I hate that “superhero fatigue” has become the accepted reason why recent movies have done poorly. It passes the blame from the studio to the audience.
People aren’t sick of an entire genre of films. They’re sick of bloated budgets producing CGI-heavy movies that get butchered in post production because the studio needs to meddle with everything to make sure the ridiculous amount of money they didn’t need to spend in the first place is as safe of an investment as possible.
Look at Iron Man 1. It had a modest budget, reasonable effects and told a concise story. People would watch another movie like that again. We don’t need world-threatening plots that can only be presented by an overworked and underpayed effects studio.
exactly same thing with star wars fatigue. just make good movies/shows and people will watch.
And people seriously underestimate the simplest reason: poor execution. Phase 4 just had so many movies that weren’t good. The writing was bad, a couple characters or moments would be what you expect, but the overall product was just shoddy.
I think you could say that about almost every single Please 4 movie except Guardians 3. There was just a massive drop in quality.
Guardians is technically Phase 5.
Shang-Chi, Spider-Man NWH, and Doctor Strange MoM were all great and Phase 4. Unfortunately Black Widow, Eternals, and Thor L&T were also Phase 4 and are some of the lowest rated movies in the MCU.
Oh right, I was mixing up Spider-Man FFH & NWH.
Shang-Chi was the kind of quality I expect from MCU.
But I’ll be honest, even MoM disappointed me. It felt like they just abandoned all of the character development poured into Wanda because “heh heh cool Sam Raimi movie” and the America plot was kind of tacked on.
Black Widow, Eternals, Thor L&T, The Marvels all had the potential to be great. It’s like they just gave up on scripts and that notorious centralized quality assurance. Which I know is something a lot of people hated on them for, but I think the difference is obvious. Their centralized production over Phase 3 projects worked.
(We don’t talk about Quantumania. That one was unsalvageable.)
I hope they get back to the old way of doing things as Phase 5 progresses.
Shang-Chi is one of my favourite MCU movies, and I actually kind of liked Black Widow. Multiverse of Madness was a good Sam Raimi movie but not a very good MCU movie.
Love and Thunder is probably my least favourite. It made me hope Taiki Waititi never gets his hands on another franchise I love even though he has done some good things in the past. Ragnarok was good but already leaning way too much into comedy. I’d hate to see what he would do to Star Wars.
I would pay to see a fixed version of Thor 4. It just needs a few comedic scenes removed, 15 minutes here and there of God Butchering, and the deleted Zeus scene by the pond and it could be a top tier movie.
He’s already worked on The Mandalorian
I actually liked Doctor Strange MoM A LOT. To me, it was what the first Doctor Strange should have been.
As far as Wanda’s development, I didn’t get the impression that she was all good at the end of WV. It was just that she was literally forced to reconcile with her delusions. But that’s it.
In MoM, she has reconciled with her delusions. It’s just not how people were expecting her to. She convinced herself in WV that she wasn’t hurting people. Faced with reality, she decided that’s not a deal-breaker.
To be honest, I was surprised people had an issue with it. It didn’t even seem like a problem when I watched it the first time.
No, I’m happy with the direction they took her after the events of WV. I would just have liked to see that moment she decided to lean into it depicted onscreen instead of being an off screen development. That’s a huge moment to just…not show. I think it would have added a lot to the movie.
I think that’s pretty much what her cabin scene was at the end of WV. But also, she never had a problem with kidnapping the whole town for herself. Killing people for “her” children isn’t that big of a step. Especially knowing she had the Darkhold.
See, I read that scene as being equivocal because I’m not familiar with the comics, so I (still) don’t know what the darkhold is beyond “evil macguffin.” The scene opens with her so tranquil, appearing to make peace with herself and searching for her lost children. I thought they were leaving the door open that she might have a chance of accomplishing that.
So it would’ve been nice to have like 5 minutes in MoM to just show what happened between that and fully evil demon Wanda. I dunno, just felt shortchanged to me
I was actually a fan of both the marvels and quantumania. But yeah the rest were bad. Thor love and thunder was perhaps the most disappointing of them all, considering how good ragnarok was.
I loved the pieces of The Marvels. But the completed movie felt rushed and really really badly edited to me. Which made it so much more disappointing because the pieces were SO good. (Kittens and dancing, singing princesses?? Omg amazing.)
Also, not everything needs to be a tracking shot. With bullet time.
Are you complaining or promoting bullet time?
Complaining. All that stuff has its place but when it’s overused it just kind of takes me out of the moment, it doesn’t add to it.
Sorry it was just a joke, you broke the sentence in two in a way that makes “With bullet time” sound like an advertisement.
Totally agree. The phrase “superhero fatigue” has been thrown around since age of Ultron.
It was being thrown around before Iron Man came out.
A while back someone posted an article from 2007 using the phrase, talking about the “upcoming Iron Man movie”
No I’m sick of the entire genre. Ubermensch above-the-law protagonists who are inherently better than normal people are the worst.
Sounds like you were never interested to begin with, since you’re so morally opposed to the entire concept of superheroes. “Superhero fatigue” is referring to people who were fans becoming disinterested due to overexposure. You were never a factor in that equation.
Except that’s not the concept of superheroes. At least not usually for Marvel. The whole “gods among men” thing is more of a DC concept to explore.
Nah, we’re sick of the genre.
You’re sick of action sci-fi? Because that’s the actual genre. “Super hero” is just an aesthetic coat of paint.
It’s not really sci-fi. Traditionally sci-fi has explored very philosophical or existential concepts, it’s not just about the gadgets. The technology is a lens through which to view newly possible conflicts. If the superhero aspect is a coat of paint, the sci-fi aspect definitely is. IMO they do have some relevant aspects of the superhero genre, but yes most of them are mostly action.
Tell another story as good as Winter Soldier, Civil War, Infinity War or Endgame.
Or maybe other directors just aren’t as good as the Russos?
I mean there are A LOT of excellent directors out there. The issue is giving them the freedom to direct.
Look at The Eternals. Chloé Zhao coming fresh off of Nomadland is an odd choice for a Marvel film director.
I don’t think Marvel made a mistake giving Chloé a chance, I think that’s how we can get some really great films.
However what we got in the end didn’t feel that special. Kit Harringtons character didn’t have much to do. All the other characters didn’t get much screen time as it was.
What Marvel has done historically has worked, but I think they need to rethink things a bit going forward.
Sam Raimi is actually a good example of this. Doctor Strange was still largely a standard Marvel film, but no question it was also a Sam Raimi film.
I loved DSMoM, but I believe many hated the Raimi-ness of it.
She-Hulk was the biggest f-you to the audience. That uncanny valley CGI just screamed, “eat this you ignorant morons, we know you’ll love it and we don’t even need to try!”
Greedy studio failure, not superhero fatigue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw-hYiRzRrU&t=116
Never saw the series, but just watched this because you made me curious. It’s so goddamned awful, I can’t believe that was released.
And they didn’t even make her a “hulk.” Just a slightly buff and sexy green woman. The Amazonian women from Futurama were bigger.
Literally one of the most true adaptation from the comics from Jen herself, to her personality and 4th wall breaking, etc.
You said it yourself, never saw the series and you very clearly never read the comics either.
I’m with you. Maybe the CG could’ve been better and I can understand if people didn’t like the character or story, but that doesn’t mean it was bad
I was specifically referring to the awful CG and not the merits of its story and character.
Because I think we can all agree that the CG is really bad on that.
