Marvel Cinematic Universe Part II

[GenericUsername]

There haven't been that mainly good MCU movies. Especially since they made almost all of them comedies because people aren't interested in these characters and making people laugh is the only way you'd get people to sit through a lot of these movies. And a lot of MCU characters have been reduced to literal jokes. Wanda is one of the only ones who's actually taken seriously since Agents of Shield and the Netflix series.

It doesn't have to be from jokes to mass murder. It's the extreme without any development that is the issue. And I don't think you can say the other solos did not build those characters. Somehow Strange is supposed to be the exception.

[Galerion]

I'm not cherry picking. There is an enormous grey area between hero and villain, and the fact that Wanda did bad or cruel things in her show, which no one denies, is not enough setup for her becoming a psychotic villain, particularly to get back some version of the kids she willingly gave up rather than hurt people.

There is a story to be told about her becoming villainous. Instead we leave her when she's clearly not a villain, and next time we see her, she is summoning demons to try and kill a child. Why? Because of a book, which wasn't even portrayed as an all-corrupting force in the show where she got it.

Just like House of M made her want to wipe out mutants with absolutely no precedent or reason given for it, this movie made her into a villain offscreen with no precedent or reason for it beyond "book bad."

Again. Ask the citizens of Westview or the authorities about it. They will surely tell you something quite different. A hostage taker who lets go of his hostages in the end isn't suddenly absolved from everything as soon as he does. Even if it started with no ill-will or intent she never bothered to put it right by all parties involved and instead choose to run and read a magic book in an attempt to understand and improve her own power more. Many people would label that as quite selfish.

Turning Agatha Harkness into Ned Flanders was creative. I guess she saw some episodes of the Simpsons in Sokovia.

It was awesome and certainly well deserved but Im also under no illusion that that would be the action of a hero.

[Frontier]

Again. Ask the citizens of Westview or the authorities about it. They will surely tell you something quite different. A hostage taker who lets go of his hostages in the end isn't suddenly absolved from everything as soon as he does. Even if it started with no ill-will or intent she never bothered to put it right by all parties involved and instead choose to run and read a magic book in an attempt to understand and improve her own power more. Many people would label that as quite selfish.

I don't think anyone holds any illusion that what happened in Westview was justified or "good," but that doesn't necesarilly mean her development in MoM made any more sense.

Wanda trying to understand her power so it didn't happen again was her attempt to do what she could to make things right (if not on a personal level to the people in Westview). Granted, instead she became even worse...

[Galerion]

I'm kind of amazed the actual Mordo isn't even in it.

Don't know how true it actually is but apparently they planned to have him confront Wanda at the beginning in his quest to cull magic users which obviously wouldn't have ended well for him. But they choose to not kill him off this way so I guess they might still have plans for him

[gurkle]

Again. Ask the citizens of Westview or the authorities about it. They will surely tell you something quite different. A hostage taker who lets go of his hostages in the end isn't suddenly absolved from everything as soon as he does. Even if it started with no ill-will or intent she never bothered to put it right by all parties involved and instead choose to run and read a magic book in an attempt to understand and improve her own power more. Many people would label that as quite selfish.

It's a big jump from "Wanda is selfish" to "Wanda is a potential supervillain." Particularly when it comes to her family, since her kids were portrayed in the show as real flesh-and-blood creatures (another thing the movie got wrong) and yet when she realized they could only survive by torturing others, she wiped them from existence.

There is a way to get her to the point where she would commit mass murder to be a mother, but they didn't get there. They simply abandoned her established characterization offscreen, and then brought it back at the end for no reason.

And since the show didn't portray the Darkhold as a corrupting force (Agatha had used it for centuries and yet she did more good than harm to Wanda and Westview), and only told Wanda that it contained a chapter on her true nature, in the context of the show she was leaving to study her powers and learn to control them, something that seemed like a good idea since her powers were unconsciously strangling the people around her.

Again, even if WandaVision had set up her heel turn, it would be lazy writing to have her turn evil offscreen. The fact that everything in the movie contradicts WandaVision -- even the portrayal of what the Darkhold does to people, and her motivation for wanting her kids back in the tag scene -- just makes it deserve some kind of Oscar for lazy writing.

[GenericUsername]

just makes it deserve some kind of Oscar for lazy writing.

The raspberry awards lol

[Geraldofrivia]

Don't know how true it actually is but apparently they planned to have him confront Wanda at the beginning in his quest to cull magic users which obviously wouldn't have ended well for him. But they choose to not kill him off this way so I guess they might still have plans for him

All that setup in Dr Strange 1, only for him to die to Wanda in this movie. Jesus, Is this the same MCU?

[Force de Phenix]

It doesn't have to be from jokes to mass murder. It's the extreme without any development that is the issue. And I don't think you can say the other solos did not build those characters. Somehow Strange is supposed to be the exception.

The comedy movies are pretty bad when the jokes don't land and they made Thor, Hulk, Mantis, Ant-Man, yeah... they're all jokes. And knowing that the next Thor villain is going to die because that's what happens to them all just reminded me of how bad these movies can get. Eternals didn't get into the fact that they resurrect, so maybe the villain will return.

[gurkle]

All that setup in Dr Strange 1, only for him to die to Wanda in this movie. Jesus, Is this the same MCU?

The person who leaked the plot last summer said that the original plan was to market this as a followup to the first movie with Mordo as the villain, to make it a big shock when he's killed in the very first scene.

When Raimi and writer Michael Waldron rewrote the script during the 2020 COVID lockdown, they basically decided it was going to be a movie full of shocks, so Mordo fits in with things that made it into the film, like Wanda already being evil when it starts (originally she was going to team up with Strange and then get corrupted over the course of the film), and the Illuminati showing up just to get instantly killed.

I'm not even sure that was the wrong approach, if that was what interested Raimi about the chance to make the movie, but it does mean it sort of runs on very sudden twists, right up to how suddenly America learns to control her powers and Wanda comes to her senses.

[GenericUsername]

The comedy movies are pretty bad when the jokes don't land and they made Thor, Hulk, Mantis, Ant-Man, yeah... they're all jokes. And knowing that the next Thor villain is going to die because that's what happens to them all just reminded me of how bad these movies can get. Eternals didn't get into the fact that they resurrect, so maybe the villain will return.

Eternals was just really bad all around. I'm not asking for ITMoM to be anything like that nor saying at all that it needed comedy. Marvel can flesh out stories when they chose to do it. They just haven't really for magic for some reason. Not that I'm surprised or anything from the company that tried to label MCU magic as some advanced form of science at first.

[mace11]

None of the marvel mcu shows(canon and non canon) are comedies and most mcu movies not comedies.
In fact the average mcu show is darker then the dceu movies and dc shows.
In fact every mcu show is darker and more serious then the first dceu show peacemaker.

by James W quote-

not much of a Marvel comic reader, but haven't they made Thor and Bruce Banner into comedians and Drax from a guy capable of killing Thanos in to guy who makes nipple jokes? Genuine question

by Steven Fraser quote-

James W Dunno anything about Drax, so I can't answer. As to the Thor and Banner point, I don't class them as "comedians" in the MCU. The comedy comes from Banner's exasperation at the situations he's put in and Thor's naivety/arrogance where he's being placed in situations where he's an outsider, a "fish out of water" as it were. It's not like they're cracking "jokes" per se, as much as their reactions to these situations where the comedy comes from. I don't recall any scene from either of these characters where they stop a scene to tell a "joke". The exact same " fish out of water" style is used for comedy throughout Wonder Woman too. These aren't "comedians"- its the ridiculousness of seeing a Norse God/Amazon react and relate to a world they have no understanding of, THAT'S where the comedy comes from.

Mark Hughes quote-

Just generally speaking, keep in mind some of the all-time best action movies were also filled with humor and comedy -- Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and Beverly Hills Cop for example. And think about some of the other great action films that also have a constant good sense of humor -- Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, The Rock, and so on. These films don't just have one or two humorous lines, they have repeated funny moments and humor throughout, and as much or in some cases more than the MCU movies.

Granted, a few MCU movies like Ant-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Thor: Ragnarok have enough constant humor to possibly say they could be considered action-comedies, but the rest of the MCU films aren't. If some folks just personally don't enjoy comedy or humor very much and only usually like straight-up serious action, that's obviously totally fine and valid for people to have personal preferences and taste. But I think it's worth trying to be more precise about how much humor really exists in MCU films, since it's often overstated or people end up with a misperception sometimes of the overall MCU tone, and to also remember some of the all-time best and other great action films outside of the superhero genre often have a lot of humor and comedy in them too.

[Lukmendes]

Lol no. People can voice when they are unhappy with something and you can choose not to read it. It was a cheap, campy horror flick that didn't do really anything to push anyone's story forward. And they could have introduced incursions in a one-shot or Spidey's movie.

Huh, thinking of it, wouldn't incursions happen in Spidey's movie by the logic established in MoM?

This movie only serves bringing Raimi back into movies. And some of his fans are getting as bad as Snyder fans. So I'm not sure if that was a good thing.

The meme status Spider-Man trilogy got definitely helped with that.

Still find it baffling that the whole nonsense of "emo Peter Parker" is liked unironically now lol.

Something that I find funny on these boards is how hard folks will go for their faves drumming up a storm when they feel like they haven't been treated or written well, but then be totally dismissive when someone else does it for their favorite.

Yeah the lack of empathy is annoying, like, sure, you don't have to care about every character at all, but at least understand the frustration fans have with a character being treated poorly and think "Man, that sucks" lol.

[GenericUsername]

Huh, thinking of it, wouldn't incursions happen in Spidey's movie by the logic established in MoM?

Yep and they could have gotten all science-y about it with all the Spideys together in that montage.

[John Venus]

The more I think about it, the more I think they should have just done another season of Wanda Vision or a Scarlet Witch movie and introduced America Chavez there. Wanda is more tied to the Multiverse than Dr Strange, the stuff about Cthon and the SW lore was already set up in WV, she is more naturally connected to the Young Avengers by being the mother of Billy and Tommy and they wouldn't have to derail Dr Strange's own movie for the sake of other characters. What we got was one half of a Strange movie, one half of a Wanda movie, a quarter of an America Chavez movie and a quarter of an Illuminanti movie and they were all half baked.

Or even in the movie we got, they could have side stepped any issues with her characterization by having 'our' Wanda possessed by an evil Wanda from another dimension instead of the other way around. Redeeming yourself by fighting an even more evil version of yourself is classic comics writing.

If they were going to have Wanda snap and go full villain, at least give her the same depth and three dimensionality given to father figure villains like Wenwu, Vulture and even Thanos. Also save it for an Avengers movie. The A-Force gathering together to fight Wanda along with Hulk, White Vision, Hawkeye and Monica Rambeau? I would watch the **** out of that.

[Dipter]

The big ensemble Avengers movies are always the most stylistically bland though. Wanda wouldn't have gotten to do half of the cool stuff she gets to do in this movie.