The MCU was first conceived brilliantly, until Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and Netflix came along, then half that shit was ignored, including the Inhumans because that was just terrible and I never even watched the damn thing.

Now, the major problem with the MCU is the same problem that has been plaguing the Marvel Comics for decades. Too many plots, too many characters and if you don't read every single issue you miss out on a lot of little details that might become crucial during the next big event BS.

As far as Valentina is concerned, I'm lucky, the extent of my exposure to her is one scene in Black Widow and now BP Wakanda Forever and quite frankly it says something when I didn't even remember her fucking name until I came here and read posts to remind me of who she is because I don't think her name was even uttered in BW or BPWF.

It's just Elaine from Seinfeld with a really odd personality quirk, a shock of blue in her hair for some reason and some really weird Super-Villain vibes.

Ross warns her off what a global power with Vibranium would do and she's acting all giddy and excited at the prospect as if it's the best idea since Ultron. I mean how is that not big warning signs to anybody sane in Office, and where the hell is Maria Hill? I don't think we've seen any of the former S.H.I.E.L.D characters that were important since Far From Home. (Unless they've been in the Disney+ stuff and, like I said, not a member.)

Anyway, I'm repeating myself.

The MCU was fun and entertaining when they had to try harder to make good movies, now that they have succeeded they're coasting, just like the comics on fan viewership. I have a feeling that once Phase 5 is over their plans for future franchises and films are going to be met with a huge flop because you can't just coast through the popularity and expect it to stay the same. It's why James Bond's film franchise slowly died until the last Pierce Brosnon failure, it's why The Sequel Trilogy has successfully murdered the Star Wars film franchise and it's why Harry Potter's Wizarding World films have succumbed to terrible choices just to cram Grindelwald and Dumbledore into everything that should have just been a light-hearted adventure about magical beasts.

 

I mean, in Valentina's case, her appearances thus far has been within context of the story. Her appearances in BW, BPWF and FaWS were all in the context of political maneuvering and all three of those are tied to the government and/or world power in some shape or fashion. If she'd shown up in Loki or Thor 4 for instance, then it'd be an issue for me.

As far as FOMO goes, typically the main events do a decent job of catching the viewer up on the key points to follow the story. You don't actually *have* to watch everything put out (there's Google for a reason).

To me, the only real problems are:

• Feige rumored to not have been as hands on with this phase as he was was with the first couple of phases. That and some sort of misstep on the route taken with Wanda messed up the order of events. I'd have to find it but I remember reading that the changed order of releases threw everything off.

• The fans for *wanting*/*needing* everything to be tied in together in order to watch. In the comics, fans prefer to have something to also read that's not tied into the main titles and stuff like She-Hulk is in that vein. Like a lot of the extra shows are meant to be watched because you like the character/want to watch-read about them. Anyone keeping up with the shows strictly as to not miss a detail of the overall MCU of course is going to feel like it's filler.

I remember shortly after Endgame, Feige was asked about what's next and he said definitely no multiphase storyline as long as Endgame. He also mentioned that he'd like to have the franchises stand on their own a bit more. This I definitely welcome so I can keep up with what I want to keep up with and Cliff Notes the rest, same as the comics.

 

If half of the build up to the crossover event is on Disney+ with political machinations that aren't shown to the film audiences you tend to have a problem with the pacing as you will need to add some kind of scene into a film to explain things.

I'm not saying stand alone adventures are bad, per-se, but at this point everybody has been conditioned to see multiple characters in even the stand alone films so we can see different interactions that the big name event films like Endgame can't touch upon. Minor character interactions that would pad the run time. Some of the best aspects of Thor 4 was his interactions with Star-Lord and crew. Those elements are hilarious and fun to watch.

Shang-Chi had Wong show up and that was great, Wong is awesome.

No Way Home included loads of interactions.

Strange MoM was cameos galore with Multiversal versions of characters folks have wanted to see in the MCU for ages.

Eternals had no other characters from the larger MCU and the main characters just didn't really hold my interest as well as they could have. It was way too drab and failed to make me care one whit about any of the new arrivals. A minor Cameo from anybody else during one of the big fights would have been interesting. Though probably not enough to save that film and I'm not looking forward to Eternals 2, even with Pip the Troll in it.

Black Widow was a really pointless film that featured a character we know is dead and had more characters introduced that we're supposed to care for because apparently now there's an army of Black Widow agents out there, and yet I don't see those characters showing up anywhere else throughout any of the films in Phase 4. Not that I would expect it, but even a reference to them would have made that film seem more interconnected and important.

BP Wakanda Forever is a glorious love letter to a fallen legend, but as I noted it's so focused on grief that even with a few moments of levity there is no moment in the film to give you a chance to reflect and accept your emotional responses. It's like a Pixar movie dialed up to eleven, like the Opening of Up without anything else to give you a chance to come to grips with your feelings on the matter. I enjoyed my time with the movie, but a three hour Wake is a bit much to take for anybody. Especially during the most depressing time of the year.

 

Right. And this just goes back to what I said. The focus shouldn't be on cameos or guest stars the focus should be on the story. If a cameo or guest star fits, that's great but it's not necessary. What the fan wants and what the story needs is entirely two different things.

 

Completely agree, it was the most boring MCU movie I have ever seen. Complete snoozefest.

 

I’ll be honest, I forgot about T’Challa a few times during Wakanda Forever. I don’t know if that’s a failure or a strength of the movie or not, but there were some stretches of the film, primarily before Shuri escapes Talokan, where I wasn’t thinking about him and the loss of him. I think it was when she brings him up to Namor during their one on one talk that I actually remembered for the first time in 40 minutes or so what had happened.

I’m not sure if that means the story was that engrossing to me, or if that means the story wasn’t doing enough regarding the loss of T’Challa. But for a movie that is indeed like @Scrapper6 said, a three hour wake, that’s noteworthy that I actually forgot about him for as long as I did.

 

And yet the stories have suffered greatly in most of the Phase 4 films.

Even Wakanda Forever has flaws in the storytelling, it's a tad too slow to build up.

 

Yeah, but then you're shuttled off to a sob story about Namor's mother dying. The whole theme of the movie was death. It was also supposed to be about legacy but that's drowned out by funeral, fight, sob story, sob story, fight, funeral, sob story, zzzz...

 

Other than variants in What If, the SHIELD crew has not made any appearances in the Phase 4 shows, though yes their next appearance will be in Disney+

 

I honestly wouldn’t expect anything less from a movie meant to deal with the death of its icon of a star. Namor’s mother wasn’t really that much of a sob story. I’m at least glad they devoted ample time to his backstory and motive even if he can’t come off as anything but a lesser N’Jadaka.

 

Sure...but I think it was supposed to be one in order to make Namor a sympathetic character. Anyway, it's a very dour, boring movie with some questionable action scenes thrown in. Not really something I'd want to watch again.

 

I enjoyed this overall, but the writing and story is incredibly weak and haphazard. They threw a lot of stuff in here for no real reason. A lot of plot points were forced and pointless. A shame really since the first one was so damn good. I fear for future projects in general now, especially with how big Quantumania looks. The bigger it is the more crap they want to throw in for no reason.

 

Ironheart: Marvel Studios Concept Artist Shares Unseen Mk 2.0 Armor
Looks better than the suit they used.

 

Only a week away from being out for a month and BP2 is limping toward $400m domestically. It's winning weekends still but that's damning faint praise when you're winning with only $17m.

Note that Love and Thunder performed worse. But I think Disney was hoping BP2 would do a LOT better than this. It's on pace for Doctor Strange 2 territory.

It is a down year for all of Hollywood, though. But are moviegoers just kind of done with Marvel movies that don't have Iron Man, Captain America or Spiderman involved?

 

You said it yourself. I think Hollywood has to rethink their approach. People might be more willing to wait for the movie to show up on streaming services, and if you password share…

I think it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. If your movie performs poorly, you can quickly dump it on streaming and act like that’s a big win for the streaming service. But then you start teaching folks that they can wait to watch it later for “free” if they are patient enough. So, what do you do? Keep the movie out of streaming for a longer period but that’ll upset customers because new content isn’t getting delivered to the streaming service.

Black Adam showed up on VOD services like 2 weeks after theater release? DAMN!

The studios want to charge multiple times for their content. They want: Theater dollars, rental dollars, purchase-to-own dollars and finally streaming dollars. It’s impossible to do that. My local BestBuy remodeled and killed their DVD/Blu-ray section and replaced it with Lego sets.

Less folks are going to theaters and buying media. More folks will stick with streaming. A reckoning is coming (or has arrived). It’s going to get ugly but you either adapt or you die and get bought by Disney/Apple/Microsoft/Google/Amazon/Netflix/Comcast (any others I missed?)

 

I think a good part of it is that fact that 60% of Americans are living damn near paycheck to paycheck. We don’t all have the money to take the whole family to see a movie, and why would we when the virus and the flu are flaring up again? Plus, we all know it will be on Disney+ in a few months, so why not just wait?


In the event of economic turmoil and more people being pushed closer to lower class do to ever increasing costs of… everything, entertainment is going to be one of the first things people cut out of their lives and one of the first industries to seriously suffer.

 

Yeah everything costs more right now even the middle class are getting stretched. People will start budgeting more and entertainment is often the first to go. Especially if they aren’t interested in even seeing a movie or show. Even though they are marketing it for modern audiences. Typically modern audiences are younger and have far less money to splurge than the older audiences they have been doing their best to alienate.

 

I just find it funny that a movie closing in on 800 mil is being considered a flop. I'm sure Black Adam would love doubling it's box office by taking WF's numbers.

 

Yeah, i mean a bunch of people these days think that for a film to be a success it has to make a billion.

 

Disagree. Not funny because 800m is the break even number for the movie. One billion was expected, so yes, it’s a flop. In phase 4 everything except SM and Dr. Strange lost money so far, and Dr. strange underperformed. It’s been a huge financial blow to Marvel/Disney and a critical failure. With Disney Plus being a huge financial loss for the company, critically panned MCU shows and low viewing numbers, hopefully Marvel can rebound quickly.