Marvel's Multiverse of Maddening Returns

[Rhom]

3 minutes ago, dbunting said:

I am a casual superhero fan. Never into the comics, my older brother was, my intro was the afternoon cartoon shows. The shows I liked were X-men, Spiderman, then  Batman, Fantastic Four... and who cares after that. Not counting Thunder Cats, He Man, Transformers in this supe group

So when a movie w Spiderman comes out, I am automatically interested, X-men, count me in. Even FF as weak as the movies have been, I still watched and somewhat enjoyed them because I know them, grew up w them.  These characters movies have to make me not want to see it, looking at you Dark Pheonix, otherwise they always get the benefit of the doubt.

I had never heard of Blue Beatle or Capt Marvel growing up...  These other heroes have to earn me wanting to see them, tell others about them, or watch again streaming. So those movies have to be better than Spiderman for me to like it as much as Spiderman, if that makes sense. Iron Man fits this bill. I knew next to nothing about him until the movie came out. It was a great movie, IMO, and I was in, was going to see everything he was in after that.

Fans like me are built into certain super hero movies and not others.

 

You basically just described me.

[dbunting]

1 minute ago, Rhom said:

You basically just described me.

Try one more thing then. I watched a lot of those shows every day, but as an adult, I don't watch any animated stuff. Watched some Simpsons, Toy Story movies but that's really it. Keep trying to watch The Clone Wars or Rebels but just can't do it.

[Martell Spy]

I like the characters involved (I loved the Ms. Marvel TV show), but I'm just wary of Marvel movies right now as I've been burned several times. And going to the theatre is much more of an investment than watching on TV. I wasn't going to make the effort without good reviews. The last Marvel movie I liked was Dr. Strange 2. 

I don't have the same issues with the TV shows. I've yet to run into a Marvel TV show I don't like to some degree. And there's less investment involved. It gives me more content, actually.

I think they are saying the right things about turning the Marvel ship around. But going to a Marvel movie at this particular moment sounds about equally wise to going to one of the last DC movies of the old universe that isn't Batman.

[Rhom]

1 hour ago, dbunting said:

Try one more thing then. I watched a lot of those shows every day, but as an adult, I don't watch any animated stuff. Watched some Simpsons, Toy Story movies but that's really it. Keep trying to watch The Clone Wars or Rebels but just can't do it.

What If? is the only recent animated thing I have made it all the way through.

Oh... and I did watch a few episodes of the HeMan show on Netflix or whatever it was.

[Poobah]

3 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

I just think that Disney has over saturated the market via Disney Plus, and the fact that they’re releasing too many movies a year.  These no longer feel like special events. 

Yeah for me this is the big one though perhaps not for the same reason. Personally it got to a point where it just felt like fucking homework to keep up with it all... and that's the insidious thing about whole shared universe concept that once it clicked in my mind that along with the general fatigue of it all that set my interest plummeting: the idea (or even the presumption) that I can be made to buy/watch anything via the power of FOMO because of course there'll be some breadcrumbs relevant to the meta-plot and/or set up for the next thing etc. And it worked... until they overplayed their hand - a couple of movies a year is one thing but a spam of movies and tv shows is another, especially when they're feeling less compelling and less able to stand on their own merits.

[IlyaP]

6 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Except her tv show was actually pretty decent, the main actress is good, it’s well made. There is nothing especially wrong with it. 
 

But nobody watched it, maybe because there really wasn’t a big audience for it.

And! And and and! And she cited Billy Joel's River of Dreams as being part of the inspiration in the Ms. Marvel comic she's writing, and that just made me so happy, to see her discussing music theory in relation to comics. 

(Also, Billy Joel's music rules.)

[IlyaP]

5 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I still think that their biggest mistake was the TV shows, period. Having to incorporate so much lore and story and intertwining and make it so that you have to watch Loki to understand Ant-Man and you have to watch FaWS to understand Black Widow and all of this - it's just too fucking much, and the weight of all the bullshit came crashing down. 

Weren't the TV shows a by-product of Covid? 

[sifth]

47 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Weren't the TV shows a by-product of Covid? 

No, they were in the works before Covid. They wanted to use them to promote Disney Plus.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

1 hour ago, sifth said:

No, they were in the works before Covid. They wanted to use them to promote Disney Plus.

Covid likely accelerated things. It definitely threw their movie release schedule into a blender. 

[A True Kaniggit]

I watched The Marvels. 
 

My quick thoughts. 

Spoiler

The Flerken scene was awesome. 

PA System: “Attention SABRE personnel, let the cats eat you” (Or something like that) Hilarious. 
 

Bad guy ending was terrible. Captain Marvel was defeated pretty much like Lonestar from Spaceballs. She fell for the oldest trick in the book. (Ummmm, at least take off the bracer from the bad guy before freeing her?)

But then the bad guy exploded herself for no discernible reason .

Kamala Khan was amazing. Maybe one too many crying hug shesh’s with her family.

Did not like the singing planet part. I cringed the whole time.

Something the movie didn’t do that I thought was a huge miss: Multiple times we saw the bad guy absorb Captain Marvel’s powers with her bracelet. I 100% expected that at one point Captain Marvel would put her powers into Kamala’s bracelet so she could hit the bad guy really hard. Booo. Booo that this obvious thing didn’t happen.
 

Edit: More thoughts are added as the develop.

 

Edited November 18, 2023 by A True Kaniggit

[Heartofice]

11 hours ago, Kalbear said:

But that's the point of the GotG comparison - none of those were recognizable to all but a very hardcore set of people. Same is true for Black Panther, honestly - it's recognizable but he's been a second-tier hero that comes and goes in the Marvel universes all the time. You don't need to have someone who has brand name recognition like Spidey or Batman or Superman; you just need some good stories and interesting villainy there. That's it!

 

To be fair I wasn’t really referring to how previously recognisable they were or how established they were in comics, but I wasn’t very clear. I just meant, as a character, are the new characters as compelling, do they have qualities you can easily point out and identify with. Are they marketable, are they unique, do kids want to get toys of these characters?

 

11 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Shang-Chi is probably the best example of this, where he probably could have done fine if they didn't need that stupid ending

Shang Chi is probably a perfect example of what I’m saying. Even if that movie was better, and it was fine, he’s still just a cookie cutter kung fu guy, doesn’t even have a recognisable costume or interesting powers. The actor is ok, but the character fits no obvious archetype you can hang your hat on. He’s just a kung fu guy. 
 

The Eternals are just some super people with a bunch of powers. There is nothing there to build a franchise out of. Just seems a dumb decision to release a movie like that. Again you could get away with these movies if Phase 4 ALSO had good movies and a core set of heroes to work with. But instead they ditched the core heroes, and didn’t replace them with something good.

Maybe they got unlucky with Black Panther, but even then he was never going to be the foundation of a whole franchise, and any plans to have Captain Marvel at the centre seem very misguided, especially now.

I think they could have gotten away with the constant vomiting of content, if they have maintained a strong central foundation. Instead they just threw shit at the wall, hoping something would stick. But when everything new is not as good as the stuff that came before, it’s going to lead to trouble.

Edited November 18, 2023 by Heartofice

[Heartofice]

And thinking about it, it’s either that Marvel didn’t really have a plan for how to replace The Avengers.. or, they really are Cartman and actually thought they could just do female / diverse versions and nobody would notice or care. Every single one of the original avengers got a diverse, almost always female replacement, which is just bizarre. 
 

Ironman > Ironheart

Captain America > The Falcon

Thor > Jane Foster

Hulk > She hulk

Hawkeye > Hawkeyes daughter 

Black Widow > Black Widows sister

You have to wonder if Disney really thought this would be a viable Avengers line up in the future , or was it all for laughs?  What did they think was going to happen to the teenage boy audience when they did that?
 

I’ve no idea if this was the plan, I sense it was just all highly chaotic and unplanned. But not having a plan for the future seems crazy 

Edited November 18, 2023 by Heartofice

[sifth]

6 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Covid likely accelerated things. It definitely threw their movie release schedule into a blender. 

Ohh I agree. For example they were forced to push Black Widow back by an entire year, despite having finished the film. The worst delay was GotG vol 3 though; because of the firing of James Gunn, the rehiring of him, Gunn agreeing to make the Suicide Squad film first and naturally Covid. A lot of people forget this, but GotG vol 3 was suppose to come out in 2019 originally. Gunn however views it as kind of a good thing it didn't, because the scene at the end of End Game, where Thor flies off with the guardians was shot, while he was fired and Thor was not in the script he wrote for vol 3

[IlyaP]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Maybe they got unlucky with Black Panther, but even then he was never going to be the foundation of a whole franchise, and any plans to have Captain Marvel at the centre seem very misguided, especially now.

Chadwick was, as far as I understand it, meant to replace Evans as the new leader of the Avengers after Endgame. And his death threw a giant wrench into the works.

[IlyaP]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Hawkeye > Hawkeyes daughter 

*Not Clint Barton's daughter. Kate Bishop is not related to Clint.

(Sorry, don't meant to sound like a jerk if it sounds that way - Kate's simply not a flesh and blood relative of Clint's, is all.)

[Jaxom 1974]

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

*Not Clint Barton's daughter. Kate Bishop is not related to Clint.

(Sorry, don't meant to sound like a jerk if it sounds that way - Kate's simply not a flesh and blood relative of Clint's, is all.)

Daughter. Not daughter. What does it matter? Obviously, she's a girl. Therefore icky. And directly responsible for ruining absolutely everything about what made the MCU special. I mean, that's the message I'm getting.

[Heartofice]

6 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

 I mean, that's the message I'm getting.

I mean that's the message you wanted to hear.

[Jaxom 1974]

24 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I mean that's the message you wanted to hear.

Pretty much what you're bringing to the table. Again. 

[Heartofice]

28 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Pretty much what you're bringing to the table. Again. 

I dunno, you seem to continually try and misrepresent what I’m saying, like how you seem to think I hate everything, when I’m constantly posting about movies and shows I like.
 

If your only take from everything I said was ‘Eww girls’ then that’s up to you.

[williamjm]

One thing I've noticed in the discussion is that we feel that there have been too many MCU TV series in a short space of time. I agree that it does feel that way, which is slightly odd considering that we are almost at the end of November and so far we've had a grand total of 12 episodes of MCU content in 2023. Maybe the perception of there being so much content is due to 2021/22 where there were over 50 episodes in about 18 months?