Yet Another Whiny Marvel Thread

[checkoutgirl]

The best thing about Thanos was the way they slowly introduced him with tiny Easter eggs here and there over what seemed like 5 or 10 years. The anticipation and build up slowly gaining until suddenly you have this 10 foot tall beast who can throw the Hulk about with that deep gravely Brolin voice. Even non comic fanboys got sucked in.

Kang they just gave him up early, sometimes multiple of him in one go. And he got squashed easily by an ant or something. It's like all the techniques and lessons they learnt went out the window.

I suspect it's because the producers and Fiege didn't want to repeat themselves. But there's a whole new generation of kids this should be for that weren't around for the Thanos build up and the way they brought Thanos in was masterful.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I posted this on the AV Club comments section, but feel it's so undoubtedly the correct way for Marvel to go that I'll copy and paste it in to this thread as well:

The answer to this is so ridiculously obvious and simple that it amazes me that Feige hasn't realised it. And it can be summed up in four words:

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl-Verse.

So a run of films starring Doreen and Nancy, then Chipmunk-Hunk, Koi-Boy, and Brain Drain films, before a the major event revolve around The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe graphic novel.

Also - I fucking forgot about the Tippytoes movie! I'm a bleeding monster!*



*And I know, you're probably wondering what my feelings are about "Monkey Joe", and the short version is that they're complicated. But I feel it would be best to deal with them in the second Doreen and Nancy film, rather than giving him his own horrifically tragic film.

**And yes, what Doreen about defeating Doctor Doom in her very first appearance? Well, isn't that a great way to introduce the character? Have him seem rather pathetic and easy to defeat, but then come back after "Beats Up The Marvel Universe" epic and it turns out he is in face now incredibly insane and all but impossible to defeat?

[Funcrusher]

I think the real thinking behind at least some of those stories was possibly not so much "this bubble will never burst" as it was "we can never even suggest that this bubble will burst, as it's grown so big and gone on so long that it's crowded out almost all other genres of blockbuster so if it does burst, there's no longer anything left that can replace it"

That's basically the situation that Hollywood is in now as far as I can see. I was watching a 90's Tsai Ming Liang film recently and at one point a character is standing outside a cinema in central Taipei that has huge posters of Julia Roberts in The Pelican Brief. The purpose is to show the presence of American mass culture in Taiwan, but it just struck me that a world in which one of the biggest Hollywood movies of the year, a vehicle for its then biggest actress, designed to attract a mass audience, is a legal/courtroom thriller, no CGI, no spaceships, no mutants, which is based on a book that doesn't have pictures in it, seems almost unimaginable now. To an audience raised on capeshit, The Pelican Brief probably looks like Bela Tarr.

[madhair60]

The best thing about Thanos was the way they slowly introduced him with tiny Easter eggs here and there over what seemed like 5 or 10 years. The anticipation and build up slowly gaining until suddenly you have this 10 foot tall beast who can throw the Hulk about with that deep gravely Brolin voice. Even non comic fanboys got sucked in.

yeah and they even fucked that up by having him appear in Guardians of the Galaxy for an excitement-dampening bit of "er, weren't expecting that were you?!" subversion of expectations

[Old Nehamkin]

I think the villain in every one of these films should just be the same guy who keeps getting foiled and going "grr I'll get you next time!"

[The Culture Bunker]

I think the villain in every one of these films should just be the same guy who keeps getting foiled and going "grr I'll get you next time!"

I've always said Dr Claw would have his moment in the sun.

[checkoutgirl]

I think the villain in every one of these films should just be the same guy who keeps getting foiled and going "grr I'll get you next time!"

That's kind of what they were going for with Kang, wasn't it?

[checkoutgirl]

yeah and they even fucked that up by having him appear in Guardians of the Galaxy for an excitement-dampening bit of "er, weren't expecting that were you?!" subversion of expectations

Is that the one where he was sat on a floating chair on an asteroid in the middle of space for some reason? Because that's for me that is. Just a big lad sat on a floating chair in space for no apparent reason.

Maybe his spaceship had the "space" setting selected on his wallpaper. We might never know.

[Mr Vegetables]

I thought Thanos was rubbish; I don't understand why people are so invested in him. His plan is *so* stupid, but treated as if it is supposed to have real gravity.

People defend this by saying "he's supposed to be mad," but that's not a compelling motivation— and it's also not clear if it's even true; the movie does seem to suggest his stupid plan actually works and says something profound.

But, like. It doesn't even rise to the level of being a cardboard villain to me. When people say he's one of the most amazing villains in anything I just feel confused that's the consensus; like if people always said a tyre yard was the best bit of Venice

[madhair60]

I think in the context of the MCU it worked if you just engaged with the finale on the level you were supposed to, which is just AW LOOK COOL

If you think about any aspect of Endgame for more than one second it collapses. So don't

[Toki]

I thought Thanos was rubbish; I don't understand why people are so invested in him. His plan is *so* stupid, but treated as if it is supposed to have real gravity.

People defend this by saying "he's supposed to be mad," but that's not a compelling motivation— and it's also not clear if it's even true; the movie does seem to suggest his stupid plan actually works and says something profound.

But, like. It doesn't even rise to the level of being a cardboard villain to me. When people say he's one of the most amazing villains in anything I just feel confused that's the consensus; like if people always said a tyre yard was the best bit of Venice

His motivation wasn't 'he's mad', it was 'he's traumatised from what happened to his home planet' coupled with 'he's a massive control freak', which doesn't negate any of the criticism but is slightly more nuanced.

For what it's worth, I found Infinity War too tight with barely any room to breathe, and I had the opposite problem with Endgame, I found it far too flabby. I found both enjoyable enough to justify my time but I won't be going back to them. The only Avengers I found had the best balance was the first one. I wish Joss Whedon wasn't such a dickhead.

[dead-ced-dead]

I find with Marvel, the more old fashioned and simple things are the better. I really dislike Thor Ragnarok, but everyone and their mum seems to think it's some highpoint in the catalogue. To me, despite Cate Blanchett being lots of fun, it's just the same beige Marvel blah-ness, with the same steril, grey cinematography and bag of quips that we'd been served a thousand times.

The first Thor, however? Not a masterpiece, but a good clean cut superhero film where Thor learns to be humbled and gets to smooch his girl at the end. Thank you! I'll take half a dozen!

[madhair60]

I find with Marvel, the more old fashioned and simple things are the better. I really dislike Thor Ragnarok, but everyone and their mum seems to think it's some highpoint in the catalogue. To me, despite Cate Blanchett being lots of fun, it's just the same beige Marvel blah-ness, with the same steril, grey cinematography and bag of quips that we'd been served a thousand times.

The first Thor, however? Not a masterpiece, but a good clean cut superhero film where Thor learns to be humbled and gets to smooch his girl at the end. Thank you! I'll take half a dozen!

agreed

[Shaxberd]

it just struck me that a world in which one of the biggest Hollywood movies of the year, a vehicle for its then biggest actress, designed to attract a mass audience, is a legal/courtroom thriller, no CGI, no spaceships, no mutants, which is based on a book that doesn't have pictures in it, seems almost unimaginable now.

One of the biggest movies of 2023 was a three-hour epic about the Manhattan Project.

There's certainly a problem with movie studios preferring franchises and remakes to taking a chance on new stories, but people will still watch other stuff if you give them the option to.



Anyway -

Despite enjoying 'Phase 1' of the MCU I've struggled to keep up with it since. The appeal of accessibility to people who hadn't been reading the comics for 30 years fell when you now needed to have seen 30 hours of films to follow the latest one. They've had a good run of it but nothing can last forever. Alas, if Star Wars is any guide, Disney would rather squeeze that tit dry than figure out an elegant way to finish something off and leave it.

[Small Man Big Horse]

That's basically the situation that Hollywood is in now as far as I can see. I was watching a 90's Tsai Ming Liang film recently and at one point a character is standing outside a cinema in central Taipei that has huge posters of Julia Roberts in The Pelican Brief. The purpose is to show the presence of American mass culture in Taiwan, but it just struck me that a world in which one of the biggest Hollywood movies of the year, a vehicle for its then biggest actress, designed to attract a mass audience, is a legal/courtroom thriller, no CGI, no spaceships, no mutants, which is based on a book that doesn't have pictures in it, seems almost unimaginable now. To an audience raised on capeshit, The Pelican Brief probably looks like Bela Tarr.

I'd disagree that it's unimaginable, for one thing which The Pelican Brief was a big film with a big star that year it was only the 21st most successful film, and number one was Jurassic Park where the  main attraction was the cgi dinosaurs (even if they are only in it for a very short time). Plus this year Oppenheimer is currently the third biggest box office success, and while I've not seen it I gather that's largely just a lot of men having serious conversations, and the explosion part is a very minor aspect of the film.

While Marvel has been successful for a long period of time these things always tend to come in waves, we're all but certain to get a lot of films based on toys and video games thanks to the success of Barbie and Mario Bros., then they'll get round to doing another Star Wars which will lead to more sci-fi, and so on and so forth until about 2033 where thanks to climate change society will collapse and we all turn on each other like the violent savages we secretly pretend not to be.

Edit: Or what Shaxbeard said far more succinctly.

I find with Marvel, the more old fashioned and simple things are the better. I really dislike Thor Ragnarok, but everyone and their mum seems to think it's some highpoint in the catalogue. To me, despite Cate Blanchett being lots of fun, it's just the same beige Marvel blah-ness, with the same steril, grey cinematography and bag of quips that we'd been served a thousand times.

The first Thor, however? Not a masterpiece, but a good clean cut superhero film where Thor learns to be humbled and gets to smooch his girl at the end. Thank you! I'll take half a dozen!

I thought that too, and never quite understood the love the third one got. That said I think the fourth one was fantastic, though that could be due to my love for Jane Foster being Thor, and I only wish it had been even more faithful to the Jason Aaron comics it took the main plot from.

[Jerzy Bondov]

Honestly I don't want them to do Doctor Doom any more. Leave him, being amazing, in the comics. He can be a nice surprise for people who get into comics. 'Oh by the way the best Marvel villain isn't even in the films'.

In fact don't do any more films at all. Just do comics.

In fact do nothing. Nothing means anything.

[greenman]

The best thing about Thanos was the way they slowly introduced him with tiny Easter eggs here and there over what seemed like 5 or 10 years. The anticipation and build up slowly gaining until suddenly you have this 10 foot tall beast who can throw the Hulk about with that deep gravely Brolin voice. Even non comic fanboys got sucked in.

Kang they just gave him up early, sometimes multiple of him in one go. And he got squashed easily by an ant or something. It's like all the techniques and lessons they learnt went out the window.

I suspect it's because the producers and Fiege didn't want to repeat themselves. But there's a whole new generation of kids this should be for that weren't around for the Thanos build up and the way they brought Thanos in was masterful.

I don't think theres been too much wrong with Kang personally(beyond Majors potential offscreen misdeeds anyway),he's played the role well not just as a carton monster and of course we've not yet seen the versions likely to lead to a big climax.

I think the issue has tended to be that the MCU generally seems to be in too much of a rush to get to "big" stuff on the level of Infinity War rather than building up drama as well as it did previously, especially in the Russo bros films.

[madhair60]

did anyone see that fucking cringe Russo Bros tik tok with their cat called "box office" or something, responding to Scorsese posting his cat Oscar. fucking embarrassing. the Russo Bros fucking suck so hard

[13 schoolyards]

It feels like the first time around with the whole MCU Disney wasn't sure that throwing everyone together for a big epic film(s) was going to work, so they built up to it very slowly and made sure the lead in films still stood alone and there were plenty of off ramps if they got cold feet and wanted to pull back or call it off.

Once it turned out that not only it did work but it worked better than they expected, they just wanted to hurry things along and get to the next one and it didn't really matter if individual films were all that good because audiences had to go see all of them if they wanted to get the full impact of what it was all building up to. Then they forgot to have it build up to anything interesting.

You wouldn't say Disney's business model is to buy things that people like and slowly turn them into things people are sick of, but it does sometimes seem that way.

[Gulftastic]

Fuck all the multi hero epics and just make a film featuring Yelena and Kate Bishop.

[checkoutgirl]

Not only is the MCU demonstrably worse and diluted by multiple films and TV, it's been going on for 15 years now. That's plenty.

And people are complaining about woke which for ages I put down to right wing inceldom tendencies. But I'm starting to come round to it. They did put Thor with a 15 year old girl sidekick. They did do Thor Jane Foster. They did do a She Hulk. Cramming in the sisters at every opportunity. If they had been brilliant additions it would have helped but they weren't.

It's actually amusing to see them make as many mistakes as DC.

Secret Wars I think I got nearly one episode in before I'd had enough.

[bgmnts]

Is She-Hulk indicative of woke (whateverfuckthatmeans)? She-Hulk is a legit comic book character Marvel shat out ages ago.

[The Culture Bunker]

Is She-Hulk indicative of woke (whateverfuckthatmeans)? She-Hulk is a legit comic book character Marvel shat out ages ago.

Well, quite. I remember they shoehorned She-Hulk into the 90s Hulk cartoon to try and help flagging ratings.

[Memorex MP3]

Accidentally watched a couple of videos about the variety article by hardcore MCU nerds and it's wild to me how they uniformly seemed to think it should have been easy to get another decade out of multiverse bollocks and that the fall is entirely down to woke.

The second you start going deep into multiverse crap you remove basically all dramatic stakes. You kind of have no choice but to do more personal stories because you've suddenly totally devalued the broader strokes of every character as there will be an infinite number of similar characters.


I thought it was all a load of shite but it's remarkable how heavily Disney managed to milk it. Can remember my coworkers genuinely caring a lot about that endgame release, which must have been over 10 years after iron man, probably like 25 films in.

[13 schoolyards]

I sometimes think the correct response to all this should be "good work Marvel, it was amazing how you managed to drag the MCU out for so long and still end on a high note with Endgame". They've completely shat the bed since then, but pretty much everything before that was a big achievement and something that really did change the face of Hollywood.

I mean, imagine if they'd shut the whole thing down after Endgame and said "yeah, the MCU is done". It would have been seen as this incredible achievement (by fans of vast sums of money at least), instead of just another time when the suits didn't know when to stop and it fell in a heap.

[checkoutgirl]

I thought Thanos was rubbish; I don't understand why people are so invested in him. His plan is *so* stupid, but treated as if it is supposed to have real gravity.

I strongly disliked the studio take on his reason for mass murder/crumblies. He was worried about resources so he technically had an ethical reason. That's not a villain! Villains want to do bad things for bad reasons. The Marvel comics reason was Thanos was obsessed with the cosmic entity Death and thought killing trillions would impress her/it. That shit is way more fucked up. That's what a true dictator would do.

Kim Jong Un doesn't give a fuck about people starving when he has an expensive rocket to build. Jeff Bezos doesn't care about overworked and underpaid employees when he has an expensive rocket to build. Why would Thanos?

[Famous Mortimer]

And people are complaining about woke which for ages I put down to right wing inceldom tendencies. But I'm starting to come round to it. They did put Thor with a 15 year old girl sidekick. They did do Thor Jane Foster. They did do a She Hulk. Cramming in the sisters at every opportunity. If they had been brilliant additions it would have helped but they weren't.

This argument is strange. If the shows had been better, you wouldn't have complained about them being "woke"? What does the quality of the product have to do with the political intentions?

There still seem to be plenty of movies and TV shows with white male protagonists. Is there an amount which wouldn't have you making this "woke" criticism? 75%? 90%?

[BritishHobo]

The thing with Marvel is the (MCU movie) plots and villains were all so formulaic and dull, and so it makes sense that that carried over into the larger plots. They're incapable of raising an interesting moral conundrum (Civil War, the Skrull/Kree thing) without it ultimately ending up as 'no this guy is the bad one and now you have to punch him enough times'. Which is fine in an individual film, but not enough to build an epic saga encompassing ten TV shows and thirty films. The way Scarlet Witch became such a generic baddie in Dr Strange 2 was astonishing. And nobody seems to give a fuck about Kang because it's just Thanos again with a slight gimmick. I know people love Dr Doom, so I hope they learn and don't give him the same dull genero-villain treatment.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Not only is the MCU demonstrably worse and diluted by multiple films and TV, it's been going on for 15 years now. That's plenty.

And people are complaining about woke which for ages I put down to right wing inceldom tendencies. But I'm starting to come round to it. They did put Thor with a 15 year old girl sidekick. They did do Thor Jane Foster. They did do a She Hulk. Cramming in the sisters at every opportunity. If they had been brilliant additions it would have helped but they weren't.

It's actually amusing to see them make as many mistakes as DC.

Secret Wars I think I got nearly one episode in before I'd had enough.

Ugh, that's a really shitty post you made there, and you know I like you as a poster. But as has been said before, She-Hulk's been around for ages now (and the John Byrne 80's run is considered an absolute classic), and Jane Foster as Thor was at the centre of Jason Aaron's highly praised run, which was both critically acclaimed and a huge fan favourite. Thor has had a whole load of sidekicks over the years as well (including his three granddaughters) so what's the problem with having a 15 year old sidekick? All of those you mention were a lot more entertaining than a whole bunch of films / series featuring male characters, and I'm really surprised that you posted such crap, and would be if anyone else on CaB had as well.

[checkoutgirl]

This argument is strange. If the shows had been better, you wouldn't have complained about them being "woke"? What does the quality of the product have to do with the political intentions?

There still seem to be plenty of movies and TV shows with white male protagonists. Is there an amount which wouldn't have you making this "woke" criticism? 75%? 90%?

I said I was starting to come round to it. Starting. As in at the beginning stages of. Not the ending. The first stages. Different to the last part. Open to the either argument for sure.

That's what can be so annoying and frustrating about the argument. Marvel is...at the end of the day I sympathise with Scorcese more and more. It's all sort of a bit shite. And it's getting shiter.

Never been arsed with the debate to be honest.