Except even the 'serious' MCU films though aren't good (let alone great or excellent). Winter Soldier is the best example of this, there was a desperate attempt during the time by MCU fans to essentially claim that this was their Dark Knight and now its just another barely remembered action flick. I had a friend who loved the movie initially, but when he's rewatched the film since, he told me he really only pays attention to the action scenes. The characters aren't great, the villains are forgettable and the politics of the film are straight up bad, even proto-Trumpian.
#InGunnITrust, #ZackSnyderistheBlueprint, #ReleasetheAyerCut
I don't hate MCU movies, I enjoy most of their films. they are entertaining but at the same time they are very juvenile and immature. Doesn't mean that constitutes hate if you know what is intended. I think hate only happens if you were mislead into a film or a film got so much hype and you were disappointed.
I hear that argument a lot, that saying "hate" is a strong term and that it does come from a place of jealously or deep-seated contempt. I don't feel jealous about the success of the films. They operate on a formula, and the formula works. I just don't happen to care for the formula. I said I admitted that I like DC movies, but that doesn't make me a DC fanboy, as I absolutely hate Man of Steel, Suicide Squad, and Batman vs. Superman from this decade, and find Justice League interesting but flawed, with the key issue being that Warner Bros. (like so many studios) deciding to put all their eggs into the "expanded universe" basket, expecting that people would be interested in exploring more of the world and then wondering what happened when people weren't interested in the end result, like how Universal's "Retro Monsters" universe effectively died after one film.
The Disney aspect is one large part of it. I mean, when I was growing up, I didn't care for the Disney brand as a kid. That's kind of one way the corporation likes to get people to become consumers for life, by having them start young by investing into their products, but for whatever reason, I did not like the "Disney formula". The vintage movies done by Walt and the Nine Old Men during the company's salad days and it's first prime didn't hook me in, and the movies of the 90s that Michael Eisner helped bring the company back from the brink as an antiquity and into a juggernaut, which was the decade I was a child, either frightened me or bored me. For whatever reason, the groups I was interested in were those that tended to spoof the establishment. Now, today, that kid who was turned off by Disney grew up to be a cynical adult who isn't as interested in Disney's conglomeration and manifest destiny, considering that I no longer have the interest in things I once had now that they're now under the Mouse Ears. I mean, Star Wars, for example. I don't like the Sequel Trilogy just as much as the MCU, but unlike the MCU, the issues tend to boil down to how TFA was majorly a shot-for-shot remake of A New Hope and TLJ being TLJ, not to mention the Expanded Universe becoming non-canon Legends and something that's only used to cherry pick assets and not explored as a testing ground for new writers before working on the actual stuff.For sake of argument let's say pretty much most movies DON'T suffer from the above (they can and do). Homogenized or standardized entertainment is not up front and center to everybody. Growing up in the broadcast TV days and going into the VHS days, I wasn't a Disney kid. I'm not a Disney adult. One of the parents my kid goes to daycare with, her brother married a chick who insisted they get hitched in Disney World and he did it and she's a grown ass women(again, perception). Fuck... I wouldn't want to even be invited to something like that. I'm more of a Hasbro kind of guy fwiw. Someone invites me to a function set to look like Cybertron... ehhh, I'd think about it pretty tough. So, I would argue that the real focus of your ire is the Disney sheen. I feel you've said something akin in the past, forgive me if I'm wrong. If that is the case than I can rock with it on some level. Having that suit tailored to the Marvel brand is tough no doubt. Disney is the poster of all ills of corporate overlord conglomeration. Hate is a strong word, I'd ask where does it really come from.
That being said, I wanted to explore my disdain from a technical perspective and not just from a corporate perspective, as this project started before Marvel was bought, with the Disney backing and resources allowing them to go all-in with the long game. My issue, though, is every time I wonder about this, do I dislike these films because they're made by Disney, or in spite of it? Am I being too hard on the films for having impossible standards, or is it due to me just not being the kind of person who is a moviegoer to begin with? I practically fold whenever I explore this, knowing the responses I will get, and yet it just amazes me how whenever a new MCU film comes out, I just groan and roll my eyes at it, like an internal defense mechanism.
There's such a thing as a generic Marvel movie, but frankly, I feel like that's a remnant of the earlier half of their movies, and in particular Phase 1 and half of Phase 2. Probably starting with Winter Soldier (but not strictly), their movies have gotten more unique and their average individual quality has increased. Phase 3 has wayyy more quality movies than duds imo.
Which of the movies do you think people see more than twice? (Theater and then that initial rewatch on home release?)
Do more than a few iconic moments jump out of the 20+ movies? (Catching the helicopter, "I'm Batman", upside down kiss).
MCU is essentially an anthology series. And I enjoyed almost all the movies. But I own five (Iron Man, Cap 1+2, Avengers 1, Guardians 1). Those are the only ones I can see myself pulling out to watch ten years from now. I really don't like the DCEU, but Wonder Woman and Shazam! are on that list.
Last edited by Conn Seanery; 07-09-2019 at 05:48 PM.
I appreciate the way you're discussing this, it's coming at this issue in a much more interesting way! Um...twice? I don't know. Why does that matter? The second Star Wars trilogy people went out to see many times over but that movie has a ton of writing problems. So what does that really say? Why is it even important? I'm also not sure I can answer the question because so many of these movies are on Netflix and we know how they mask that information.
Iconic moments? That's a bit subjective but I think a lot of people remember: "We Are Groot", Avengers Assemble (1st and last), Thanos' snap, Wanda trying to kill Vision, the several major battle lines that were drawn, Gamora's death, Fury showing up in the post credits, "Hulk....smash!", Cap in the elevator. I'm probably missing some.
Last edited by Theleviathan; 07-09-2019 at 03:05 PM.
I’m still trying to figure out what the iconic scene is where Batman says “I’m Batman”, tbh.
On a related note. "I am Iron Man" is now iconic twice over.
Y'know...I'm reading stuff like this about about both Marvel and DC movies and I gotta ask, as comic fans, do you folks not realize how good you have it right now?
I mean to be blunt a lot of you sound outright spoiled.
I don't out-and-out hate Marvel movies, but I do think they have a lot of elements that I do not like about today's writing style.
A lot of today's movies and TV shows throw together quips, pop culture references, callbacks to earlier scenes or dialogue, and a mawkish overly-emotive confessional or two and call it a script. I've never seen a Kevin Smith movie, but I suspect as a major film geek he writes in this style. Am I wrong?
It was novel when Joss Whedon (and maybe Smith) did it 20+ years ago, but now it's everywhere and everything feels derivative of everything else to me. Just as Whedon is watered-down Spielberg, everyone today writes watered-down Whedon, so it's a knockoff of a knockoff.
Guardians of the Galaxy is emblematic of this type of film. It's a movie that is so deliberate in its attempt to be hip and clever that it becomes unbearable. It just checks every box of today's storytelling tropes that I don't like. Didn't bother to see Volume 2, and most likely won't see v3. I'll get to them one day on Blu-Ray. Ditto Thor Ragnarok, which from what I understand is another Guardians-type film.
Winter Solider is a movie I particularly dislike, not because it was quippy and pop cuturey because it wasn't (at least from what I remember), but because the spy movie vibe they were going for was hitting all the spy movie tropes so on the nose that I couldn't stop rolling my eyes.
Last edited by Pinsir; 07-09-2019 at 05:02 PM.
#InGunnITrust, #ZackSnyderistheBlueprint, #ReleasetheAyerCut
Well, that's what "lasting" is. To my mind at least. That you will want to pull these movies out from time to time, ten, fifteen, twenty years from now.
There are plenty of movies I've seen over the past couple of decades that I truly enjoyed that I would right now have to be reminded I saw.
And I don't want to say Netflix doesn't count. It's sort of its own relatively new category. It's not quite just stopping to watch something because it's on FX on a Sunday afternoon (I watched all five original Planet of the Apes movies in a row that way once. I would never decide to do that), but it's also not necessarily getting an itch to see something either.
I always find it odd when fans of Marvel movies complain about the CGI in movies from other studios. I don't usually notice CGI (and it's kind of the low hanging fruit of movie criticism), but the CGI is the thing in Marvel movies that's the most perplexing to me. It looks like the movie has cut to an animation sequence or a video game. And I wonder if that's intentional. Like maybe it's become part of the aesthetic which would explain why Marvel fans don't notice it anymore.