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Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 4: Tripping Balls (Spoilers)


atomheartbevo

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Posted (edited)

Eh…okay? Big fan of Ozark, I guess. Edit: she is playing the Shalla Bal version of the Silver Surfer as it has been speculated that the FF is set in an alternate Earth. 

 

Edited by mdmost
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4 minutes ago, mdmost said:

But not a standalone series. I feel like this is one that won't be happening. 

IMDb says it’s in post-I agree with you, though-there was nothing about the character’s introduction in BP2 that made me think “I want to know more about her story.”  
 

I actually appreciate Marvel trying to grow the audience by adding more diversity both in front and behind the camera, but it’s pretty clear that there’s just a finite numbers of performers charismatic enough to pull it off.  Anthony Mackie is a great example-he’s a solid enough actor, I like him in a supporting capacity, but I don’t feel any particularly curiosity about his story out of the orbit of Steve Rodgers.  
 

Thunderbolts is going to be a test case for “you wouldn’t pay $10 for a ticket to see any single one of us, but will you pay $10 to see ALL of us?!?!”

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Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, BrazilHorn said:

A) “The Guardians of the Galaxy” effect. They caught excellent casting lighting in a bottle with the cast of GoTG and the efforts since to take “C” level MCU characters in terms of name recognition and wrap a movie around them isn’t working

1 hour ago, mdmost said:

I'd argue GOTG was a hit because of the writing and dialogue combined with having a great cast. It was a completely different tone than the previous Marvel movies. I don't think Marvel has a writer like Gunn in their bullpen now. I think anything post-Endgame was going to be difficult to perform well unless it was a continuing character like the Guardians and Black Panther. You can only go to that well so many times and it won't always work out like the last Thor and Antman movies. GOTG was a good ending for the franchise as only Gunn could write it.

I think a huge part of the problem is that fatigue set in after Endgame with too many heroes, worsened by them pumping out more movies than they should have, without a clear "endgame" (pun intended) for the audience - most of the audiences for the pre-Endgame movies knew that something big is on the horizon.  The hero bullpen was fairly small, everybody could easily identify most of them, and most of the movies were moving either plot lines or characters towards where they were going to be when Endgame happened (Tony Stark was going to be neurotic/PTSD/worn out, Thor was going to have self-doubt where he had none before, Captain America was going to be weary, more cynical, etc.).

Since Endgame, there have been groups or super heroes introduced where you have no idea if their storylines will come together as happened with Endgame.

Will the Marvels and Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Thunderbolts and Doctor Strange and the new characters from Black Panther 2 come together?  How does Deadpool and Wolverine fit into that?  Blade?  We've got these three heroes with related Marvelous cosmic powers, we have super heroes that have been around for thousands of years and inspired ancient mythologies, we have this Shang-Chi guy with magic powers and dragons, we have this former Army guy who was disfigured and is kind of like Captain America in that he's super strong and heals fast, and then there's Wolverine who is an experimental soldier or wait, he's been around for centuries and had powers hundreds of years ago so how did he get that metal skeleton, and then we are going to have a vampire fighting vampires.

 

 

Edited by atomheartbevo
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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, mdmost said:

But Endgame was the perfect culmination of 10 years of movie making. The drop off after it was always going to happen. Kang is just not compelling compared to Thanos. Also, Thanos was being built towards as the looming threat. Kang just doesn't meet that since you kill one and there's more that will pop up. That gets tiring. 

The MCU's best hope is Deadpool resetting everything and the Fantastic Four being a success. That's definitely not a given. Thunderbolts could be decent but this has been done to death already with Suicide Squad. Falcon Cap isn't going to move the needle as Anthony Mackie just isn't leading man material. Then you have to hope an X-Men reboot pays off. Maybe Deadpool helps with that. 

With the first phase or two of the MCU, we had basically half-a-dozen or so main characters, and outside of Thor/Loki (and the Guardians), they were mostly contemporaries whose powers/etc. were easily shown/developed on screen, and we had one overriding baddie (Thanos).  Even before Majors' legal issues, there was no sign/clue for most of the mainstream audiences that Kang was the Thanos of this next grouping (the Multiverse Saga, which many fans don't even realize is the name).

The ancillary heroes introduced during/after the first phase of the Infinity Saga (Ant-Man, Hulk, Wanda, etc.) were still in service of moving the main plot lines along towards Endgame.

Too many of the current movies (Eternals and Marvels stand out) and shows feel superfluous or they are standing on their own island and have nothing to do with anybody else, and don't feel like they are pushing towards the Secret Wars showdown in three years.  Shit, if you mention Secret Wars, many fans might think it's season two of Secret Invasion.  And it's all muddied by the Sony movies (Venom, Kraven, Madame Web, etc.) having the Marvel label, further confusing fans.

I think they fucked up by not having everybody in the first phase or two of the Multiverse Saga come together earlier.  In the Infinity Saga, we had 5 movies covering 4 main heroes and then the first Avengers movie.  This time we are going to have 15 movies cover over 20 main characters before they come together.  The confusion will be/is high.

I think we should have had the Doctor Strange movie start really pulling more heroes together like the first Avengers did...  And the Doctor Strange movie was the 28th MCU movie - let that sink in for a moment.

The brilliance of Endgame was that even the seemingly unrelated movies (Captain America in 1940s war-torn Europe, Thor doing his thing) were still driving the plot because they focused on the Infinity gems.  That's not the case with the current movies.  They feel like they are their own self-contained shows.

Edited by atomheartbevo
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1 hour ago, BrazilHorn said:

The false narrative to me is MCU has gone “woke” or some shit. All they care about is $. They aren’t looking to fuck up the golden MCU goose over politics. Ultimately MCU got too cute thinking they could just throw movies out there with rando characters and people would come out in droves. Add in fact now that the movies are so bad the actors in them are making fun of them (Madam Web eg) and Marvel needs to hit pause and figure some shit out. 

Bingo.  The "woke" bullshit is just that - bullshit.  9 times out of 10 if somebody uses "woke", it means they are intellectually lazy and don't want to have to think hard about defending why they don't like something.  And way too many of those idiots have never watched the movie/series (because it's "woke"), or are not a fan of comic book stuff in general, or may even be DC fanboys.

And I've actually had people ask me if the MCU is flailing around because they heard it went "woke" and I have to explain that "no, it's flailing around because the writing went to shit, the overall plots that should tie all of the movies together are not being clearly laid out, people don't know who the main baddies are, and several of the movies seemingly have no connection to one another and just exist for the sake of existing, because somebody thought the comic did well so they should make a movie out of it.

Marvel's biggest problem is not some "woke" bullshit, it's how are they going to bring alien-powered humans who are out doing space shit, eternal superheroes who inspired earth's mythologies and who are in hiding, vampires, Deadpool and Wolverine, Asian mysticism, and some American super soldiers together.

 

7 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

I actually appreciate Marvel trying to grow the audience by adding more diversity both in front and behind the camera, but it’s pretty clear that there’s just a finite numbers of performers charismatic enough to pull it off.  Anthony Mackie is a great example-he’s a solid enough actor, I like him in a supporting capacity, but I don’t feel any particularly curiosity about his story out of the orbit of Steve Rodgers.  

Thunderbolts is going to be a test case for “you wouldn’t pay $10 for a ticket to see any single one of us, but will you pay $10 to see ALL of us?!?!”

Yeah, they have this massive stable of comics and people should not have been surprised that they'd tap that well (especially since when they started laying it out, they were lacking the X-Men and Spidey).  I'd argue that they had to start hitting up the B-list and C-list comic book heroes, because if they had simply rehashed the originals (Thor, Cap, Ironman/War Machine, Hulk, Black Widow/Hawkeye and a few others (Ant-Man)) or worse, recast the originals with new actors and new names, it would have bombed miserably.

But they are fucking up by trying to bring all of these very disparate heroes and plots together.  They pulled it off with Endgame because of the infinity gems touched on all the main plots/heroes in some manner. 

I think they should have been just willing to make some stand-alone movies (Eternals and Marvels are great examples), have the phases be more self-contained (the current phase should have wrapped with a Doctor Strange movie), and not have this desire to have these movies all somehow feed into Secret Wars.  

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10 minutes ago, freyguy said:

Uhhh...hmmm...

Not what I'm used to, but ok...

 

Shoulda stuck with Nick Kroll.

I realized I should've read the article. She is playing Shalla Bal, the female Silver Surfer. So I'm guessing this is a variant version where she is forced to choose to serve Galactus to save their planet. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

The multiverse is simply too confusing and not compelling when it seems there's no stakes. People have revisionist memories with the whole infinity saga. Not every movie was a banger that everyone says, Iron Man 2 and 3 were mostly forgettable, they made a hulk movie I guess, Thor didn't work until the 3rd movie, Ant Man 1 was a tonal mess, Avengers 2 was a letdown, no one liked Hawkeye or Black Widow at first and Civil War was just OK. RDJ, Brolin and Chris Evans made Endgame work

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5 hours ago, Michael Knight said:

The multiverse is simply too confusing and not compelling when it seems there's no stakes. People have revisionist memories with the whole infinity saga. Not every movie was a banger that everyone says, Iron Man 2 and 3 were mostly forgettable, they made a hulk movie I guess, Thor didn't work until the 3rd movie, Ant Man 1 was a tonal mess, Avengers 2 was a letdown, no one liked Hawkeye or Black Widow at first and Civil War was just OK. RDJ, Brolin and Chris Evans made Endgame work

Sir, I kindly disagree.  

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17 hours ago, Parliament said:

Sir, I kindly disagree.  

Yup disagree with that bit and...

22 hours ago, Michael Knight said:

The multiverse is simply too confusing and not compelling when it seems there's no stakes. People have revisionist memories with the whole infinity saga. Not every movie was a banger that everyone says, Iron Man 2 and 3 were mostly forgettable, they made a hulk movie I guess, Thor didn't work until the 3rd movie, Ant Man 1 was a tonal mess, Avengers 2 was a letdown, no one liked Hawkeye or Black Widow at first and Civil War was just OK. RDJ, Brolin and Chris Evans made Endgame work

Ant Man 1 was widely enjoyed by many, and was a refreshingly different style of movie compared to most of the rest of the MCU.  They weren't really able to recapture that in 2 or 2 IMO, but the first one was extremely entertaining.

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I'll go ahead and say it, the Multiverse thing is stupid af. I can't even remember when it was first introduced, Spiderman maybe? At this point, I don't give a shit who's coming from where and especially don't care to try to map out how they relate to anything or each other. 

Basically the gist is none of anything matters because there are a gazillion different realities and there's going to be a war to save all the other gazillion realities that I don't give a fuck about.

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Jonathan Majors was actually awesome though and while the premise of the whole overarching arc sucked, he was a bright spot as an actor and his characters lept. Sucks he had to be an abuser in real life for a myriad of reasons, one being that he got fired. But maybe MCU will see it as a good time to pivot and move on to another story arc.

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