I’m a fan of Alan Moore’s comments on superhero media’s relation to fascism. Quoted bit below:
And he now looks with dismay on the way the superhero genre in which he once worked has eaten the culture. “Hundreds of thousands of adults [are] lining up to see characters and situations that had been created to entertain the 12-year-old boys – and it was always boys – of 50 years ago. I didn’t really think that superheroes were adult fare. I think that this was a misunderstanding born of what happened in the 1980s – to which I must put my hand up to a considerable share of the blame, though it was not intentional – when things like Watchmen were first appearing.
The relevant bit in bold:
He thinks that’s not just infantile but dangerous. “I said round about 2011 that I thought that it had serious and worrying implications for the future if millions of adults were queueing up to see Batman movies. Because that kind of infantilisation – that urge towards simpler times, simpler realities – that can very often be a precursor to fascism.” He points out that when Trump was elected in 2016, and “when we ourselves took a bit of a strange detour in our politics”, many of the biggest films were superhero movies.
Isn’t $47 million dollars for one weekend pretty good? What did they spend to make the movie?
Everything costs over 100M these days and usually much, much more. I heard someone say The Marvels was $250M
274.8 million. the 4th highest marvel budget LOL
I wouldn’t personally say that it has anything to do with fatigue or oversaturation. I think the reality of it is that the majority of these movies have no heart, feeling, or direction. The obvious counter example to this trend is the Guardians of the Galaxy films, all of which are dripping with heart and are obviously thoughtfully crafted, and are all around good moving despite being in the MCU. If this universe of films were all given the same amount of care and thought as those films, I think they would all be successful. But alas, capitalism.
Great my fucking YouTube feed is gonna be drowning in so many “go woke go broke” posts from now til the end of goddamn time thanks Disney you fucks.
At this point they’re doing this shit on purpose to get more people voting red so they won’t ever pay taxes again ever.
I saw it today. It was fine. It’s far from “the worst movie in the MCU” like some reviews I’ve seen. And I didn’t watch Ms. Marvel or Secret War, either. Still followed the story fine (I am a casual comics fan so I’m already vaguely familiar w/ Ms. Marvel and the Kree/Skrull war, in fairness).
Biggest contributor to the low B.O. in my opinion was the studios dragging out the writers & actors strikes and not being able to mount any publicity for the movie. I only remembered it was opening this weekend when I saw all the negative headlines about it coming out.
This wasn’t the point of the article at all, but all I could think was “Quantumania got a B? Whaaaaat?”
Are these newer movies really that much worse in general or has the audience just finally gotten tired of the entire MCU? I saw every single one up until the second Spider-Man flick and many of them were just sort of lame. Movies like Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel and Black Panther and the Ant-Man movies which all released in the MCU’s most dominant period leading up to and in between the Thanos movies were pretty bad and they still made a lot of bank.
I watched all those mid movies because I was invested in the shared continuity and wanted to see the different branches of the universe collide with each other. When they finally did, that investment just kind of dissipated, but I think the final nail in the coffin for me was when they announced the Disney+ Marvel shows at which point it just became too much of a time commitment to keep up with.
Adding TV shows into the mix that were average made it too much to bother keeping up, and I haven’t watched MCU since then.
@neme I remember the advertising for The Marvels was pretty bad. You had commercials that felt like advertisements for the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general. One ad I got was like “Remember when Tony Stark built his first suit and became Iron Man? The Marvels, in theaters this November”
I think I saw one trailer months ago that I looked up on YouTube. I’m pretty sure I never saw an actual ad for it. The first I heard it was out this weekend is articles like this. Doesn’t that lack of advertising usually mean the studio has already written it off?
Where I live I was inundated with Marvels advertising, it’s been everywhere.
Were they trying to keep the movie release a secret for a reason?
Seems like a lot of us had no idea it was coming out this weekend…
Writers strike and actors strike, meant that only minimal promotion was possible
studios should’ve caved faster
True
Wrong. It was absolutely possible. Just not possible while sacrificing absolutely everything for their profit-focused timeline. I want movies to be profitable, but most studies won’t accept anything lower than “wildly popular with opportunities for sequels and spinoffs”.
Where I live there were ads everywhere and on tons on TV.
Maybe is a good time to go back and get good stories scripts and hire good directors.
That’s just putting a bandage on a bigger problem. They need to get rid of “the Marvel method”. Changing entire scripts in post production doesnt work anymore, Marvel isnt some small studio like in 2008.
Or, realize that after 33 films, we have superhero-fatigue.
Brie Larson shouldn’t have gotten that nose job.
I honestly believe Captain Marvel was the start of the downfall of Marvel. Not because of the cast, sex, or anything along those lines.
I believe they over did the character. They made her way to damn strong which made all the other characters pointless.
Remember when a literal god, the most advanced mech, and the super soldier with all the stats struggled with Thanos? Then Cpt Marvel swoops in destroys a couple of ships and takes one on the chin like nothing, that was the moment. The first movie benefitted from a month release from Endgame. Everyone thought it would have something major in it.
The movie wasn’t horrible, it followed most of the other mediocre movies. Origin story where we meet a villain that we will never see again and some powers we will never see again. The acting and the cast were good but it was just ok.
I honestly believe Captain Marvel was the start of the downfall of Marvel. Not because of the cast, sex, or anything along those lines. I believe they over did the character. They made her way to damn strong which made all the other characters pointless. Remember when a literal god, the most advanced mech, and the super soldier with all the stats struggled with Thanos? Then Cpt Marvel swoops in destroys a couple of ships and takes one on the chin like nothing, that was the moment.
I don’t understand this criticism at all.
First of all, it was Wanda who had Thanos almost beaten, which is why he had his ship fire on the ground. So Wanda presented a greater threat to him than Captain Marvel did; so great a threat that he was willing to sacrifice his entire army to try to take her out. I think it was Feige who said, around the time of Endgame or maybe shortly thereafter, that Wanda was the most powerful character in the MCU. But people don’t criticise Wanda for being overpowered and making all the other characters pointless.
Second of all, while Danvers did take down one ship (not two, not that it makes a difference), they could have found ways for several other characters to do the same (eg Doctor Strange via illusions, Wanda or Thor through sheer power, Iron Man through nanotech magic) - they just wanted Captain Marvel to make a big entrance because she had been teased at the end of Infinity War (and then also in her own movie prior to Endgame), and we hadn’t really seen her manifest her full power earlier in Endgame.
But the whole point of that her late intervention in the final fight was that Captain Marvel was NOT the overpowered deus ex machina that many fans falsely deride her to be. Because in a one-on-one fight with Thanos, Thanos disposes of her easily - they trade a few punches, he throws her into the ground. She comes back, and he punches her out of frame and out of the film (until the epilogue). The final fight came down to Captain America, Thor and of course Iron Man, which it was always going to - those being the three keystone Avengers of the MCU.
That’s also why all the founding members of the Avengers went unsnapped at the end of Infinity War. Markus and McFeely and the Russos knew they were making an Avengers movie, not a Captain Marvel movie. Markus and McFeely knew that fans would have felt rightfully betrayed if a character, who had only been introduced to the MCU a year or so before, had swooped in and saved the day after a decade-long build up. So they made sure she didn’t. But more fool them - they still cop the same criticism.
And I say all this as someone who thinks that both Captain Marvel movies (and most of Larson’s performances in the MCU) have been decidedly mediocre, though not for any reasons related to her power level.
“The final fight came down to … It was always going to be”
But there was no reason too. The problem wasn’t that they created an overpowered character who saved the day, it’s that they created an overpowered character who couldn’t save the day because the weaker popular characters had to.
There is zero consistency in powerscaling even scene-to-scene within a single movie. I appreciate a good galaxybrain take but I think you aren’t correct here.
Remember Strange participating in a ~5 v 1 vs Thanos and losing before going one on one and almost drawing? Absolute “conservation of ninjutsu” shit. That’s without even considering the fundamental brokenness of the Time Stone, which he never properly uses in Infinity War, but Thanos actually does use it somewhat properly to basically negate a third of the movie.
Garbage franchise finally suffering, good. This shit needs to die. Endless seas of trash.
