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What Are Your Thoughts on the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

Spiritual Mask Salesman

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A few days ago I was thinking about the Marvel movies and how I felt more excitement and investment in them prior to Infinity War/Endgame. That's not to say I've disliked all the films since, I just felt like there was more of a direction, a clear cut overarcing plot that was being built up to. From the films alone, I'm not really seeing anything that is indicating what the next big event in this universe will be. I'm left wondering if they should even start building up to something big again, how long they should wait to set it up before reaching the climax, or if they'd be better off simply focusing on individual stories again for a while before trying some big event again with all the characters joining together for some purpose.

What are your thoughts? I think this could also be a good place to talk about thoughts on connected universes in general, and whether they are a cinematic model that is still practical?
 

Uwu_Oocoo2

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Honestly by this point I feel like they maybe shouldn't continue the series. All of the original movies were great, and all of that anticipation and building up to the climax made for an epic conclusion. Marvel's plan going forward is just to have a bunch of nonconnected films but is it really necessary? The quality of the movies are going down, much like several Disney franchises. They're pretty much just milking it for the money because Marvel sells. And the longer the series goes on the more actors they lose, and the more b- c- list heroes we get. Even though it's better for them to stop while they're ahead, they're obviously not going to do that so individual nonconnected films seems the most likely route.
 
the original movies were alright, but now they're literally all the same thing with a mediocre premise of "you work for this person/organization whether you like it or not, here are your superpowers" with forced jokes and a predictable love interest subplot given more attention than the actual plot. also the main character never learns a single lesson lol
its just a tech demo for wacky special effects and a reason to sell more merchandise, and disney is all over that
 

thePlinko

What’s the character limit on this? Aksnfiskwjfjsk
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Everything Endgame and prior was at the very least good except for Captain Marvel .

Nearly everything since has felt kinda pointless. Far From Home was a neat epilogue to “The Infinity Saga™️“ as they’re calling it now, No Way Home was amazing, and thats coming from someone who never got into the other Spiderman movies.

Black Widow was laughably bad, “WandaVision” and “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” were just boring, and while Loki was certainly an interesting watch it also completely destroys the canon and any emotional weight of the entire MCU.

I haven’t seen the rest of them, but ive heard that they’re not great either. I definitely agree that they should’ve ended with Endgame and kept the Spiderman movies as an epilogue.
 
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I'm gonna be in the minority, but the Infinity Saga was...not good (with exceptions). Iron Man, Avengers, First Avenger/Winter Soldier/Civil War, Guardians 1&2, Homecoming, Ragnarok, and Infinity War/Endgame were good movies; everything else was either bad or unwatchable IMO (H1, IM2/3, T1/2, AM1/2, A2, DS1, BP1, CM1, SM2). Only Agent Carter, Daredevil and Luke Cage were good shows. (AoS, JJ, IF, TheD, TheP, InH, RA, C&D, HelS were all terrible). So 11/23 movies and 3/12 shows were good.

Again, I'm gonna be in the minority, but in Phase 4, I've personally enjoyed Shang-Chi, Eternals (i f---ing love Chloe Zhao), No Way Home, and Multiverse of Madness, LOVED WandaVision, and thought Loki and Moon Knight were good. The phase 4 projects are much more up my alley and are experimenting with different genres, storytelling mechanisms, character relationships, and directorial vision. And we're only two and a half years in, whereas Phase 1-3 had 12 years. So 4/5 movies and 3/6 shows have been good.

The directorial vision point is super important: Before, they had Jon Favreau (good), Louis Leterrier, Kenneth Branagh, Joe Johnston, Joss Whedon, Shane Black, Alan Taylor, The Russo Brothers (good), James Gunn (good), Peyton Reed, Scott Derrickson, Jon Watts (good), Taika Waititi (good), Ryan Coogler (good), and Boden/Fleck as directors. This phase they have Cate Shortland, Destin Daniel Cretton (good), Chloe Zhao (good), Jon Watts (good), Sam Raimi (good), Taika Waititi (good), Ryan Coogler (good), Peyton Reed, James Gunn (good), Nia DiCosta (good) and probably John Krasinski (good). The directorial line-up seems much stronger for this phase, and so I'm very excited to see what they do.
 

VikzeLink

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I feel like the only person that haven't seen these movies. Yea, it's true!
Well, I've seen one actually, and I didn't like it. It was Iron Man 2. Back when I was still in school when that movie came out, one guy in my class had a "non-legal" copy of it and it was near the end of the school year, so all work was basically done, so during one class we got to watch a movie instead. He brought that one, and almost everyone wanted to watch it.
It just wasn't very good, and also a bit confusing for me, as I hadn't seen the first one.

Other than that, I've not seen a single one of them, so I can't really have an opinion on that level.

However, I will say that I think that we're having a bit of a movie-drought because of these movies. The money-people of the movie business only look at movies in terms of numbers. As these movies bring in very large amounts of money for them, they keep funding them for that reason, and that reason only. They don't care about if the movies turns out good or not, only if it makes them money. This in turn leads to other types of movies not getting as much funding, or none at all, as they are not as guaranteed to rake in the money.

The people with the money are not willing to take risks anymore, and that hurts the artform. They want to seem "woke", but rather than funding and creating new, strong amazing characters and franchises (which has a chance of not bringing in much money if they're not successful), they rather do remakes and reboots of existing, beloved franchises with a built-in fanbase, but change the roles in them (for example, the female Bond discussion), because they know that because of the name attached to the project, they are guaranteed a certain amount of money from it, even if the product sucks.
Do you think the original Star Wars would have been made today? No one would ever dare to fund a project like that nowadays, but look what we got from it! The people with the money in the movie industry needs to take more risks!
 

Dio

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I'm gonna be in the minority, but the Infinity Saga was...not good (with exceptions). Iron Man, Avengers, First Avenger/Winter Soldier/Civil War, Guardians 1&2, Homecoming, Ragnarok, and Infinity War/Endgame were good movies; everything else was either bad or unwatchable IMO (H1, IM2/3, T1/2, AM1/2, A2, DS1, BP1, CM1, SM2). Only Agent Carter, Daredevil and Luke Cage were good shows. (AoS, JJ, IF, TheD, TheP, InH, RA, C&D, HelS were all terrible). So 11/23 movies and 3/12 shows were good.

Again, I'm gonna be in the minority, but in Phase 4, I've personally enjoyed Shang-Chi, Eternals (i f---ing love Chloe Zhao), No Way Home, and Multiverse of Madness, LOVED WandaVision, and thought Loki and Moon Knight were good. The phase 4 projects are much more up my alley and are experimenting with different genres, storytelling mechanisms, character relationships, and directorial vision. And we're only two and a half years in, whereas Phase 1-3 had 12 years. So 4/5 movies and 3/6 shows have been good.

The directorial vision point is super important: Before, they had Jon Favreau (good), Louis Leterrier, Kenneth Branagh, Joe Johnston, Joss Whedon, Shane Black, Alan Taylor, The Russo Brothers (good), James Gunn (good), Peyton Reed, Scott Derrickson, Jon Watts (good), Taika Waititi (good), Ryan Coogler (good), and Boden/Fleck as directors. This phase they have Cate Shortland, Destin Daniel Cretton (good), Chloe Zhao (good), Jon Watts (good), Sam Raimi (good), Taika Waititi (good), Ryan Coogler (good), Peyton Reed, James Gunn (good), Nia DiCosta (good) and probably John Krasinski (good). The directorial line-up seems much stronger for this phase, and so I'm very excited to see what they do.

I agree with you on the saga not being all good though I have a different idea on which films were good and which were bad to you.

I like Iron Man 1, Thor 1, Guardians of the Galaxy, Infinity War and Endgame. I enjoyed the original avengers when it first came out as it seemed to be the first major crossover title and it was a real spectacle though rewatching it does not bring back that feeling for me now as crossovers are the norm. I also Love the first Dr Strange and Homecoming.

I hate all the captain America films. I think he is a boring man, Iron man 2 was dissappontingly mediocre and 3 was actually so bad I wish i hadn't seen it. Thor Sequels were mediocre, Guardians 2 mediocre.

Since Endgame there appears to be nothing to build up for and I'm ok with that. I quite like the more self contained movies like Spider Man No Way Home and Far From Home.
 
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I think this could also be a good place to talk about thoughts on connected universes in general, and whether they are a cinematic model that is still practical?
I was just thinking about this a little bit: isn't Zelda a connected universe? 19, to-be 20, games all taking place within the same shared universe (I mean, not technically cuz the timeline, **** I hate the timeline), referencing past events, bringing characters, races, places from past games into future ones. It feels like an troupe of actors, popping up in different productions and the audience goes "Oh I remember so-and-so from such-and-such, they were great, glad they're here." I don't know what that feeling is called, but it's the same one you get when watching a movie and realize you recognize the actor from something else. Except this time it's the entire character coming along for the ride.

I think, while stand-alone stories are great, building those stand-alone stories within a broader narrative and universal context can really enrich them and add elements and flesh out characters that would otherwise be disconnected. I mean, the MCU, Fox X-Men U and Sony U are all now connected, bringing together 49 movies and 20 TV shows, something unprecedented in human history. We have NEVER done this before, to this degree, with the technology and impact that the MCU has had. The only two fandoms I am part of are the Zelda and MCU fandoms, and I love them for very similar reasons: the experimentation, the cross-over references that allow for generative theories, the simple but effective storytelling, the crazy third-act battles, the strong character moments in the second act, the strong origin stories. So, yeah, I think shared universes are still practical and good.
 

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