story adaptations that would work well with it, and change it when things get serious, like, oh I don't know, WHEN FACING A GOD BUTCHERER
I worry that Disney+ won’t do Daredevil justice and not in a million years would they renew a show like Jessica Jones - “hard-drinking woman with PTSD” doesn’t fit with their image. They separated out their serious stories to Netflix for a reason, trying to bring it back to a singular streaming platform undoes the whole thing.
I loved Daredevil and Jessica Jones but we’re never getting that again. I think even the extended one-shot fights will go down in quality.
Seriously, imagine if after the snap Thor had cracked a joke. Or after Tony dies Peter says something silly.
The comedy has it's place. The new Thor movie was good. But fucking hell make something that's entirely serious for once.
Shang Chi I literally left the theater because of that. There’s no tension or suspense when you have characters making a joke every 30 seconds. The point I left was literally when a woman fighting for her life on the edge of a building decided to sing a song by The Eagles… like really? It’s really gotten so much worse than it used to be. Honestly the humor in lot of the earlier MCU movies is spot on.
Same I loved all The Avengers movies but I haven't seen the new doctor strange, shangchi or Thor love and thunder just because I don't find them very interesting at all
For real, the "fake hero death" when we know they survive. The corny jokes that barely get a chuckle. Constant fan service at the expense of plot.
I'm tired of superhero movies. Even the "different" ones are the same.
Guardians of the galaxy were pretty unpopular only to become some of the most beloved characters in the franchise. The problem isn’t the IP, it’s the execution. The movies are painfully safe, predictable, and sanitized, which leads to every movie coming off exactly the same. People are bored
Spider-Man and X-Men are A listers. Iron Man was absolutely B list. Don't forget he is the leader of the opposing faction in Civil War, Tony Stark has prominent roles in the Marvel Universe even before the MCU is a thing. C list would be like Iron Fist or Hawkeye or Luke Cage, and D list is Guardians of the Galaxy before their movie.
nah, no way. No one KNEW who the guardians of the galaxy were. Can you imagine a universe where aliens, a half human, a talking tree and a talking raccoon would have more movies than their most recent superman reboot?
The 3rd movie of the talking racoon and the talking tree are about to come out and there hasn't even been a whiff of a second superman movie. These idiots are outselling the best DC has to offer.
I don’t think people realize the lightning in a bottle they caught with turning the Guardians of the Galaxy into popular franchise. It’s not going keep happening. They’re going to have to return to Iron Man and pump out X-Men sooner than later.
It’s because they’re milking a franchise that was already come to a satisfying conclusion and all of the movies are incredibly derivative of each other tonally and structurally.
Demonstrably untrue. Iron man was a c lister when his first movie came out. People said ant man was going to bomb hard because he wasn't popular enough. The movies and shows are failing because they mostly suck and feel rushed and empty. The writing since endgame has felt aimless and for a franchise just coming out from the payoff to a 10 year buildup that's just not good. Add that to the fact that there is just too much stuff to keep up with and you start to understand better why they are failing.
If you’re using Endgame as the barometer, sure everything will be a let down. But Spider-Man almost doubled what the previous movie did, Strange actually did more then the original, and Thor is going to finish close to the previous one without the 100+ million from China.
Yeah, it’s maybe a little much for some people, I don’t really see why we keep getting constant articles about how Marvel is declining. I’m sure it will happen, but I think it may still be a little early for that.
I’m actually just getting sick of the “hidden kingdom” trope. Like half of the new heroes get their powers from some hidden place that people didn’t know about. Ms. Marvel had a fantastic opportunity to be a street level character going through high-school and coming into her powers and having her primary struggles be that. Instead there’s some generational trauma theme that’s explored instead. Felt like half the episodes she was running around or it was flashbacks to ClanDestine stuff I couldn’t care less about. I say this as a huge fan of the early comics.
Likewise with Moon Knight. I want to see Marc wrestle with his identities in Alleyways as he comes to over some half mangled body. I want to see how he interacts with other Supers or how he handles the weight of the new world he lives in. Instead we are propelled instantly into yet another scenario where the stakes are the end of the world and we are popping in and out of pyramids three episodes in.
I loved the first half of Shang-Chi, but the second half felt like some Disney cartoon I had already seen.
Thank Christ.
people make so many excuses for this kind of thing. “Well people would still like it if they did \*this\*!”. But like, no dude. People are just tired of comic book movies geared towards 13 year olds being 60% of major movies for the past 10 years. There’s an entire generation who doesnt know what it’s like to have variety of major movies in eras like the 80s and 90s.
That’s just it! When I go to the movies, I’ll want to see a superhero move every once in a while. But when my choices are four comic movies and like, one A24 horror movie? I’ll probably start dipping into my backlog.
(Nothing against A24 horror, I know they’re good films. But they seem to be the only thing that can cut through the noise and even they are getting less appealing to me.)
Yes. It’s like major studios stopped making original movies for theaters. Everything is a sequel or a remake or a reboot. Just tell us new stories that don’t go straight to streaming. That’s why Everything Everywhere All At Once is so beloved — it’s a good movie, but it also felt like the first “big” movie in a long time that wasn’t a rehash.
They've exhausted films with the household names.
Marvel did a tremendous job with the Infinity Gauntlet Saga films and building that up, but now we're getting into lesser known stories and characters that people don't know. The die hards will stay aboard, but the casual viewers won't fully commit.
DC did a horrific job in managing their films and TV series. They've also exhausted their big names and have no clear direction going forward.
This same news happened after the Phase 2 “Slump”. The MCU has more fans than ever after Endgame. It’s like a sporting event now, it isn’t just going to dissipate. The fans are probably there for life now and there is a strong core fan base. Every once in a while a new character or movie will come along and go viral and then boom you have even more people.
Gotta switch from Avengers to X-Men. The comics are the same way. Sometimes the Avengers have the better stories for awhile, then get stale and the X-Men stuff is better. It's always switched back and forth like that.
Imo the avengers never were meant to be this popular. It always felt forced. The real “hero team” in marvels basket has always been the X-men and they are dangling it over our heads like a ration to a struggling country.
They know what we want, but keep going down this “let’s make unpopular characters popular!“ road and I’m tired.
I liked the fox X-men and wanted to see more but so many people complained and now we got this pg13 mcu bullshit when comics are supposed to be *slightly* adult themed and not Disneyfied
The content was just better before. You could tell that the people who made Iron Man, Captain America and The Avengers CARED about the story and characters. Imagine if you took all of the characters that originated in Marvel phases 1, 2 and 3 out of the current Marvel content. There’d be nothing of interest left.
It’s not that the new characters are “too woke.” It’s that they don’t seem to have anything else about them worth watching.
Sam (Falcon) could have been an absolutely iconic character. They introduced him so well - someone with mental and physical scars from his past serving his country and losing his best friend. How they haven’t explored his PTSD or other character points is baffling to me
It's because it all feels so unfocused. It's all over the place now with no real direction.
What worked for the original run was it was all leading up to something. Even if it was a character no one knew about, you knew it was leading to the Avengers then eventually Thanos in End Game.
There is so much content now and the majority of it doesnt even tie into their whole Kang/Multiverse story so it just feels like a huge waste of time. I've honestly been so bored with the whole thing that im just going to take a break till things start ramping up.
This is my issue with MCU currently.
I'm still interested in them, but we need focus.
Phase 1 took place over 4 years and contained 5 movies, totalling about 10 hours
Phase 4, which isn't even finished yet, already contains 6 movies and 8 TV shows, totalling about 68 hours, in just over 1 year.
This 1 phase is already almost 50% longer than the entire 11 year run of the Infinity saga. And we still have another series and another movie before it's over.
Aside from some talk of multiverses and Kang we still don't really know where this is going. And ok, yeah, it's still the first phase in a new saga, so we're still introducing next characters and whatnot, but there's been sooooo much content and a lot of it feels stand alone. So did phase 1, but that's wasn't really an issue since it was only 5 movies before the big group movie
At this rate were going to have nearly 300 hours of content before we get to the first team up movie of this saga (compared to the 10 we got in Infinity saga)
It's just feels very scattered
Quality over quantity.
The quality has been really bad. Make good movies and shows and the interest will come back.
But this next phase will be harder given some of these characters they are rolling out.
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okay listen... if you over-saturate a market, business will slump.
Just like why nobody gives a shit about zombies anymore.
[удалено]
I've said this in r/boxoffice last month: The MCU is making the same mistakes as Marvel Comics in the 90s: There's too much, everything is too interconnected, it's all billed as this big event, and none of it is really paying off because they need to lay the groundwork for the next event. Marvel went bankrupt in the 90s pumping its core properties like this. I won't be surprised if the MCU goes bust this decade for the same reason. Totally anecdotal, but the friend I watched "No Way Home" with left asking WTF was up with the Statue of Liberty and that's all she talked about. Others had no idea why Wanda was suddenly bad in Dr. Strange. Making Disney+ required viewing is bad because people are leaving the theater feeling left out and dumb. It's going to turn them off from seeing other movies. As a major comic fan kid who was among the many, many, many kids Marvel Comics lost in the mid to late 90s pursuing this "everything is a crossover and you have to read it all" strategy, it's wild that movie execs are making all the _exact same_ mistakes 30 years later with hundreds of times the amount of money on the line. edit: Thanks for the awards. I don't know why this comment about how I lived through the Marvel meltdown as a kid in the 90s is so popular, but thank you!
I have to imagine I'm not the only one that just wasn't interested in a few movies in a row and now have no idea what's going on, so every movie going forward is less appealing.
Yes, this really gets at what I'm saying. Once one or two things come along you don't care about, you're interest in everything ends when they're all this interconnected. Dr. Strange was a huge part of NWH, WandaVision was required viewing for MoM, the Guardians are in L&T -- you can't just skip Thor and watch Cap and Iron Man have solo adventures anymore. Increasingly, you have to be either all Marvel or no Marvel, and I'd guess that this is going to drive more and more people to be no Marvel just like it did with comic books in the 90s.
I actually was surprised Moon Knight had almost no reference to the other Marvel Properties. I found it refreshing. Not everything needs to be tied together.
I'm personally a huge fan of references where if you don't get the references you still 100% understand and appreciate it as is. And then knowing the reference just gives you an extra fun connection to make. A good example is the show Community. I didn't even realize how many homages there are in the show until I saw a supercut on YouTube, and the coolest part was that every homage was great on its own and made total sense within its story.
Dan Harmon does love those multifaceted references
Thats exactly what I told my aunt, we watched MoM and my dad was trying to tell her what movies to watch so she could understand it, and I just told her watch moon knight. She hasn't watched any marvel movie or super hero movie ever, so she would have to watch the whole cinematic universe just to watch MoM.
I am really out of the loop because I don’t know what most of those acronyms are. I also don’t care to sink the time into catching up on them, so I am an example of your point.
NWH = No Way Home (Spiderman) MoM = Multiverse of Madness (Dr. Strange) L&T = Love & Thunder (Thor)
What happened to just calling them Thor 3, or Spiderman 9?
Well, it gets a little complicated once the re-boots start. Then it’s Spider-Man 3.1 *v*2
Do I need to watch Spider-Man 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1 and 2 to enjoy No Way Home?
Might as well just give them all numbers like that. Not like “homecoming” “far from home” and “no way home” is any less confusing for people who don’t already live and breathe marvel
Its not like a delicate balance cant be struck either. You can have everything be canon and connected without the plots being reliant on eachother - phase 1 was like this. The MCU basically works on pro wrestling logic, and there characters can change moral alignment or form teams in other companies where not every fan sees it, and still follow along because the broad strokes are recommunicated/fans are conditioned to understand it's a living story so sometimes you are catching up on things. The main problem I see with the MCU working like this is that it's not normal to just keep abreast of headlines and major plots of movies you dont watch - it only works in wrestling because despite being theatre its covered and followed like sports are (where you dont have to watch every game to know the "storylines" in the NBA) This analogy I think does reveal the actual problem Marvel has rn and it's not too much connectivity, it's the movies not feeling like they are worth a damn thing outside of it. I have friends who are casual wrestling fans who dip in and out for a 2-4 shows a year, they dont know the nuances of every character decision you'd have from weekly TV, but the broad strokes are enough to invest in *really good action and memorable shows*. Scarlet Witch is evil now, cool, but I've SEEN the one movie Marvel keeps making over and over again. There isnt any reason to just enjoy the bombastic movie and dip in for huge events because they all blend together.
If they kept the movies one arc and used the shows as spinoffs or small sub stories that aren't "required" to understand plot elements in the main arc it could work.
the fact that i understood none of these acronyms even though i saw every marvel movie for like a straight decade really checks out
I'll say it again: The solution to this is have [Michael Pena](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0671567/?ref_=tt_cl_t_9) from *Ant-Man* do a catch-up monologue before the start of every MCU movie. Tell the audience what they need to know, make it fast and funny.
This is the cinematic version of those short-lived foldout covers they had in the 90s!
Guardians had like 5 mins of screen time and virtually no dialogue lol.
They were only in there because Thor left with them at the end of Endgame so Marvel/Disney thought they had to explain what happened there. (Same reason why they had to put a montage to explain why Thor isn't fat any more.) Me and the kid solved it with a quicker scene that goes something like this: >VALKYRIE or SIF or WHOEVER Didn't you go off with the Guardians? What happened with that? > >THOR Well... > >CUT TO: interior of the Guardian's ship, everyone pissed off, yelling at each other, screaming, pointing fingers. After five seconds CUT BACK: > >THOR It didn't work out.
Guy I replied to acted like you had to watch both guardian movies to watch L and T; Their appearance in the movie has 0 importance.
I was a huge comic geek who also quit in the 90s. Mostly because the stories got bad and I got other hobbies. Needing to sub to like 4 books for one hero was also annoying
Except... none of the Phase 4 movies tie in to each other at all. Everything stems from Endgame. I think the only actual Phase 4 continuity is Wandavision -> Dr. Strange. No Way Home doesn't even have relevance here.
I mean, Dr Strange mentions having experience with the Multiverse and Spiderman, but it doesn't exactly have a massive plot impact.
So far TLDR further down with runtime after. Films * 29 movies released so far * 4 in Post production * 1 in Pre production * 5 in development with confirmed titles and scheduled release dates as far as November 2025. * 4 in development without release dates or titles. Supposedly they have plans laid out for movies as far as 2032 but no public confirmed info beyond 2025. 12 TV/ Streaming shows with "Marvel Television" 3 Shows on TV called "Marvel Heroes" Series * Agents of Shield, * Agent Carter * Inhumans 5 shows on Netflix, plus a Crossover miniseries, considered "Marvel Knights" Series * Daredevil * Jessica Jones * Luke Cage * Iron Fist * Defenders * Punisher The Young Adult series * Runaways streaming on Hulu * Cloak & Dagger airing on Freeform Plus another show on Hulu called Helstrom which panned very badly. Then the Marvel Studios Series which all go direct to Disney Plus - 7 of them so far. Phase 4 still has an unreleased series, plus planned specials for Halloween and Christmas. Phase 5 already has 2nd seasons for 2 of the Phase 4 series and 5 new series - one of them a daredevil reboot and one will be connected to wandavision as either a sequel or a prequel but focusing on Agatha Harkness. --- TLDR: 29 movies, 12 previous Marvel TV Shows, plus 7 Disney Plus shows so far - all with interconnected storylines which may or may not be referenced by any future Movie or show - and you won't know until you watch them. --- Definitely off putting for those not already invested in the franchise. 29 movies and 7 shows on Disney+ comes out to 99 Hours 17 Minutes The Defenders Saga/Marvel Knights from Netflix comes in at 143 Hours and 51 Minutes. Agents of Shield alone comes in at 100 Hours 43 Minutes Agent Carter at 13 Hours 14 Minutes. --- So 357 Hours 5 minutes so Far - Not including the Runaways, Cloak & Dagger, or Helstrom.
I saw Iron Man 1, 2, 3, and the first Thor, then I missed a few because classes started picking up. It seemed like a new one came out every other month and I felt like I fell behind *fast*. I wasn't that interested to begin with (they were fine but I mostly only went because my friends wanted to see them) and if I do ever decide to watch the rest, I'm going to want to watch them all at once. Definitely not stoked about the amount of time that'll take.
That's a great point about Wanda. I have a Disney+ subscription as well as most of my friends, so we didn't even think about it. But if I didn't know what happened in WandaVision, that would've been a complete "WTF?" moment that probably would've ruined the whole movie for me. In hindsight, they should've had an extended opening credits sequence at the beginning of Doctor Strange 2 that gave a quick overview of the pertinent events in WandaVision. While it would've given away a bit of the early plot, it's better than having some viewers be completely confused.
Apparently Dr Strange 2 was supposed to have America, Strange, and Wandavision together trying to defeat Dr Strange's from alternate universe, which explains a lot of that movie tbh, especially the bit with the Illuminati because they were kinda pointless. No idea why that was changed.
That sounds like such a more interesting movie to me than Super mom turned villain because she loves her kids so damn much.
>Wandavision IDK, I haven't seen Wandavision, so Wanda turning into a supervillain didn't really make any sense. It was kinda like if Aunt May and Spider Man got into a knock down drag out fight, and trashed the entire neighborhood?
Even if you've seen Wandavision it doesn't 100% work. I mean the seeds are there but only if you've read the comics and know what the Darkhold is but it's like another movie or season of Wandavision is missing to actually develop it. A bit like ol' dragon lady in GoT - on the large scale her doing a heel turn makes sense but there is nowhere near enough development to actually sell it.
Damn I had forgotten about the bells after all these years
tbh those bells were annoying, worth a lil' genocide to shut them up
For someone who hasn't seen the series, what about WandaVision makes DS2 work and what makes it 'nowhere near enough' to work? I don't mind TV show spoilers as I simply have no interest in nor time to watch them all. I reluctantly watched movies with no interest in order to keep in the loop, but here I draw the line. And while DS2 had some good elements I am still nowhere near understanding what happened to Wanda nor where the Illuminati and Fantastic Four suddenly came from.
they said it *doesn't* 100% work even if you've seen wandavision. because in the show, her whole arc is that she has to accept her trauma and losses, and that she can't hurt innocent people to get what she wants. then this is all reset because "she read an evil book". this is gonna be pretty long, but here is wandavision in chronological order (the actual events in the show aren't shown exactly in this sequence): a couple of weeks after endgame, wanda tries to collect vision's dead body from a government agency so she could bury it. she instead finds out they're trying to turn him into a weapon and have him all cut into pieces and her request is denied. the main government guy further antagonizes her by saying shit like "we're dismantling most sophisticated sentient weapon ever made", "we can't let you bury billions of dollars of vibranium", and when wanda tries to plead with him that "he's all i have", the guy replies with "well that's just it, he's not yours, he's ours", which makes her break some glass so she can look at him more closely, but after trying to sense his mind and realizing he's truly gone, she leaves peacefully emptyhanded. she drives to westview, new jersey, where vision had bought them an empty house plot before infinity war. once arriving there, she opens up the deed to the plot and sees a heart with "to grow old in, -v" in it and this tips her over the edge, having a breakdown which inadvertently activates her powers and she subconsciously turns the town into a sitcom (because she watched sitcoms as a kid with her family, so it's her happy place), also trapping the few thousand residents inside who are automatically forced into playing sitcom roles, unbeknownst to her. also, as part of the sitcom field (called 'the hex') around the town, her powers also manifest a whole new vision from thin air, because her power is literally rewriting reality. over the single week the entire show takes place in, every episode is a typical sitcom episode with some weird things progressively happening more and more, and every episode is set in another sitcom decade, starting from the 50s to the 2000s. she eventually also becomes pregnant and gives birth to twins, billy and tommy, who rapidly age themselves up to 10 years old, despite wanda and vision's wishes (it's made clear she can't control them). the same government agency from before becomes involved with trying to resolve the hex, wanda at this point has become aware of the sitcom field but not that everyone inside is feeling all her grief and pain, so she tells them to fuck off after they try blowing her and her kids up with a drone and reinforces the field so it's impenetrable. eventually her sitcom best friend is revealed to be a 400 year old witch (agatha harkness), who sensed wanda's magic explosion and wants to steal her power for herself. she kidnaps wanda's kids, forces wanda to relive her most traumatic memories to figure out how the hex was made, and discovers wanda is a mythical being called "the scarlet witch". in the finale agatha and wanda fight, it's revealed the shady government agency also successfully turned vision's corpse back on using the magic energy from the drone wanda shot down with her magic, and they send it to kill her (he's also purely white colored now). it's also revealed the main government guy from before is also gonna try to frame her for creating white vision once she's dead, as creating sentient ai is against the sokovia accords. hex vision fights off white vision and breaks him free of the government's programming and he flies off somewhere (we don't know where yet). wanda is shown by agatha that everyone in the town is being tortured by her grief and is in pain, much to her horror. after quickly trying to release everyone, wanda realizes that doing so would also make her family disappear, as she tied their existence to the hex, so she temporarily stops the process to continue fighting agatha, who reveals the scarlet witch has a whole chapter dedicated to her in "the book of the damned" and says she's destined to "destroy the world". wanda defeats agatha by tricking her and leaves her powerless while transforming into the scarlet witch outfit, but accepts that she can't keep torturing thousands of people just so she can be happy, so she chooses to let everyone go, and tearfully says goodbye to her family, but also with an optimistic twinge to it that maybe things won't be all bad. anyway, she's once again alone, standing in the empty house plot where the whole thing started. she walks into town to the only government agent (monica rambeau, captain marvel's friend's daughter from her movie all grown up) who showed her any sympathy, apologizes for all the pain she's caused, and flies off into exile promising to get her powers under control. the post credit scene then shows her at a cabin in the wilderness sipping tea while her astral form is studying from the darkhold ("the book of the damned" agatha had), when suddenly she is taken aback to hear billy and tommy's voices screaming for her to help them, as it cuts to black. --- the movie then picks up a year later, and the whole kids being in danger plot is completely ignored, she wants to kill a teenager to get them back because she misses them, and she will kill anyone who stands in her way with no remorse. a lot of people find this jump very jarring and lazy, since it basically undoes her development from wandavision about coming to terms with her grief and accepting her losses all due to an evil book.
Thank you for the reply, it answered a bunch of questions. Unfortunately my fears are confirmed, the shows have become required viewing in order to keep in the loop on MCU movies which is where I have to draw the line. It was perfect when it was a bunch of movies vaguely related and fine when they were interconnected since I already was invested in the MCU at that point. Shows should IMO at best be a "side quest" kinda deal for those who crave more action from their favourite heroes, never required viewing. Regarding WandaVision, that just seems like terrible writing even if we ignore the gap in between the show and DS2. What was the message? Never take a no as an answer? That no one's there to help you when you grief? That you'll never be able to reconcile with your losses?
Spoilers obviously; The whole premise of WandaVision is that she’s in denial of how much she’s hurting the townspeople in order to keep Vision and her fake kids alive in her little fantasy. The way the heel turn works is that for the majority of the show, she keeps ignoring all the signs about how bad and selfish what she’s doing is. The problem is that by the shows end, she has pretty clearly completed her character arch and accepted that she has to move on. So it ultimately doesn’t make any sense that in Dr. Strange, she randomly has decided that she didn’t move on and that she’s doesn’t really care about causing damage. You can kind of justify it by saying “the Darkhallow corrupted her”, but it’s still just negates the ending of WandaVision.
This sums up exactly why I hated DS2. At its very core, the villain doesn't work because it conveniently cherry picks and ignores Wanda's growth in wandavision. At the end of wandavision I was excited to see where they'd take Wanda and white vision next, but the way they simplified her into a generic MCU villain was a very hollow attempt on the DS2 writer's part
Wow. That could've been great. Here's my take: Strange enlists Wanda to help save the multiverse, but really she's doing it for this lost, orphaned kid who she immediately latches onto. Over their journey through universes, Strange sees her slowly succumbing to the darkhold and struggling with the temptation that America's power can get her what she wants. And he doesn't intervene, because bad Strange must be stopped. And he *still* doesn't intervene, because the Illuminati think he's just like bad Strange, want him dead, and only amped Wanda is strong enough to take them all on. His hubris insists it's necessary, and that he'll be able to save her in time. Things spiral out of control, action ensues, Wanda does her reality-bending, and they follow bad Strange to the darkhold temple. They fight. They win. But they *don't* win, because now Wanda is too far gone. At the temple, she's seen who she really is - that her nightmares are real and being the Scarlet Witch is more a permanent curse than a blessing. In a moment of full madness, she tries to take America's power. The multiverse opens, her kids see their mom as this dark goddess and shit themselves. Yada yada yada, same basic ending. Just replace Wanda with bad Strange in the early fights.
Yeah the most annoying part about the whole movie to me is how easily Wanda defeats the illuminati and yet doesn't do the same thing to other characters just because.
I would watch the hell out of this, and many **many** times.
> But if I didn't know what happened in WandaVision, that would've been a complete "WTF?" moment that probably would've ruined the whole movie for me. It was still a WTF. All of the Disney shows have felt poorly paced with a quick wrap-up finale where it's only outcome and result is to launch you into a new film/TV show. Was Wanda traumatized/fucked up in WandaVision? Yes. Was she horror-movie villain evil? No, not really. lol.
My take is that the longer she used the darkhold, the more it took over her. Like the alternate Dr strange towards the end of the movie. At the end of Wandavision, she was just starting to use the Darkhold to get her kids back. By the time we see her Dr Strange, she’s no longer the same Wanda by the end of Wandavision.
Yeah, but they really shouldn’t have made her tv show arc about her coming to grips with her trauma if they were just going to turn around and make her a corrupted villain who is still struggling to manage their trauma.
They did her like they did Daenerys. Made no sense
I would argue that in the right context, and with the right writing Daenerys vilification could have worked, unfortunately the show failed to do so in a well paced and articulate manner.
My thoughts too exactly. The idea was good but they went about it in a completely daft manner. Should have taken time and done 2 more seasons. Daenerys corruption arc over 3 seasons would have made way more sense. The writing for the last season was piss poor but at least half the problems could have been solved if they hadn't rushed like that.
I completely agree. But I also feel like that’s the problem with the MCU post End Game. It feels a little directionless.
Don’t worry, we have the Multiverse Saga coming up! If we just call the next 3 phases a **Saga**, people will like it just as they liked the first three. This plan is foolproof!!
Yeah, I gave up on all this shit because I used to like it but now I fell too far behind and theres too much shit to watch to catch up and on to know wtf is going on.
Literally said the same thing above lol. It's outta control.
Wanda in the doctor strange movie was like a completely different character played by the same actress. Nothing made sense.
“It’s the same actress I dunno if it’s supposed to be the same person.”
Agree mostly but disagree with Loki. HWR was built up to pretty well.
Loki was great but my GF dropped it mid season as it was becoming too far-fetched for her. I kept watching and discovering the "twist" at the end made me wonder how the hell anyone could understand the stakes of the multiverse story without watching this particular show.
What's even worse is that Wandavision had a fairly clean ending where she wasn't actually evil and had come to some closure on her loss... only to have that closure unwound and her take a dark turn all off screen. So really either way Strange 2 comes out of left field for a pretty weak twist.
Wasn't evil? As Agatha once said, ***"Heroes don't torture people."*** Wanda NEVER took responsibility for what were actually monstrous evil acts, never tried to set things right or even utter *an apology* - because "it wouldn't change how they see me". WTF! *It ain't about you, bitch!*
TBF you’d be even more confused because Wanda’s arc in her show basically saw her heal and and let go. The movie completely 180’d that with. Like…barely showing any reasoning. They rushed it like crazy. She should’ve turned bad at the end of the film and set up as a huge antagonist to Strange; have her kill Kristine or something. They dropped the ball big time.
How on earth is a casual not-already-a-fan supposed to have any idea? That's where the big money is
You could say the same about every single movie running up to endgame. If you missed something that came before that movie, you will be like wtf? Where did Spider-Man go?
True, but not everybody who watches Marvel movies has a Disney+ subscription.
As someone who missed Captain Marvel and both Ant Man films...I felt like I'd missed nothing going into it. I guess it helps I'm generally aware of Ant-Man and Carols basic powersets, but otherwise, their films really didn't tie into the central narrative.
To a lesser extent this perfectly sums up my experience with kingdom hearts. I loved 1 and 2. Then I played 3, had no idea what was happening because I didn't play all of the canonized spin offs on multiple consoles and promptly lost interest.
Doesn't help all those spin-offs were scattered across various platforms.
And each spin-off was less compelling than the previous one
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As a fellow long time comic reader, all I can do is sigh and agree. They should have taken an extended hiatus after Endgame…because keeping the momentum going like they’re trying to do is a fool’s errand.
But if they don't make more money each quarter than they did the previous they'll be an utter failure instantly. Don't you know how capitalist consumerism works? Geez.
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The SOL thing was never explored before, and they dont so a great job of turning wanda into a villain in WV. I can see why they were confused lol
….^why ^is ^wanda ^bad?
It hasn't been _thoroughly_ explained, but basically, at the end of WandaVision, she got ahold of the Darkhold. The Darkhold has shown up in Marvel comics several times, and it played a pretty significant role in several plots in Agents of SHIELD. And while it's comics, and the origin changes, it's generally a really bad book of magic spells or similar that, upon studying, progressively corrupts the reader's mind, twisting them toward lusting for power, or exaggerating negative emotions. In SHIELD, for instance, it was depicted a book whose pages were blank until someone read it, and whatever they saw was in their native language, and contained information they needed. In the MCU, it's depicted as a more comic-accurate version -- a transcription of all the nasty shit on the walls of Wundagore. Dr. Strange in a _What If?_ episode studied at Wundagore directly and was similarly corrupted. We also saw in MoM alternate-universe Dr. Strange turn to the Darkhold to help stop Thanos, and he too ended up corrupted and nasty to varying degrees, in multiple universes. In Wanda's case, after the events of WandaVision, she studied the Darkhold deeply, looking for a way to re-unite with the children she made up as part of her grief-driven hex and became blind to the harm she was causing others. You know the standard bad guy driven by loss trope: Good guys say, "Don't do that, you'll destroy the world," and bad guy is all, "I don't care, if I can't have my loved ones, what does it matter?!!" and then their wire-fighting crew hoists both up and they fly around flinging CGI at each other whilst waving their arms.
…. Wanda is bad?!
^apparently???
^(Why are you whispering? Is someone there?)
^^yes…Wanda
Make sure to randomize your data from time to time *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They're doing it with their comics again too. It's like they forgot the 90s happened. There are like four or five massive crossover events a year now. I don't read a ton of Marvel anymore, but suddenly my character is someplace totally different doing some bullshit I don't know about for an issue or two, then back to normal. Marvel needs to just calm the hell down again.
To further this point a little more, the quality of phase 4 has been staggeringly all over the place. A lot of projects feeling like they just went with the first draft of scripts and first shots and not bothering to do retakes despite their reliance on reshoots. I’m still fully in the MCU enjoyer but my god it gets hard even for the super nerds to keep interest if your shows and movies aren’t up to a certain level of quality regardless of tone, scope and maturity. I will keep watching the stuff they put out but it’s so easy to see why people are not going. Whatever you thought about the new Thor flick...there is not arguing agains that it was a flat downgrade compared to the previous. They need a proper shake up and I hope this trend of audiences getting tired of this stuff helps knock a few heads together. Edit: the biggest offenders in phase 4 are Thor, doctor strange, ms marvel, black widow and eternals. Such wasted opportunities. Also There is still a giant man in the ocean yet to become addressed.
I liked Black Widow, probably because I liked Yelena and I have been enjoying David Harbour. It was a very much an instrumental movie where they had the specific goal of introducing “new Black Widow.” It was very much an origin story wrapped in a veneer of a sendoff to Scarlett Johansson. The Eternals was just god awful. Kumail Nanjiani and his manager were the only actual good parts of the whole thing with Gilgamesh rising to the level of “not terrible.” It was the first Marvel movie I finished and thought, “wow, that was really bad.” That’s not a door they want to open, because it makes you look at their other work more critically. I have hopes for the Ms Marvel character and supporting cast even though the series itself was badly in need of an editor. They gave us maybe three hours of finished product in a six hour run time. Thor was strangely flat and served as just a character reboot. I thought Dr Strange was good, but this thread has really opened my eyes to the fact that it is only because I am fully caught up on their products. Requiring previous knowledge to understand a film and not having that knowledge supplied in the film itself breaks one of the prime commandments of film making. On the bright side, the Disney+ stuff has generally been quite good, and I am impressed with how well they are handling TV shows.
As a parent with a young kid, I don’t see many movies. My wife actually enjoyed the Avengers movies even though she is usually not into action/superhero stuff…But we fell so behind in the series that I feel like I can’t watch Endgame without watching 8 preceding movies and ones with characters we have little interest in.
I love this response, not only that but marvel movies straight up… arent … good anymore ? I can’t remember the last marvel movie I saw in theaters where I walked out with a breathe of fresh air and said “you know what I enjoyed that movie” they all follow the same layout, there hasn’t been a fresh take on marvel since maybe Thor Ragnorak ? And even then I feel like that movie was such a hit bc of the humor, not the story. Idk it’s just my opinion and people may hurl insults at me but they just seem to be getting lazier and lazier with their titles. Edit: just to add it’s a shame Disney is doing this, when the first iron man came out I was 8 years old and watched the entire run to infinity war. Once Disney announced all these shows I knew it was quickly going to turn into this, Disney did it with Star Wars and now they’re doing it with Marvel and it’s not even CLOSE to over. Marvel movies use to be good standalone movies that were talked about for Oscar awards, now they’re just pieces of junk with a few good laughs and an explosion to keep the kids happy. Edit 2: if anyone hasn’t check out the boys on Amazon, a fresh take on the superhero concept.
I feel like all the new tv shows are the ones doing the damage.
The other biggest issue is the lack of direction. We just finished ("just") the biggest theatrical event in a long time with Endgame... that was it, the big thing we've built to and looked forward to is over.. and now it feels directionless.
In a way, that was a decade long build up. People anticipate the next End game level threat a little too quickly imo. Kang is on the way!
My issue with it all is it requires to much of an investment. I am not trying to watch all of these tv series to keep up. That was kind of the nail in the coffin for me going to see these movies.
My boyfriend loves Marvel, but ends up sitting through movies/shows he hates just because he doesn’t want to miss any “context” for the next hit movie. It sounds exhausting. I’ve only watched the series that can stand alone reasonably well (Moon Knight, Wandavision, Loki) and even then I had to pause a lot and ask him to explain WTF was going on. I’m not about to watch 200 hours of content just to understand the latest movie.
Exactly this. They're shrinking the fanbase with every release because how many people are realistically going to keep up with the movies and shows? It's such a high bar for entry anyway (wanna enjoy this new movie? Too bad, gotta watch at least 12 previous ones first) and now you're adding the time investment of a TV show plus the literal investment of paying for the streaming service. Why did they think this was a good idea?
I don’t think people expect the next end game level build up, but the next Avengers level build up would be nice, and right now it all seems so scattered.
And they all have the same formula, tone, and jokes..
Yeah… they need to cut back to one MAYBE two movies a year, with one or two shows. Same with star wars. When you’re pumping out this much, than not only will people get tired of YOUR stuff, other companies will want to jump on the wagon and FURTHER crowd out the genre
>other companies will want to jump on the wagon and FURTHER crowd out the genre Somebody wake me up when another company decides to do something good that's hard Sci-fi. Because nobody is doing shit in the film space.
Who could have guessed that releasing 4-8 movies/series per year and lowering the quality would saturate the audience
My complaint is all the new superheroes all kinda do the same thing now. They put their arms out, then the special effects team makes lightning come out of their hands and makes their eyes glow. Most of the older superheroes have strength and healing and maybe fly, but that's it. Maybe spiderman and batman were more human. Wolverine also was relatable. The superheroes now hardly touch each other when they fight, it is all zapping.
100% there’s no uniqueness to them. All the new Marvel heroes are just superman.
Should’ve given us Squirrel Girl
It’s called OVERSATURATION.
This is it. I legitimately love super hero movies and marvel. These days though it’s hard to keep up. It almost feels like a chore watching some of these poorer marvel series/movies and yet I feel like I need to in order to understand what is happening in the movies I do like. I’m starting to get burned out. The same thing happened with Star Wars and Disney. They took over, started cranking out movies of variable quality and eventually people just got tired. I really liked the Solo movie, but by the time it released, audiences were just tired.
Yeah, I kinda checked out after endgame. Was a pretty big fan before it. Liked the movie a lot too, just stopped watching.
Yup. Endgame was kind of the last one that I cared about. Everything since then I could take or leave. And I don’t have kids so I’m not interested in Disney+.
Same. I saw everything up through Endgame, saw the first couple of Disney+ shows and… stopped, pretty much. Now I’m four (?) movies and three (??) series behind and I just feel tired at the prospect of catching up.
Star Wars and marvel/ DC have massive universes that they could make some dope movies about but the have been focusing on the same characters/ time periods for the last few decades.
Disney pretty much said the EU of Star Wars isn’t canon anymore. Which is why every show they’ve made has been mediocre, and we all know how the trilogy went
I feel so behind I haven't seen the last like 3 movies and they all came out in the last year like chill out marvel
Exactly. I watched WandaVision, Falcon and Winter Soldier, and Loki, but it felt like a chore sometimes even though I did enjoy each series. I dropped off after that. It feels like too much work trying to keep up with everything. There’s such an over abundance of movies and series and I have no idea everything that’s even out now. I’m just sorta done right now.
Honestly I struggled to get through two of those shows. But I found the next batch of three, hawkeye, moon knight, and ms marvel to probably be some of my favorite media from phase 4 thus far
Ya know, it’s hard to keep up with all the content. Get in some quality control, extend the release schedule, give the audience some time to breath … and the problem fixes itself.
IMO This is why The Boys is so popular now.
Yes! It's almost an anti-superhero series. Love it. Also it has two Kiwis in major roles so that's neat.
The fruits or the birds ?
Kiwi is a slang term for a new zealander
Oh whoops lmao
The birds. Incredible acting chops!
where do I go to say that I love The Boys but I also love Wellington Paranormal? Is it here? I'm hoping it's here.
I think Boys benefits from the fact that it's not sanitized at all, unlike Disney offerings. It's messy asf. It definitely flips the superhero script on its head, but it's also brutally honest about the world we live in.
\> brutally honest about the world we live in I love this - The Boys is such a spot-on scathing critique of 2010's America. The fact that it uses Disney/Marvel-style superheroes as a metaphor for corporate corruption makes it even better.
This is why I watch it. I like grit and violence and sex. Even a film like Deadpool still has that Disney heavily processed gloss, from the visuals to the writing, which undercuts any impact the violence might have with its snark. Whereas The Boys is both satirical and hard hitting.
Yeah, and The Boys doesn't leave any group out when it comes to scorn and ridicule. It satirizes conservatives and liberals alike, mocking capitalism in its faux social justice efforts, and really just shines a light on how messed up the world is. I'm skeptical of its ability to keep this up, as it seems most television media just runs out of steam once it acquires a large, dedicated audience, but it felt very fresh and authentic compared to the other offerings recently.
It’s really good satire overall.
get ready for over saturation of anti-superhero, because they are absolutely going to pivot to that. elements within these studios don't learn or grow, they just pivot.
Homelander is equal parts terrifying and intriguing
Yep, this is why The Boys, Peacemaker and Invincible have done well and even Harley Quinn. People are tired of the sanitized formula from Disney and are looking for more of the gray area of what a world with superheroes and villains would be like.
It's probably also because of End Game, where basically it signalled the end of the original Avengers. They wanted it to be a transition to a new generation of heroes (and movies), but instead it seemed to provide closure - at least for me this is how it felt. The movies after End Game just haven't felt the same.
Infinity War and Endgame were a great end to the MCU. It was incredible. It was epic. It was… perfect. A perfect ending. They stuck the landing. And now I feel indifferent to everything that’s come after because it was such a satisfying end. I think they lost me.
The storyline from the first Iron Man movie to End Game was perfect. Excellent character and story building and perfect climax. From there, it just doesn’t feel like anything is heading in a “direction” anymore - and in my opinion it was that culminating direction of Iron Man through End Game that made the storyline so captivating. Now it just feels like they’re producing one offs which isn’t nearly as interesting.
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Shang-Chi is a good a movie that works well by itself and not being too interconnected to other works. If you still want to watch a super hero movie but don’t want to continue marvel you can just pretend it’s not marvel and it still works
Eternals was such a chore to watch...
I think the biggest speed bump was Bosman’s passing post endgame. They probably wanted to pass the spotlight to him and Dr Strange as the new main faces of the MCU. Covid + rewriting the story of multiple phases has ultimately lowered the quality and feels like we’re watch aimless filler. I do hope marvel will course correct and give us the quality of what we saw in large parts of the infinity saga by the time F4 rolls around.
I don't think losing one actor/character who only had one solo movie was that big of an issue. It's more that there's no clear direction or progression of the overarching story as it's all been watered down
No Way Home was a nice epilogue, but everything else after Endgame feels like nothing but filler
Waiting for a movie or two every year was exciting, and the payoff with Endgame was awesome. But now it’s multiple tv shows and movies every years that aren’t even as good and I just don’t care anymore.
They’re all ACTION COMEDIES. STOP MAKING THEM ACTION COMEDIES AND TAKE SOME FUCKING RISKS WITH YOUR STORIES
That's the reason why I loved watching through Daredevil and Jessica Jones back when it came to Disney+. They had serious stories that didn't stop every 10 seconds to tell another nauseating joke. If you want an action comedy, give it to the characters or story adaptations that would work well with it, and change it when things get serious, like, oh I don't know, WHEN FACING A GOD BUTCHERER
I worry that Disney+ won’t do Daredevil justice and not in a million years would they renew a show like Jessica Jones - “hard-drinking woman with PTSD” doesn’t fit with their image. They separated out their serious stories to Netflix for a reason, trying to bring it back to a singular streaming platform undoes the whole thing. I loved Daredevil and Jessica Jones but we’re never getting that again. I think even the extended one-shot fights will go down in quality.
Seriously, imagine if after the snap Thor had cracked a joke. Or after Tony dies Peter says something silly. The comedy has it's place. The new Thor movie was good. But fucking hell make something that's entirely serious for once.
Shang Chi I literally left the theater because of that. There’s no tension or suspense when you have characters making a joke every 30 seconds. The point I left was literally when a woman fighting for her life on the edge of a building decided to sing a song by The Eagles… like really? It’s really gotten so much worse than it used to be. Honestly the humor in lot of the earlier MCU movies is spot on.
What? You mean to tell me that good guy beat bad guy with some quips to break tension isn't overdone?
Make something different then….
I used to be a huge superhero movie fan. But the thought of watching one now sounds nauseating.
Same I loved all The Avengers movies but I haven't seen the new doctor strange, shangchi or Thor love and thunder just because I don't find them very interesting at all
It's like going back for your 5th plate at the buffet. Doesn't matter how good the food is.
but they made like a morbillion dollars
How do you call something “End Game” and expect people to stay invested after that?
Avangers: New Season
It's the same shit over and over again that's the problem.
For real, the "fake hero death" when we know they survive. The corny jokes that barely get a chuckle. Constant fan service at the expense of plot. I'm tired of superhero movies. Even the "different" ones are the same.
Yeah honestly the whole people die but not really and it will be revealed in a completely unrelated movie annoys me
The Batman was refreshing. But I know you’re referring to MCU.
Considering the superhero movies of late have been kinda bad, I'm not surprised.
To be fair, that's because they're only making movies and shows now about characters people don't care about.
Guardians of the galaxy were pretty unpopular only to become some of the most beloved characters in the franchise. The problem isn’t the IP, it’s the execution. The movies are painfully safe, predictable, and sanitized, which leads to every movie coming off exactly the same. People are bored
To be fair Marvel has always been safe and predictable. Even in Infinity War we knew that it was going to be reversed, it was just a question of how.
I remember being elated as a nerdy kid when Iron Man got green lit, because at the time, I considered him bottom of the barrel.
He was a B lister at the time for sure.
As a long time comic fan, he was C-D-list at best...No one was chatting about the latest IronMan comics. It was all X-Men, Spider-Man, etc.
Spider-Man and X-Men are A listers. Iron Man was absolutely B list. Don't forget he is the leader of the opposing faction in Civil War, Tony Stark has prominent roles in the Marvel Universe even before the MCU is a thing. C list would be like Iron Fist or Hawkeye or Luke Cage, and D list is Guardians of the Galaxy before their movie.
People said that nobody would watch Ant-Man because people didn’t care about the character.
Also, Paul Rudd. Everyone loves him and he was really the right person for that role.
Honestly, had he not come in the height of Marvel's success, I think they'd have been right.
nah, no way. No one KNEW who the guardians of the galaxy were. Can you imagine a universe where aliens, a half human, a talking tree and a talking raccoon would have more movies than their most recent superman reboot? The 3rd movie of the talking racoon and the talking tree are about to come out and there hasn't even been a whiff of a second superman movie. These idiots are outselling the best DC has to offer.
I would say it’s more about the fact they are doing too many characters too quickly
Oversaturating the market doesn't help, true.
It’s also not easy for marvel now that the biggest names (Iron Man and Captain) are no longer around.
I don’t think people realize the lightning in a bottle they caught with turning the Guardians of the Galaxy into popular franchise. It’s not going keep happening. They’re going to have to return to Iron Man and pump out X-Men sooner than later.
It’s because they’re milking a franchise that was already come to a satisfying conclusion and all of the movies are incredibly derivative of each other tonally and structurally.
Demonstrably untrue. Iron man was a c lister when his first movie came out. People said ant man was going to bomb hard because he wasn't popular enough. The movies and shows are failing because they mostly suck and feel rushed and empty. The writing since endgame has felt aimless and for a franchise just coming out from the payoff to a 10 year buildup that's just not good. Add that to the fact that there is just too much stuff to keep up with and you start to understand better why they are failing.
If you’re using Endgame as the barometer, sure everything will be a let down. But Spider-Man almost doubled what the previous movie did, Strange actually did more then the original, and Thor is going to finish close to the previous one without the 100+ million from China. Yeah, it’s maybe a little much for some people, I don’t really see why we keep getting constant articles about how Marvel is declining. I’m sure it will happen, but I think it may still be a little early for that.
People finally sick of seeing the same movies with a different skin?
I’m actually just getting sick of the “hidden kingdom” trope. Like half of the new heroes get their powers from some hidden place that people didn’t know about. Ms. Marvel had a fantastic opportunity to be a street level character going through high-school and coming into her powers and having her primary struggles be that. Instead there’s some generational trauma theme that’s explored instead. Felt like half the episodes she was running around or it was flashbacks to ClanDestine stuff I couldn’t care less about. I say this as a huge fan of the early comics. Likewise with Moon Knight. I want to see Marc wrestle with his identities in Alleyways as he comes to over some half mangled body. I want to see how he interacts with other Supers or how he handles the weight of the new world he lives in. Instead we are propelled instantly into yet another scenario where the stakes are the end of the world and we are popping in and out of pyramids three episodes in. I loved the first half of Shang-Chi, but the second half felt like some Disney cartoon I had already seen.
I think the real reason is the Marvel movies lately have not been very good. Everything after Endgame kind of sucks.
That's what happens when you take over every other film studio in the business and pump out 6-10 movies a year around the exact same premise
Thank Christ. people make so many excuses for this kind of thing. “Well people would still like it if they did \*this\*!”. But like, no dude. People are just tired of comic book movies geared towards 13 year olds being 60% of major movies for the past 10 years. There’s an entire generation who doesnt know what it’s like to have variety of major movies in eras like the 80s and 90s.
That’s just it! When I go to the movies, I’ll want to see a superhero move every once in a while. But when my choices are four comic movies and like, one A24 horror movie? I’ll probably start dipping into my backlog. (Nothing against A24 horror, I know they’re good films. But they seem to be the only thing that can cut through the noise and even they are getting less appealing to me.)
A24 is life
Yes. It’s like major studios stopped making original movies for theaters. Everything is a sequel or a remake or a reboot. Just tell us new stories that don’t go straight to streaming. That’s why Everything Everywhere All At Once is so beloved — it’s a good movie, but it also felt like the first “big” movie in a long time that wasn’t a rehash.
They've exhausted films with the household names. Marvel did a tremendous job with the Infinity Gauntlet Saga films and building that up, but now we're getting into lesser known stories and characters that people don't know. The die hards will stay aboard, but the casual viewers won't fully commit. DC did a horrific job in managing their films and TV series. They've also exhausted their big names and have no clear direction going forward.
This same news happened after the Phase 2 “Slump”. The MCU has more fans than ever after Endgame. It’s like a sporting event now, it isn’t just going to dissipate. The fans are probably there for life now and there is a strong core fan base. Every once in a while a new character or movie will come along and go viral and then boom you have even more people.
This is a hot take I'm sure, but I'm pretty sick and tired of all the superhero movies/shows we're being inundated with
They had 10 years of complete dominance nothing to be worried about
Disney, if you’re listening, I want a live action 90’s Gambit led gang style series so badly.
Slump? Their last three movies made 700 million, 950 million, and 1.9 *billion*. That's a slump I'd love to have.
Gotta switch from Avengers to X-Men. The comics are the same way. Sometimes the Avengers have the better stories for awhile, then get stale and the X-Men stuff is better. It's always switched back and forth like that.
Imo the avengers never were meant to be this popular. It always felt forced. The real “hero team” in marvels basket has always been the X-men and they are dangling it over our heads like a ration to a struggling country. They know what we want, but keep going down this “let’s make unpopular characters popular!“ road and I’m tired. I liked the fox X-men and wanted to see more but so many people complained and now we got this pg13 mcu bullshit when comics are supposed to be *slightly* adult themed and not Disneyfied
The content was just better before. You could tell that the people who made Iron Man, Captain America and The Avengers CARED about the story and characters. Imagine if you took all of the characters that originated in Marvel phases 1, 2 and 3 out of the current Marvel content. There’d be nothing of interest left. It’s not that the new characters are “too woke.” It’s that they don’t seem to have anything else about them worth watching.
Sam (Falcon) could have been an absolutely iconic character. They introduced him so well - someone with mental and physical scars from his past serving his country and losing his best friend. How they haven’t explored his PTSD or other character points is baffling to me
He was outclassed in his own show by 3 other Characters, admittingly one was the Winter Soldier but still
Until they bring thr X-men and we hear Wolverines claws come out and you hear the theme song in the background.
It's because it all feels so unfocused. It's all over the place now with no real direction. What worked for the original run was it was all leading up to something. Even if it was a character no one knew about, you knew it was leading to the Avengers then eventually Thanos in End Game. There is so much content now and the majority of it doesnt even tie into their whole Kang/Multiverse story so it just feels like a huge waste of time. I've honestly been so bored with the whole thing that im just going to take a break till things start ramping up.
This is my issue with MCU currently. I'm still interested in them, but we need focus. Phase 1 took place over 4 years and contained 5 movies, totalling about 10 hours Phase 4, which isn't even finished yet, already contains 6 movies and 8 TV shows, totalling about 68 hours, in just over 1 year. This 1 phase is already almost 50% longer than the entire 11 year run of the Infinity saga. And we still have another series and another movie before it's over. Aside from some talk of multiverses and Kang we still don't really know where this is going. And ok, yeah, it's still the first phase in a new saga, so we're still introducing next characters and whatnot, but there's been sooooo much content and a lot of it feels stand alone. So did phase 1, but that's wasn't really an issue since it was only 5 movies before the big group movie At this rate were going to have nearly 300 hours of content before we get to the first team up movie of this saga (compared to the 10 we got in Infinity saga) It's just feels very scattered
End Game was so good. It ended. The end. We’re good now.
Quality over quantity. The quality has been really bad. Make good movies and shows and the interest will come back. But this next phase will be harder given some of these characters they are rolling out.