Disney spent $4 billion for Marvel back in 2009. They’ve made far more than that back already, and I’d argue the superhero / comic movie space is now ridiculously saturated.
Personally I hope this just leads to more varied projects instead of executives resting on a single IP until the end of time (and yes, all Marvel stuff is one big IP).
Black Panther 2 Doctor Strange 2 Black Widow Ms Marvel SheHulk Marvel What If?
These all have really been pretty bad.
Honestly, I’m in the position to say that the Fantastic Four is fucking cursed.
Nothing can make the Fantastic Four be good in a movie, short of a blood sacrifice.
Literally had some of the most popular Marvel Franchises condensed into one Movie, and some how, Doctor Strange 2 absolutely butchered all of them.
Not to mention that the proposed villain of Doctor Strange 2 from the original Doctor Strange post-credits scene was dealt with Off-Screen.
It’s absolutely soul crushing to see it come to this. But atleast, it would appear, someone other than Disney has a chance in the Cinema Market right now.
Marvel made this bed when they did End Game 2. Not that End Game 2 is a bad movie in isolation, just that some of the choices of that film really fucked up long term story telling. When you start doing multi verse or timey wimey bullshit to get out of killing characters you remove any consequences or value from killing off characters. Once you remove the permanence from doing so, and its particularly clear that after the shake out it was done to write out two of the more expensive actors who both feuded over money, you remove it from all other character deaths, as you can no longer trust that they will not just bring somebody back at a later point. Never kill off a character you do not want permanently dead, it just removes any danger that character faces.
This is a big part of the problem with Kang, we know he will not die despite any deaths on the road to the end of the big Avengers pay off, kind of makes his whole build up a bit pointless, unless they going to have him start permanently killing people on his way, which I am really unsure that will happen. Then the other big problem with Kang is his casting as Majors is just proven to be trouble on and off set, at least he hasn’t gone full Ezra yet.
Marvels biggest problem is Captain Marvel just lacks any character, shes too focused on being the invincible Superman but without anywhere near enough Clarke Kent to ground that character for audiences. Its left Brie Larson hardly any space to engage the audience. Sure, we all want the huge super strong pay off scene such as when Thor came for Thanos in Wakanda as that was awesome, but it only meant something because we had already engaged with Thor in his more vulnerable moments, and he had real suffering on his way to his climatic appearance. Making characters too strong just ends up making them unlikable.
Couple this with lazy and often just plain bad writing, terrible CGI, and an over reliance on MacGuffins to dig out of self made holes created to impose any sort of peril, and its no wonder Marvel is struggling…
Last time Brie Larson engaged with the audience it was to tell the guys in the audience that they were douchebags. The whole run-up to Captain Marvel was a lot of Brie Larson talking down to men and talking up the whole female empowerment side of things. I know it was mostly for marketing but it still left a really sour taste in my mouth. Good movies can be lead by either a female or male lead and a well written character will cause both boys and girls to gravitate to their more positive and relatable traits regardless of the gender disparity.
When you push all the blame onto Larson without looking at the wider picture then you are very clearly and very loudly showing your bias.
Do you really think Disney of all film companies does not have a predefined media strategy that the actors have to follow? Disney decided that the girlboss meme was marketable and profitable, hence bullshit like the epic mess of the last SW trilogy that showed they have no idea how to make a character relatable or likeable if its a woman in a lead action role.
Blaming Larson for not correctly engaging fans for the mess that is Captain Marvel is like saying the Rock is at fault for Black Adam as he did the same. While the Rock is a terrible actor he is one of the most engaging actors currently working and brings his own dedicated fan base. That all fell apart when it came to the god awful shitshow that was Black Adam, both the pompous unlikable character and the boring and dull film, very similar to Captain Marvel.
You’re ire should be strictly reserved for Disney and DC for their lack of understanding of how to write films, if the Rock cannot save it, no actor could have saved either role.
Disney just do not understand what the characters are, witness them making Peter Parker into Iron man nano bot edition with powers, complete with worldwide fame and buckets of cash. So hard did they fuck that up they had to MacGuffin their way out of that with the shitty global mind wipe. But even that terrible decision was saved from the by bringing back likeable and engaging characters from the previous films and iterations. Take out the mind wipe crap and add in almost any other multi verse cross over trope and it still works, take out the ability to bring back old characters from the multi verse (or similar MacGuffin) and the film would just absolutely stink.
I don’t agree, these actors and production hands and the whole plague that is Hollywood push the woke agenda at every turn.
The interviews happened, you can watch them. As a shriveled up media whore I would expect no less but to say 'she didn’t have a part, and the blame goes to her employer " is such a new age cop out.
I’m actually excited to see this one. Kamala is a fun character and Iman Vellani captured her essence really well. They have not done a good job of making Captain Marvel or Monica Rambeau as characters we care about, but through the Kamala lens we might during the movie. But a lot of folks skipped on Ms. Marvel thinking she was for kids.
However, I wouldn’t even call this dip in presales Marvel fatigue. I’m a Marvel fanboy. I watched She Hulk and enjoyed it. Yet, Marvel have done nothing to actually invest me into the current phase. It’s not a Marvel fatigue but more a multiverse/plot fatigue. I haven’t watched Secret Invasion or Loki 2 because… Why?
I find Kang to be such a damp squib of a character. They ruined most of his mystique at the end of Quantumania to the extent he is no longer a real threat. Thanos worked because he was a difficult but not impossible threat. You felt like even the Guardians had a chance against him as slim a chance as that might be.
Kang is an impossible threat. A multi-versal threat that has no limits. He’s boring because he can’t be overcome.
I’ve said it before when we were all on Reddit, this Phase would be made significantly more interesting if you use this as the opportunity to introduce Doctor Doom. Have him crush Kang as a threat setting up a more complex, potentially beatable, villain and establishing a power order in one sweep.
Once he’s established, bring in the X-Men and FF fighting off incursions, lead up to X-Men Vs MCU as your Summer Blockbuster, have a handful of arthouse y Last Days Of style movies. Go into Battleworld, have some really fun remixes of our established characters, reset the multiverse to a single world with more mundane threats and recast any character who wants out of the franchise.
Instead, this movie becomes a ‘eh. I’ll see it on Disney+ eventually’.
I’ve seen one episode of Secret and have no urge to find out what happens. If Loki is only 6 episodes like last season, this season so far has been a huge nothing sandwich. And episode 5 just came out!
I didn’t care enough about Kamala’s show to watch it all the way through. From what I remember and what I saw, Iman Vellani did a good job of not being a super annoying fangirl, which is the main complaint most folks have about the comic character. She’s pretty cringy because she’s obsessed with all the people she’s fighting alongside and it makes the character insufferable. They solved that with some of the later iterations of Kamala, including the one in the Avengers game’s main story who was markedly less annoying than any other iteration prior.
Add comment