DrunkonDuty
he/him
EDIT: TL;DR just read the last paragraph.
I've enjoyed pretty much all the Marvel stuff. There are some poor movies in the bunch. Iron Man 2 & 3, and Thor 2 are completely forgettable. Age of Ultron gets a fail because it set up to do one thing (paralleling Tony's daddy angst with Ultron's) and then... just didn't. But otherwise the MCU movies are fair to good.
But back to phase 4. All enjoyable, big tent, sfx extravaganzas. I agree with @Lanefan that Eternals is the most likely to give us the goods going forward. I say most likely because I never rule out executive meddling and the ability of producers to screw stuff up. But, absent that, Eternals has a good cast of characters and many cool plot threads. I liked that it was a family melodrama with super powers. That doesn't make it unique in the MCU. Shang-chi and Black Widow are also family dramas. Hell, Avengers was a family drama; found family in its case. But Eternals did family drama in that big, soap-opera way. I suspect that if I was familiar with Chinese soap opera I would see a lot of parallels/nods/shared tropes.
For my money Multiverse of Madness is the weakest of Phase 4. Not bad. Big, dumb fun. Very Sam Raimi. And yes I have my issues with the villain of the movie. Please see the Dr. Strange 2 thread if you want to hear them. (No, I wouldn't bother either.) Put me in the club that assumes the multiverse is the MCU's way to introduce all the new characters. Hot take, I know.
As for 2 Spider Man movies... my cup runneth over. I love Spidey. Yes Spidey 3 requires both Peter and Strange to be utter bloody idiots to kick the plot into gear. <sigh> But the other universe characters were all so good that it goes some way to making up for that poor writing. Spidey 2 was great. It was very Spidey.
Shang-Chi was a good all the way up to when they switched to the kaiju battle. It did not suit the rest of the movie. But otherwise it has good characters, good fight scenes, good plot. I like that our heroes get dragooned by the Sorcerer Supreme right at the end. They gotta run off and do...something. It was a real "no time to explain, get in the lama!" moment. I'm intrigued enough to find out what that something is when the next movie arrives. Also, who said Trevor was unnecessary? I loved Trevor and the double butted wombat or whatever it was.
Black Widow, for obvious reasons, is not going to give us much going forward. Not nothing, thank-you Florence Pugh as the new Widow. But it is a requiem for Natasha. And a good movie in it's own right.
Phase 4 is already shaping up to be much more focussed on giving us a shared ultra-villain (Kang according to the scuttlebutt but does anyone else think the Celestials would be a better choice?) than Phase 1 was. I'm sure most (all?) of us know Phase 1 was not originally intended to all come to a point. It was something that just... happened. It feels like Phase 4 is being given more guidance than that.
I've enjoyed pretty much all the Marvel stuff. There are some poor movies in the bunch. Iron Man 2 & 3, and Thor 2 are completely forgettable. Age of Ultron gets a fail because it set up to do one thing (paralleling Tony's daddy angst with Ultron's) and then... just didn't. But otherwise the MCU movies are fair to good.
But back to phase 4. All enjoyable, big tent, sfx extravaganzas. I agree with @Lanefan that Eternals is the most likely to give us the goods going forward. I say most likely because I never rule out executive meddling and the ability of producers to screw stuff up. But, absent that, Eternals has a good cast of characters and many cool plot threads. I liked that it was a family melodrama with super powers. That doesn't make it unique in the MCU. Shang-chi and Black Widow are also family dramas. Hell, Avengers was a family drama; found family in its case. But Eternals did family drama in that big, soap-opera way. I suspect that if I was familiar with Chinese soap opera I would see a lot of parallels/nods/shared tropes.
For my money Multiverse of Madness is the weakest of Phase 4. Not bad. Big, dumb fun. Very Sam Raimi. And yes I have my issues with the villain of the movie. Please see the Dr. Strange 2 thread if you want to hear them. (No, I wouldn't bother either.) Put me in the club that assumes the multiverse is the MCU's way to introduce all the new characters. Hot take, I know.
As for 2 Spider Man movies... my cup runneth over. I love Spidey. Yes Spidey 3 requires both Peter and Strange to be utter bloody idiots to kick the plot into gear. <sigh> But the other universe characters were all so good that it goes some way to making up for that poor writing. Spidey 2 was great. It was very Spidey.
Shang-Chi was a good all the way up to when they switched to the kaiju battle. It did not suit the rest of the movie. But otherwise it has good characters, good fight scenes, good plot. I like that our heroes get dragooned by the Sorcerer Supreme right at the end. They gotta run off and do...something. It was a real "no time to explain, get in the lama!" moment. I'm intrigued enough to find out what that something is when the next movie arrives. Also, who said Trevor was unnecessary? I loved Trevor and the double butted wombat or whatever it was.
Black Widow, for obvious reasons, is not going to give us much going forward. Not nothing, thank-you Florence Pugh as the new Widow. But it is a requiem for Natasha. And a good movie in it's own right.
Phase 4 is already shaping up to be much more focussed on giving us a shared ultra-villain (Kang according to the scuttlebutt but does anyone else think the Celestials would be a better choice?) than Phase 1 was. I'm sure most (all?) of us know Phase 1 was not originally intended to all come to a point. It was something that just... happened. It feels like Phase 4 is being given more guidance than that.
