What do you think of Marvel post-Endgame?

[Hussar]

A further thought about super hero burn out.

I'm not so much burned out by comic book movies They're all different enough, for me, that it's okay. That doesn't faze me too much. What I am burned out of though is the Post Modern take on the genre we get every couple of months. Things like The Boys, or Guardians of Justice or the Umbrella Academy (although I do like that one Sue me, I'm not always consistent)

Look, I get it. Everyone loves Alan Moore and they all want to show how much everyone would suck if they actually got super powers. But, y'know what? It's been done to death. People suck. Ok, great. Showing me, show after show after show about how much people suck is far too close to the real world for my light entertainment, thank you very much.

Can we please let these types of shows die for a little while? What's wrong with a bit of "Hey, here are the heroes, and they're going to help people because, well, they're generally pretty good people"? Even something like Civil War was fine, AFAIC, because well, all the characters are still basically heroes. I don't even mind anti-hero stuff where the good guy isn't all that good.

But, can we please stop banging the drum that people are all selfish naughty words? Just for a little while?

 

[Argyle King]

Which ones did you have in mind? The first five MCU movies were:

• Iron Man (2008) - Great
• The Incredible Hulk (2008) - Not great
• Iron Man 2 (2010) - Not great
• Thor (2011) - fun, but, not exactly rocking the world
• Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) - Great

So, to me, the first movies before Avengers were mostly pretty meh. I did just do an MCU rewatch (mostly because I just got Disney+ and spent a couple of months on it ) and none of the movies were bad. But, that being said, most of them are fun, popcorn movies and not a whole lot else.

Which, to me, is fine. They're popcorn, big tent movies. It's what it says on the tin, and that's what you get.

Iron Man and Captain America were the two which came to mind. In the case of Cap, the movie manages to be both a prequel and a sequel -while also being a good movie on its own.

Winter Soldier did a good job of addressing what it's like to be a soldier coming home to a country he no longer recognizes; addressing corruption in the govt; and being simultaneously a Cap movie and a Black Widow movie.

I would agree that some movies weren't great, but even the not-so-good ones (usually) paid attention to small details to help the overall story fit together. That includes finding ways to take characters which have a wide variety of power levels in the comics and present them in a cinematic universe in a way where they're all at least somewhat in the same ballpark of usefulness for a mission.

Edit: In contrast, Captain Marvel was introduced as just being immediately the best at everything -and also having gotten her powers in a way which was ridiculously easy, but that apparently nobody had ever considered trying before (or considered trying again afterwards).

So then other characters need to ramp up to meet that. Eventually, everyone becomes so juiced that they need to be written as being kinda morons to ever fail in a way which pushes the plot forward. Dr. Strange MoM is especially egregious at this during several points of the movie.

 

[Rune]

Edit: In contrast, Captain Marvel was introduced as just being immediately the best at everything -and also having gotten her powers in a way which was ridiculously easy, but that apparently nobody had ever considered trying before (or considered trying again afterwards).

I’m not going to argue that Captain Marvel was the best film Marvel has to offer, but I have to wonder if you and I even watched the same movie. In the version I saw, it took Danvers the entire film to finally break through her Kree conditioning to become better than everyone else.

And getting blasted by an exploding infinity stone-powered engine so badly that you require an infusion of alien blood to survive strikes me as being neither an easy way to gain superpowers, nor easy to duplicate. In contrast, Captain America and Hulk (to name two from Phase 1) both got their powers comparatively pretty easily. And Thor was born with his.

 

[Argyle King]

I’m not going to argue that Captain Marvel was the best film Marvel has to offer, but I have to wonder if you and I even watched the same movie. In the version I saw, it took Danvers the entire film to finally break through her Kree conditioning to become better than everyone else.

And getting blasted by an exploding infinity stone-powered engine so badly that you require an infusion of alien blood to survive strikes me as being neither an easy way to gain superpowers, nor easy to duplicate. In contrast, Captain America and Hulk (to name two from Phase 1) both got their powers comparatively pretty easily. And Thor was born with his.

Hooking a power source to an infinity stone and causing it to discharge powers seems like it would be something that advanced technology could duplicate after it was seen to work.

In most other instances, tampering with a stone like that -or even so much as touching a stone- kills pretty much everyone else. But she survives because

To be fair that should also be true of radiation and a bunch of other things used in comic movies, but it seemed a bit forced in how it was presented in this case.

As far as the Kree conditioning, my perception was that it was a somewhat lazy exploration of gender stereotypes:

•Emotions bad
•Women are emotional, so you suck
•repeated flashbacks and events to show how virtually every guy she had ever met was toxic
•...wait, your emotions are actually the thing that makes you better, and all the military training you had before was wrong

I found the movie to be a weird contrast to most everything else being put out at that point. In a lot of ways, the movie seemed intentionally designed to go against most of what had been established about the setting by other movies from the phases leading up to Endgame.

 

[ART!]

The first five MCU movies were:

• Iron Man (2008) - Great
• The Incredible Hulk (2008) - Not great
• Iron Man 2 (2010) - Not great
• Thor (2011) - fun, but, not exactly rocking the world
• Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) - Great

I'm not sure it's fair to include The Incredible Hulk, because (if I'm remembering and quickly checking things right) Marvel Studios didn't have the kind of control over it that they had over the other films on that list.

 

[Morrus]

I'm not sure it's fair to include The Incredible Hulk,

'Fair' to who? I think Disney will be fine!

 

[wicked cool]

....well, when you put it like that, it's pretty easy!

Hey, stupid Hollywood people! Just make movies, you know, BUT BETTER! Do the stuff that's good, and more ... and the stuff that sucks?

Stop doing that.

if only we had that power. so many franchises would have been so much better with better plots/directors

 

[billd91]

In most other instances, tampering with a stone like that -or even so much as touching a stone- kills pretty much everyone else. But she survives because

To be fair that should also be true of radiation and a bunch of other things used in comic movies, but it seemed a bit forced in how it was presented in this case.

Why would it seem forced in this case? Given the frequency of accidental supergenesis from events that should be deadly in comics, why would it seem forced at all?

As far as the Kree conditioning, my perception was that it was a somewhat lazy exploration of gender stereotypes:

•Emotions bad
•Women are emotional, so you suck
•repeated flashbacks and events to show how virtually every guy she had ever met was toxic
•...wait, your emotions are actually the thing that makes you better, and all the military training you had before was wrong

Lazy? I know a number of women who watched it who felt a lot of it was timely and right on the nose. It doesn't have to be extremely deep and heavy to hit some really sore spots in 2019.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Why would it seem forced in this case? Given the frequency of accidental supergenesis from events that should be deadly in comics, why would it seem forced at all?

Yeah, that seems very much an odd complaint.

 

[Argyle King]

Why would it seem forced in this case? Given the frequency of accidental supergenesis from events that should be deadly in comics, why would it seem forced at all?


Lazy? I know a number of women who watched it who felt a lot of it was timely and right on the nose. It doesn't have to be extremely deep and heavy to hit some really sore spots in 2019.

What can I say? Different experiences

You know people who felt it hit the nail on the head. I know people who felt it didn't (and that other movies -such as Black Panther's portrayal of female characters- did a better job of addressing those issues). Carol spends her whole movie fighting against stereotypes, just to find her power by embracing it. She then follows that up in her next appearance in the MCU by adopting an attitude which barely differs from the toxic a-hole guys that her whole movie's character arc spent rebuking.

That's all also layered over what I said previously: her movie seemingly designed to go against the grain of everything else that was being established around that time.

As far as forced, it's hard to quantify feel. That's simply how it came across to me. It seemed like a lot of ideas concerning story and character development were rushed so as to hurry up and fit the character into the MCU before the fight with Thanos.

Edit: I think part of it might be what I've said already. The movie appears to violate what had already been established as how things usually work in-setting. That by itself isn't necessarily wrong. Other characters and movies have done so; however, there is typically at least some barebones explanation given to explain why. In that case there isn't. There could have been some connection made between Carol being blasted by the stone and how MCU Wanda received her powers via manipulation of a stone. There could have been any number of reasons but there weren't. In the end, what was the overall narrative gain for all the effort to do things in a way which went against what had been established by virtually everything else up to that point?