• IzyaKatzmann [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    So a couple of points…

    Marvel has really felt like it’s lost it’s vision since Endgame. Everything from Iron Man forward had been building to that point and once they hit it, it’s like they forgot what they were doing.

    The current big bad didn’t get introduced until Loki, a Disney+ show, and if you look at the properties:

    Endgame - 4/26/2019
    Spider-Man: Far From Home - 7/2/2019
    Wandavision - 1/15/21
    Falcon and Winter Soldier - 3/19/21
    Loki - 6/9/21

    That’s a full 2 year gap and three properties before anyone gets a sense of where the next phase is going. Then:

    Black Widow - 7/9/21 (unrelated flashback)
    What If? - 8/11/21 (unrelated)
    Shang Chi - 9/3/21 (unrelated)
    Eternals - 11/5/21 (unrelated)
    Hawkeye - 11/24/21 (unrelated)
    Spider-Man: No Way Home - 12/17/21

    Using Spider-Man to crack open the multiverse first announced in Loki 6 months previously was a good idea, but there was no mention of Kang or what threat he represented. There were also FIVE unrelated properties between Loki and Spider-Man making it easy to forget Kang was even a thing, assuming people even caught the Disney+ show in the first place.

    Moon Knight - 3/30/22 (unrelated)
    Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness - 5/6/2022

    A direct follow on what was done with Spider-Man, 5 months later, again, no reference to Kang.

    Ms. Marvel - 6/8/22 (unrelated)
    Thor: Love and Thunder - 7/8/22 (unrelated)
    She-Hulk - 8/18/22 (unrelated)
    Werewolf By Night - 10/7/22 (unrelated)
    Wakanda Forever - 11/11/22 (unrelated)
    Guardians Holiday Special - 11/25/22 (unrelated)

    Phase 5:
    Quantumania - 2/17/23

    First film in Phase 5 makes it clear (finally) that Kang is the next big bad, almost 2 years after the character was introduced in a TV show, but it’s not the years that were the problem…

    It was the hours of unrelated content spread across 11 movies and TV shows, 14 if you count What If, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange hitting the multiverse angle but failing to mention Kang.

    Guardians of the Galaxy 3 - 5/5/23 (unrelated)
    Secret Invasion - 6/21/23 (unrelated)
    Loki Season 2 - 10/5/23
    Marvels - 11/10/23 (unrelated)

    And here we are… I haven’t actually seen Marvels yet, so I don’t know how it fits in to the overall plot. Alternate universe hole. No Kang. I’ve heard rumors of an X-Men stinger similar to what they did with Xavier and Reed Richards in Doctor Strange.

    2 and a half years of churning out unrelated properties after having three phases of tightly integrated continuity is NOT how you keep your existing audience.

    So all of that being point 1.

    Point 2 is this… In the comics nobody really cared about Carol Danvers. She didn’t become interesting until the modern Captain Marvel reboot in 2012. In fact, they replaced her a couple of times. Before that, her major story arc was getting her powers stolen by Rogue who would later join the X-Men using both her own power stealing mutant abilities and Carol’s flight, invulnerability and super strength.

  • GreenMario@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Hux@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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…

  • Volkditty@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • TheBroodian [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I think the fatigue is a product of the fact they have no heart or feeling

      irony is fun and all but ultimately people want sincerity. Irony and wit are like icing people like them but there has to be something more substantial there or you just walk away feeling unsatisfied and slightly sick

      Terry Pratchett’s work is a good example of how this can work he’s very ironic and uses a lot of witicisms but underneath it all there is a clear depth of feeling and the books are also full of profound and sincere statements and moments

  • doublepepperoni [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • LENINSGHOSTFACEKILLA [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      They’re bad. Multiverse of Madness was alright. The Spider-Man movies are pretty fun. Everything else since Endgame has been utter shit, though I will say the end of Loki season 2 gave Loki a great “out” as a character, despite being dumb for two seasons, and its a shame they’ll definitely not just let him go.

    • PeludoPorFavor [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      its a double edged sword, re: shows.

      like on the one hand, i think if they had just done spin-offs, people could decide what they were into or not. but on the other hand, they NEED to have everything tied deeply together, or else no one but the actual die-hards would actually watch the shows.

      like it was so frustrating watching the third Guardians movie (snuck into the theatre screening, didn’t pay for that shit), and literally was like ‘who the fuck is that?’ ‘i thought that person died’ ‘etc’. and it’s like… oh right, didn’t watch this or that season of this or that show, or special or whatever.

    • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It just depends on the movie. A good superhero movie will still pull more money than anyone can spend in a lifetime.

      All of the articles are about a movie that wasn’t promoted at all, and it’s the sequel to a movie that didn’t do good anyways. There’s zero surprise to anyone with a level head. It’s all clickbait rage bs.

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        I go to A LOT of movies. I have the AMC A List thing so I try to go every week. I have not seen a SINGLE trailer for The Marvels.

          • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            I was about to ask why airing trailers was against strikes but then it occurred to me that writers are probably still involved in trailers technically lol.

  • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • FoundTheVegan@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Right? Like I’m not against going to the movies for a MCU show. But it just feels like I have to do homework to catch up before I can do so.

  • Majin Boowomp@techhub.social
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    1 year ago

    @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”

    • FlumPHP@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      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?

      • Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Where I live I was inundated with Marvels advertising, it’s been everywhere.

    • whofearsthenight@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think so, I just think these movies have largely not been very good. Like, I really liked Loki S2, have rewatched NWH a hundred times, I liked the Marvels, etc. The problem isn’t superheroes, you can use that as a backdrop for just about any type of story you want to tell and it can be great. For example, WandaVision tells a very different kind of story than anything else and it was really good. But of course, Marvel decides (I’m guessing late into post-production) they’re going to fuck up all of that character development in a post-credits scene and then ignore it entirely in the next movie.

      I think they’re going to have to get a lot more creative about what types of stories they want to tell and what themes they want to get after and stop making them feel like cookie cutter properties. The early phases I think managed this a little better. Like, I remember walking out of TWS and thinking “damn, that was a really good Bond film with a Captain America skin on it” which is a compliment. Somewhere in there the whole thing got really generic.