Aren’t there people who think the guy who did the second movie in the most recent Star Wars movie is really good, and that movie stunk.
You mean the guy who also directed Looper, Brick, and Knives Out? Some of the best films of the last couple of decades?
Yea, that guy. I think he butchered the Star Wars movie, but he does have some good work in his resume.
I do think recent MCU movies are trying to be as comedic as they are adventurous, and that doesn’t always work.
Knives Out was really good, Brick was okay, Looper has some problems if you think about it too closely…but calling them “some of the best films of the last couple of decades” seems like a stretch.
Everybody take cover! It’s a TLJ drive-by!!!
A scene I love for it’s pure cinema impact. Just gorgeous.
A scene I hate for how it opened so many questions about past Star Wars space battles. Just dumb.
It is beautiful, and dramatic, and the rest didn’t bother me.
Ugh, Keep the Star Wars stuff in the Star Wars thread, please.
Haven’t watched Thor 4 yet, but I feel the MCU post-endgame seems to be going in much the direction that people feared.
A fair amount of OK content, but a huge amount of stuff which is completely forgettable and not particularly interesting other than as a summer popcorn flick/series. Unlike when the MCU found its grove, where I felt that there was a real incentive to follow the films, I feel there is very little real reason to go and watch anything MCU now, unless it reviews well. Very unsure what they’re looking to do now?
Representation? For sure. That is very clear with new Cap, America Chavez, Ms Marvel, Eternals, Shang-Chi, Echo, etc. No question that this is a big focus for the MCU going forward. And it’s great when done well as in Black Panther. But they need to do better than just throwing a non-white actor in front of a camera and give them an actually good film/show to act in.
The multiverse? I was worried this would turn into a disjointed, low-stakes mess like most other examples of time-travelling/mutiverse attempts, and I’ve yet to see anything to convince me otherwise. Granted - maybe Feige has a grand master plan that will start coming together in future and make all of these different parts worth watching, but if so they need to start doing actually good movies again. Currently there is nothing in Phase #4 that would even get inside my Top-10 of MCU movies (I guess “No Way Home” might just squeak inside, but I’m not as impressed with that one as some people are).
I’ve actually reached the point where I’m not looking forward to any future MCU property. Loki S2, maybe? Hiddleston was great in S1, and my kids will definitely want to see that as well. We like Ms Marvel, so the Marvels maybe also. But apart from that, I think it’s only a Spider-Man movie (or very good word of mouth) that’d pull us into the MCU cinema at this point.
I’m hopeful for Wakanda Forever.
That was the formula in the beginning of the MCU though? Do solo movies and establish the characters properly, and only then start tying them together. They partly cleared the board with Endgame and are now redoing that setup + writing out what remained of the old guard. (And obviously using the TV series for it too, not just the movies).
If you look at the dependency chain of their post-Endgame character / plot point introductions, they haven’t really started tying things together at all. I think the only actual connections are Black Widow → Hawkeye and WandaVision → Dr. Strange 2?
(I guess one could argue that the events of Loki had a major universe-wide effect on everything they’re doing from now on).
The thing that is very different here is that in phase 1 they basically used the Iron-Man movies as the trunk and merged branches to it pretty quickly. Here they have nothing like that yet. I thought the idea would have been to do that via Dr. Strange, but it was not at all the direction Multiverse of Madness went.
Very unsure what they’re looking to do now?
Given the amount of younger superheroes they set up at the end of phase 3 / start of phase 4, it seems pretty obvious that they’re setting up for that to be one of the ensemble movie cores.
Re: “Where is the MCU headed now?” - Everyone knows the answer to this. It’s gonna be a giant team movie, with a vast budget, a bunch of stars, and an even longer list of beloved Marvel characters than the first Avengers movie.
Which is to say, we’re getting X-men. But that’s the boring answer, because we’ve seen X-men movies before. What people instead generally mean by this question is either, “What events are we seeing the groundwork laid for in the various Marvel movies and TV shows?” or “What event are we getting that would be as logistically audacious and as longed-for by fans as the first Avengers movie?”
And we know the answer to the first question as well - or rather answers, because multiple things are being teased. We’re getting time travel shenanigans with Kang. We’re getting a secret team headed by Madame Hydra and featuring US Agent. We’re getting a continuation of the Kree/Skrull storyline. And we’re getting Young Avengers, or at least something like it.
But what about the second question? When are we going to hear Marvel announce a single project that gets as big a collective gasp out of fans as, “They are actually doing Avengers?”
The answer to that, though, is probably, “There will never be a moment like that again.” Not because Marvel won’t try - the betting right now is that in a decade or so they’ll do a mega-event branded as Secret Wars. Rather, it’s because most of the low-hanging, universally beloved fruit has already hit the big screen. There’s no single thing fans agree needs to be done next. Any particular choice - Galactus, say - will find some fans saying “Naw, he sucks, and we had him already.”
It’s also, paradoxically, because modern-day Marvel can do anything. At the moment, with Marvel ruling Hollywood, there’s no project that’s impossible. If they wanted to make a movie with twice the number of characters as Infinity War/Endgame, no one doubts that they could. And there’s no character or concept so esoteric or niche that they can’t afford to just go ahead and do it - they’ve made movies out of Ant-man and The Eternals, for crying out loud. But when you can do literally anything, any particular thing you do seems less impressive. (There’s a parallel here with multiverse fiction.) I can’t think of any Marvel property out there now they could possibly announce where my reaction would be surprise and awe rather than, “I guess I figured they’d get around to that eventually.”
The advent of Marvel on Disney + opened the door for Marvel to do stuff beyond their mainstream movies and they have taken advantage of that to give us something different. Do you believe that Ms Marvel would have worked as a major motion picture? Myself, I am happy that they are branching out and exploring so many different aspects.
They don’t have the rights anymore but if they announced a Micronauts film I’d explode with shock and excitement.
This is a fair point. I’m just disappointed in that I was assuming Ms. Marvel was going to be an ongoing series. Certainly the structure and content of this season implied that to me. Also, if this season is the only season it does mean the crappy Clandestine plotline ate up a huge chunk of the show, to its detriment. That makes me sad.
Basically, I have to adjust my expectations for the Disney MCU shows - they are not tv series in the way I’m used to, but are limited series. I wish Disney was more clear about managing expectations and I also have concerns about Disney “milking” these series as fodder for movies - I would prefer the shows exist due to their own creative merit, and any franchise building component is a bonus (in my ideal world, which does not exist.)
Which makes me wonder about upcoming She-Hulk. They could do the “superhuman lawyer” TPBs in one season, which is maybe what they are going to do, and that’s probably appropriate for that character. For Ms. Marvel, I had hoped for more.
@WhollySchmidt I guess I have hope for BP2 as well, though I’ve soured a bit on Wright during the pandemic. And it’s basically going back to square 1, with Boseman gone.
I think there is a big difference between the state of the MCU then and now, though. The MCU films back then were actually good. Iron Man is an excellent film. Captain America and Iron Man 2 were solid blockbuster fare. And they came together fairly quickly in the Avengers (as you say, the used IM as a turnk and merged quickly).
In contrast, phase 4 has had 5 films (I’ll give Black Widow a pass, as that really has nothing to do with Phase 4), and no less than 6 TV series, most of which has been watchable, but generally… pretty middle of the road. I don’t think it’s just the “collective gasp” that @HumanTon alludes to - personally, I didn’t care for the Avengers as characters (I prefer the X-Men, to the extent that I read Marvel comics) - what made me want to watch the Avengers was that there had been a couple of great movies with great characters, and I looked forward to seeing those characters clash and come together in what was promising to be a blockbuster. Which was what it delivered.
Exactly the thing I did not feel when Justice League rolled around. And pretty much how I don’t feel about the MCU now. Ms Marvel + Captain Marvel? Yes. Shang-Chi and Spider-Man? Any of the Eternals with anyone else? Thor with any of the new cast? I literally couldn’t care less. And I can definitely see the same with a lot of the people I know. I watched the first 24-25 films with my sons + the first couple of series. Moon Knight? Zero interest. Dr Strange 2? Zero interest. We have been watching Ms Marvel after I managed to cajole them into it, and they enjoy that, but I doubt we’ll watch Thor in the cinema. Maybe that’s superhero fatigue… but I’m not convinced. I think it’s more that the quality feels as if it is increasingly being exchanged for quantity.
Or to put it another way - it feels a lot like the MCU is going in the same direction as the comics, where you follow the few heroes that interest you (e.g., Ms Marvel → Captain Marvel or Wakanda → Iron Heart → Wakanda series or Spider-Man or the Sorcerers or the Cosmics or I guess whatever Moon Knight is going to be about) and then you generally don’t bother with the rest. And then, every once in a while there’ll be a crossover crisis and then I guess Disney will hope you’ll catch up on the other related content. Except, by that time you need to sit through 50+ hrs of content of very varying quality and… I doubt most people will bother.
Well, maybe it’s just Dr Strange 2 blues hitting me. I just recently watched that one, and I’m still trying to figure out why I bothered.
P.S: I think it says a lot about most of the Phase 4 output, that it’s best parts has generally been the non-superhero parts.
I’m hoping that putting Wright front-and-center was never the plan. I like her character but she doesn’t seem like a good fit for the mantle of Black Panther. Give it to M’Baku or Okoye or a mutliversal Killmonger (or go against what they said from the start and just recast T’Challa).
M’Baku would be an interesting choice, though it’d take Wakanda in a completely different direction than under T’Challa (at least if they stay true to his character). We’ll see this November, I guess.
I can’t imagine any replacement not taking it in a different direction!
I would say Shuri could step in with not much change to their original plans (i.e., Wakanda becoming more global). Okoye too, simply in terms of her wanting to “honor T’Chala’s memory” or some such rot. M’Baku would be placing an isolationist, undiplomatic Black Panther on the throne. It would make zero sense for him to continue T’Chala’s policies - he quite literally hates everything Shuri stands for.
For that reason alone (and because we know Ironheart appears in BP2 - which presumably involves some connection with Wakanda’s outrach program), I’m pretty sure it won’t be M’Baku.