An MCU That Is Directionless

[Phil]

We're now multiple entries into Phase Four (post-Endgame). While my default setting is to reject the idea that "wokeness" is killing Hollywood, in this case, I can't help but agree, because it's true. Across nearly every new chapter that's been told since Endgame, there's been one consistent theme at play — representation over substance, with the reduction of male characters through groan-inducing "girl power" jokes and storytelling narratives that have reset even the strongest of them as bumbling apes who can't even speak without embarrassing themselves.

 

I just watched Love and Thunder last night (just got released on Disney Plus,) and I was honestly floored by how bad it was.

 

Spoiler

The movie's villain — The God Butcher — literally doesn't butcher a single god on screen, and it's "hero," Thor — rightfully despondent after failing to kill Thanos the first time in Endgame, but who ultimately found his purpose in life again by the end — has astonishingly returned to being a passionless rube. All the while, Valkyrie and Mighty Thor (Jane Foster) are seen as stoic depictions of strength and reliability. I don't even need to rhetorically ask why.

 

The entire film is like a giant exercise in verbal castration that we're just supposed to laugh about while the visual depiction of the alpha male is reduced to a bumbling moron who can't even talk to women.

 

In Multiverse of Madness, Dr. Strange was a supporting character in his own franchise. The entire thing isn't about him. It's about Wanda.

 

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier series was just a giant exercise in showing us racism against black people, complete with the "do better" speech from Sam Wilson as Cap to end it.

 

Eternals was the embodiment of forced representation, spread out over arguably the most boring and irrelevant movie in the entire MCU. I'd rather watch Thor: Dark World a thousand times than watch Eternals ever again.

 

I haven't even bothered with Ms. Marvel or She-Hulk. They look awful. And hey, maybe I'm not the audience for this, but this all feels like a huge missed opportunity to actually be inclusive.

 

I get that representation matters. In fact, I agree. But represenation over substance is a terrible marketing strategy for telling compelling stories with mass buy-in. Lifting up "marginalized" groups for the sake of lifting them up seems like such a stupid, identity politics-driven vehicle when simply telling stories with elevated marginalized groups would achieve the same thing without insulting a huge swath of their audience.

The MCU has a seemingly unlimited budget, with plans for a ton of content, but I can't help but agree that the Fiege-lead venture is just tripping over itself to knock down the  pillars that got us here. How many more "Team Jane" jokes do we need here? How many more girl power team-up scenes do we need at the direct expense of emasculated male characters?

 

[Pete]

Dude, put shit in spoilers. 

 

And yea, it all started in End Game with with the all female vs Thanos scene. Slight tarnish on the best movie ever, but it really was the end of MCU run. 

[The Dude]

It's a Disney thing. See anything Starwars for more examples. 

 

Then again it's everything. Commercials, movies, comedy.. 

 

[SaveByRichter35]

It all started with the 2016 "Ghostcatchers" movie.  

[josh]

Reminds me of the black Batman discussion we had years ago

[SaveByRichter35]

Just now, josh said:

Reminds me of the black Batman discussion we had years ago

They're in the works for a black Superman now too. 

[Long live the King]

Seems like you're overreacting to installments that you personally didn't like and are focusing on those rather than the overall road map.

 

Far From Home, Loki, Moonlight all missed a mention from you.  And there's plenty coming down the pike that don't feature female heros.

[SaveByRichter35]

11 minutes ago, Long live the King said:

Seems like you're overreacting to installments that you personally didn't like and are focusing on those rather than the overall road map.

 

Far From Home, Loki, Moonlight all missed a mention from you.  And there's plenty coming down the pike that don't feature female heroes.

He's still not wrong though

[Pete]

Also, She Hulk pretty good. 

[The Dude]

Watching love and thunder...

 

The sound mix in this movie is frikken terrible. Sound effects and music? Way up. Dialog? Muffled and low. 

 

There's only so much bumbling, stupid Thor and ridiculously loud GNR I can take. I'm a half hour in and I'm not sure I even want to finish this. 

Edited September 11, 2022 by The Dude

[The Dude]

Spoiler

Liked Russel Crowe, thought that scene was pretty funny. 

 

I didn't get the vibe Phil did on the wokeness.  Not completely. I mean there's the Korg species being all dudes as a nod to... well I'll leave that.   I've kinda felt that vibe Phil was talking about, more in other stuff for years...

 

Anyway. 

 

I didn't understand the ending. Like at all. She dies and so does Gorr. Thor has to watch over Gorrs shitty kid (for what and why?), who's now a god/superhero? 

 

Why didn't Thor call the Guardians of the Galaxy or the Avengers for help??? 

 

How much did GNR make off this? 

 

Easily the worst of the Thor franchise to date. 

 

Natalie Portman was hot as fuck as a blonde though. 

 

[Phil]

On 9/9/2022 at 6:48 PM, Pete said:

Dude, put shit in spoilers. 

 

And yea, it all started in End Game with with the all female vs Thanos scene. Slight tarnish on the best movie ever, but it really was the end of MCU run. 

 

Done. And agreed — that was the major tipping point. It was done in exactly the same fashion, too.

 

Spoiler

Spider-man, laying, clutching the gauntlet, scared to death. Captain Marvel, confident as fuck, takes it, with some groan-inducing line about how "WE got this," as every female character comes together at once. Just so fucking cringe.

 

On 9/10/2022 at 11:57 AM, Long live the King said:

Seems like you're overreacting to installments that you personally didn't like and are focusing on those rather than the overall road map.

 

Far From Home, Loki, Moonlight all missed a mention from you.  And there's plenty coming down the pike that don't feature female heros.

 

No, I explained it succinctly in the OP, I thought. Hence "across nearly every new chapter that's been told since Endgame."

 

Not everything has suffered the same fate, but enough has to warrant criticism of representation over substance.

[Morphinity 2.0]

I watched the new Thor this weekend and I didn't quite come to the same conclusion as you re: the wokeness. Maybe it was more subtle than the nonsense in She Hulk or Falcon and Winter Soldier, but Thor's bumbling nature tracked well with where we left him post-Ragnarok and End Game. Valkyrie grew into a pillar of strength in Ragnarok, and the Jane Foster stuff does sort of line up with what I understand from the comics.

So maybe it doesn't quite pass the smell test based on what the MCU has been doing lately, but it seemed mostly above board. 

[Phil]

10 minutes ago, Nashley Tisdale said:

I watched the new Thor this weekend and I didn't quite come to the same conclusion as you re: the wokeness. Maybe it was more subtle than the nonsense in She Hulk or Falcon and Winter Soldier, but Thor's bumbling nature tracked well with where we left him post-Ragnarok and End Game. Valkyrie grew into a pillar of strength in Ragnarok, and the Jane Foster stuff does sort of line up with what I understand from the comics.

So maybe it doesn't quite pass the smell test based on what the MCU has been doing lately, but it seemed mostly above board. 

 

Maybe I'm being too hard on it, but here's how I saw it:

 

Spoiler

When we leave Thor at the end of Endgame, he is so much more content than he was prior (having failed to kill Thanos the first time). When he names Valkyrie the new King of New Asgard, he does talk about how he's now "purposeless" or something to that extent, for the first time in his life, having renounced his throne/title, but he's not despondent about it. He's proud to name her King, and seems, I don't know, cautiously optimistic about what lies ahead for him? There's at least some semblance of excitement.

Fast-forward to the start of Love and Thunder, and I don't feel like he's in the same head space at all. Behaviorally, he feels like he's wallowing in self-pity. He literally doesn't give a shit about anything around him, like the Tower he destroys in the beginning, or for his own well-being (having the hole blown through his fucking poncho or whatever the fuck he was wearing, or just the fact he was sitting like a hippie as people died below him and had to be asked to join the fight).

 

It just feels so unnecessarily... castrating.

 

[LindG1000]

I think it's indisputable that the MCU has become directionless - or at least, the direction is far from clear. A good deal of time has been spent building up three or four until-now completely disparate storylines:

• Aftermath of Endgame
• Multiverses
• Street Level Heroes/whatever the fuck CA+WS was
• Gods

I don't see the pathway that connects all of this. I see how Kang and Loki/Strange/the Eternals/Gods things can connect. I see how a future-state X-Men reboot can connect with the street-level heroes work they've been doing. I don't see how the rest of it comes together, and I don't see how those two potential connections come together.

 

And...part of me thinks they've earned the right to be a little directionless for a bit after the incredible run they had in the Infinity Saga. They're clearly fucking around with some really interesting concepts that transcend the traditional superhero narrative in thoughtful, funny, or at least creative ways. She-Hulk is a really good example of this; the idea of a Hulk in a legal comedy is outright fucking weird, and it just...it works. It's funny. It's doing fuckall to move a plot forward, but it's straight up delightful. They're going to miss sometimes - it just feels like it's been more often than not recently, especially on the big screen. Eternals stunk. No Way Home was good-not-great. Multiverse of Madness was more confusing than good. L&T was like...40 minutes shorter than it needed to be in order to hit the mark. Lots of random fan service stuff, but not so much in the way of advancing a greater narrative.

 

As for the "woke" thing...comic books have always been "woke". It's the default state of Marvel and has been for seven decades+, doubly so when you keep in mind who created these characters and their place in time. It should be expected, even when it's kitschy fan-service like the Endgame "but she's not alone" thing to throw a bone to the A-Force. The one exception I'd note is for Ms. Marvel, who is a very new character in the comic space and seems entirely borne of post-9/11 anti-Muslim backlash. Natural for comic books, sure, but not really in the narrative of the characters we're talking about.

[Pete]

I think comics overall (not just Marvel) need to do some real audience insights work to understand who their consumer is, not who they want them to be.

 

Ms. Marvel is a great example. The percentage of teenage Muslim girls who are into comic books and super heroes is (I'd guess) super fucking tiny. But when you come out with Ms Marvel as a series, you put that on the level of a character like Loki, She Hulk, Wanda, etc. And it's just not the same.

 

They'd be better off doing some architecture work within the franchise and decide:

1. Who gets a solo feature (Cap, Iron Man, Strange, etc)
2. Who gets into a storyline collab (like Avengers, Infinity Saga)
3. Who gets a series on D+
4. Who gets a "Special" on D+ (60-90 minutes, either in 30 min formats, 3 parter, etc)

Right now they just treat it all like it's important and it's not. IMO anything that leads to the next movie or storyline should get a series (CA+WS moves into CA: New World Order? Fine), everything else could be mini-series or special D+ movie. Even Moon Knight, which I really enjoyed, is going nowhere as far as I can tell. Same with She-Hulk.

[Phil]

27 minutes ago, Pete said:

I think comics overall (not just Marvel) need to do some real audience insights work to understand who their consumer is, not who they want them to be.

 

Ms. Marvel is a great example. The percentage of teenage Muslim girls who are into comic books and super heroes is (I'd guess) super fucking tiny. But when you come out with Ms Marvel as a series, you put that on the level of a character like Loki, She Hulk, Wanda, etc. And it's just not the same.

 

They'd be better off doing some architecture work within the franchise and decide:

1. Who gets a solo feature (Cap, Iron Man, Strange, etc)
2. Who gets into a storyline collab (like Avengers, Infinity Saga)
3. Who gets a series on D+
4. Who gets a "Special" on D+ (60-90 minutes, either in 30 min formats, 3 parter, etc)

Right now they just treat it all like it's important and it's not. IMO anything that leads to the next movie or storyline should get a series (CA+WS moves into CA: New World Order? Fine), everything else could be mini-series or special D+ movie. Even Moon Knight, which I really enjoyed, is going nowhere as far as I can tell. Same with She-Hulk.

 

Well, that speaks to it being directionless. Because, as you pointed out, there's no hierarchy. If everything is "important," then nothing is. The idea that 100% of your audience is going to consume 100% of your content seems misplaced, too.

[The Dude]

I just hope they don't destroy the Daredevil and Punisher series. I guess Spider-Man is going to have a place in that universe, which is fine. 

[Pete]

2 hours ago, Phil said:

 

Well, that speaks to it being directionless. Because, as you pointed out, there's no hierarchy. If everything is "important," then nothing is. The idea that 100% of your audience is going to consume 100% of your content seems misplaced, too.

I don't think they actually have that idea, or they would be setting up the next movies to be explicitly tied to all the series, and they're not.

 

Like I said, some things clearly aren't going anywhere. But there's clearly a direction with new world order, Kang, etc. 

 

I think the hierarchy would help from a financial perspective as well as three episodes of Miss Marvel is a lot more palatable than 8. I have liked to see a longer Moon Knight, things like that. 

[Long live the King]

@Phil I disagree with your take on the Spidey/Captain Marvel scene.  Spiderman was new to his powers and a 'rookie' superhero.  Captain Marvel is one of the most powerful characters in the MCU so far and had been superheroing all over the universe.  I guess you can be upset about all the female heroes being in one shot, but I didn't find it to be cringeworthy. 

 

@Pete They are setting things up and the series are explicitly tied in. 

 

Spoiler

In Wandavision we saw how Monica Rambo got her powers.  Ms. Marvel got an origin series.  Both of them will be in The Marvels.

 

Falcon & Winter Soldier had a ton of set up for Thunderbolts.

 

There's still something like 15 entries to come out before the next Avengers.  They're introducing new characters to replace dead/retired ones.  That takes some time.  things will be more clear after Kang is introduced.

 

 

[Phil]

21 minutes ago, Long live the King said:

@Phil I disagree with your take on the Spidey/Captain Marvel scene.  Spiderman was new to his powers and a 'rookie' superhero.  Captain Marvel is one of the most powerful characters in the MCU so far and had been superheroing all over the universe.  I guess you can be upset about all the female heroes being in one shot, but I didn't find it to be cringeworthy.

 

That's not even the part I took the biggest issue with.

 

Spoiler

The all female "we got this" or "she's not alone" or whatever that stupid line was scene that immediately followed it is the crux of the issue. It literally spurned all of this tokenism I'm railing against.

 

But I stand by my original assertion. Rookie or not, you don't need the visual of one of your up-and-coming team stars (Spider-Man) in the fucking fetal position, scared shitless, getting "whiteknighted" by the strong female lead for exactly the same reason you don't need it in the reverse. In fact, had it happened in reverse, the movie would be rightfully panned for reinforcing dated stereotypes that men need always save women.

 

They're all superheroes. Some of them have insane powers. Spider-Man has enough fearlessness to jump on a space ship that jumps into another galaxy but is a helpless babe on the battlefield? Bullshit. The fact of the matter is, not a one of them belongs infantilized for the express purpose of lifting up the other to be the white knight. Because they're all the white knight.

 

You know how you do that exact scene without the woke nonsense? Spider-Man, having just carried the gauntlet and now gassed, is exhausted, not scared. Captain Marvel lands near him. He's still struggling to catch his breath, and Captain Marvel says something to him like "welcome to the team, kid. I'll take it from here." Spider-Man can even look at her in awe, like he does, and you skip the girl power team up entirely. This would have achieved the same goal of empowering Captain Marvel without the need to emasculate Spider-Man in order to do so. And we completely avoid the token bullshit that made most everyone's eyes roll for being what we all knew it was designed to be.

 

[Pete]

35 minutes ago, Long live the King said:

@Phil I disagree with your take on the Spidey/Captain Marvel scene.  Spiderman was new to his powers and a 'rookie' superhero.  Captain Marvel is one of the most powerful characters in the MCU so far and had been superheroing all over the universe.  I guess you can be upset about all the female heroes being in one shot, but I didn't find it to be cringeworthy. 

 

@Pete They are setting things up and the series are explicitly tied in. 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

In Wandavision we saw how Monica Rambo got her powers.  Ms. Marvel got an origin series.  Both of them will be in The Marvels.

 

Falcon & Winter Soldier had a ton of set up for Thunderbolts.

 

There's still something like 15 entries to come out before the next Avengers.  They're introducing new characters to replace dead/retired ones.  That takes some time.  things will be more clear after Kang is introduced.

 

 

Spoiler

Thing is the Marvels are a go-nowhere franchise. They're not even secondary a la Ant Man/Wasp...They are like bit characters, because people hate Brie Larsen.

That said, the all female End Game scene was contrived as fuck and not at all authentic.

[Long live the King]

3 hours ago, Phil said:

 

That's not even the part I took the biggest issue with.

 

  Hide contents

The all female "we got this" or "she's not alone" or whatever that stupid line was scene that immediately followed it is the crux of the issue. It literally spurned all of this tokenism I'm railing against.

 

But I stand by my original assertion. Rookie or not, you don't need the visual of one of your up-and-coming team stars (Spider-Man) in the fucking fetal position, scared shitless, getting "whiteknighted" by the strong female lead for exactly the same reason you don't need it in the reverse. In fact, had it happened in reverse, the movie would be rightfully panned for reinforcing dated stereotypes that men need always save women.

 

They're all superheroes. Some of them have insane powers. Spider-Man has enough fearlessness to jump on a space ship that jumps into another galaxy but is a helpless babe on the battlefield? Bullshit. The fact of the matter is, not a one of them belongs infantilized for the express purpose of lifting up the other to be the white knight. Because they're all the white knight.

 

You know how you do that exact scene without the woke nonsense? Spider-Man, having just carried the gauntlet and now gassed, is exhausted, not scared. Captain Marvel lands near him. He's still struggling to catch his breath, and Captain Marvel says something to him like "welcome to the team, kid. I'll take it from here." Spider-Man can even look at her in awe, like he does, and you skip the girl power team up entirely. This would have achieved the same goal of empowering Captain Marvel without the need to emasculate Spider-Man in order to do so. And we completely avoid the token bullshit that made most everyone's eyes roll for being what we all knew it was designed to be.

 

 

 

Spoiler

Yes, they're all superheroes, but sometimes even superheroes need saving.  You mention a male getting "whiteknighted" by the strong female lead for exactly the same reason you don't need it in the reverse.   What if they were the same gender?  The genders are meaningless to me in this scene.  I have no issue with a weak young hero, who had just been un-blipped, being saved by one of the most powerful veteran heroes in the MCU after freezing on the battlefield.  The entire battle was going pretty poorly for the entire ensemble of good guys until Captain Marvel showed up.  They didn't pick some random female hero to save him.   

 

[Phil]

1 hour ago, Long live the King said:

  Hide contents

Yes, they're all superheroes, but sometimes even superheroes need saving.  You mention a male getting "whiteknighted" by the strong female lead for exactly the same reason you don't need it in the reverse.   What if they were the same gender?  The genders are meaningless to me in this scene.  I have no issue with a weak young hero, who had just been un-blipped, being saved by one of the most powerful veteran heroes in the MCU after freezing on the battlefield.  The entire battle was going pretty poorly for the entire ensemble of good guys until Captain Marvel showed up.  They didn't pick some random female hero to save him.   

 

Spoiler

Again, the all girl team up was the primary issue. It was cinematic virtue signaling to the highest degree.

I had issue with how they did the scene prior with Spider-Man being portrayed as such an infant, but even if nothing else changed with that scene, the rest would have been fine had it not immediately transitioned into the girl power moment. That it did made what transpired before it worse because it's impossible (at least for me) to not see how the entire girl power scene is predicated on them gender swapping that traditional white knight role — a role I've already explained sucks.