lemm.ee

2 points

1 year ago

This is the disconnect

I want movies, I never liked comic books. Others want comic books and weren’t huge movie fans. Disney hasn’t committed to either and it’s not working.

I know I’ve stopped caring about the MCU entirely since Endgame. I’m really not interested in this comic style storytelling, just like I wasn’t as a kid.

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Vespair@lemm.ee

2 points

1 year ago

And that’s fine. But why assume all media has to be for you? These are comic films from a comic company; if you weren’t ever into comic books why assume you’d be into these?

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2 points

1 year ago

Because historically they’ve been for audiences like me, and now that they’re not, they’re wondering where everyone went. I assumed I’d enjoy these because I’ve enjoyed previous marvel movies, but I can’t name a single (marvel) movie since NWH that I’ve enjoyed. It’s been a massive shift in their movies that can’t be ignored.

They weren’t originally this comic book like up until just before endgame (coincidentally when everyone started to think the quality of the content is trending down)

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Vespair@lemm.ee

3 points

1 year ago

No, they were, it’s just that by the time people got on board we were past the issue cycle and were onto the event cycle, so people got used to the incline and expected that that was going to be how these went: endless incline in excitement. But that was all the Infinity War lead up and climax. Now we’re in the lull leading into the next build-up cycle. We’re back at the Thor through Guardians 1 stage of the cycle, basically.

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3 points

1 year ago

I really don’t think that’s the case.

Going back to watch any of the Phase 1 movies is such a better experience than any of the Phase 4 or Phase 5 movies. There doesn’t need to be endless excitement, there just needs to be decent writing, and that’s missing from anything new. Nobody cares about any of the new characters.

There’s never been a huge number of flops from marvel with people losing more and more interest in watching them. There’s no clear plan forward, as their planned “Thanos” scale villain has been in hot water irl and will likely not be able to continue to play the character.

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Vespair@lemm.ee

1 point

1 year ago

I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience, but I personally care about the MCU Shang-Chi, Kate Bishop, Yelena, Monica, Kamala, Moon Knight, hell I even care about Stature (Ant-Man’s daughter) a little bit.

As to the “plan forward,” I dunno man, it seems weird to borrow worry by letting speculative futures impact your opinion on and enjoyment of what’s in front of you. Maybe it’s not for you, that’s okay, but it you think it could be for you, I would suggest maybe trying to focus on what’s on the screen rather than caring about what’s happening behind the screen so much.

I’m not a business analyst; I’m not in the speculating market. I’m a media consumer, so I’m going to choose to judge them on their output, not any of the factors surrounding it or the discourse about it. For me, ignoring all the outside noise, I can only think of about 3 MCU-related properties that I watched and did not enjoy myself while watching. That’s all I’m looking for out of this relationship, so as far as I’m concerned they’re still doing right by me.

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2 points

1 year ago

That’s where we differ. I couldnt care less for pretty much any of those characters. Maybe it’s because I’m not the target demographic, but absolutely none of them connected at all with me, they were often just another marvel protagonist who follows the exact same story as all the other ones. That worked in Phase 1, it won’t work now that it’s played out.

Even as far back as Iron Man there was a plan forward. They had some idea of where everything was going, even if the viewers didn’t see it. Currently it looks like they have no ultimate endgame and don’t have any idea what’s happening next.

The on-screen product has been terrible. All of the D+ Shows have been downright horrid and I’ve given up on trying to force myself to watch them to keep up. MoM had me leaving the theater genuinely angry at how bad they fucked up all the characters.

I can’t name a single marvel property that’s landed well since NWH, and NWH was heavily carried by nostalgia. Ant-Man was some spy kids level of terrible, MoM completely ruined a ton of character development, black widow was just bad, and the list keeps going on. There is clearly some larger issues because I know it’s not just myself who feels this way about the current phase.

I’m no longer enjoying the content because of the poor writing and extremely shallow characters. And it may be that those elements were present in the original marvel films, but the tropes have been played out so much that they’re predictable.

Superhero fatigue may not be a thing (The Boys/Batman have been great), but there sure is Marvel fatigue

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