Marvel Cinematic Universe

Yep. They always devolve to a big smashy CGI-fest for the last act
I'm getting so bored of it.

I don't think Black Panther does particularly. But yeah its often the way. I'd say previously its been more of a DC problem; Wonder Woman being their best film where the 2nd act leads you to go "Oh maybe you can't just smash your way through humans being fucking awful" then no a big CGI villain just appears. Black Panther was always leading to a conflict with Killmonger and it was fairly well done (not the CGI the plot). So its at least earned on some level.

Shang Chi appeared to be going for some sort of resolution between children and father that'd have had some emotional heft they'd earned, maybe a kung fu fight. But nah some big CGI monster just rocks up instead. 

I really, really, really, really wished they hadn't killed of Killmonger. Michael B Jordan was brilliant as him and really could have been a great antihero Black Panther in the upcoming sequel.

I guess what's fascinating here is that there's absolutely no consistency on which people think was "the best" or liked the most of the Marvel series. Something for everyone, maybe.


I don't think that's honest, I think it's a bit weird and opinionated, especially because it implies stuff before Endgame wasn't "shite", which seems like bollocks to me.

I mean, Spider-Man: No Way Home was easily the best Tom Holland Spider-Man movie (of course there have been two post-Endgame and Far From Home was pretty weak) and one of the better and more human and humane MCU films period. The only other movies post-Endgame have been Eternal (beautiful and completely rubbish) and Shang-Chi which was a lot of fun though as Zephro correctly points out, had a crap final act (and some really shockingly bad SFX at times).

All the rest is TV series, which clearly no-one agrees on the quality of (even WandaVision is significantly split between "Brilliant!" and "Okay, but a slog at times"). Personally the only TV series which came close to crap for me, despite liking the lead characters, was Falcon. I'm always happy to see more Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan on screen, both are funny and charismatic (Anthony Mackie nearly managed to save a terrible Netflix movie where he was an android a year or two ago, solely on the basis he was great in it, with an amazing psychotic gleam in his eye, Sebastian Stan is just effortlessly charming), but was annoyed that the writing just wimped out on everything, which dragged it down - as did the US Agent stuff, weirdly.

We all agree Black Widow and Eternals were the actual weakest ones though, right?

I seem to be alone in this but the difference between them is barely perceivable to me.

The kind of thing that gets "OMFG this is the worst thing ever I can't believe this shit" is maybe a 6.5/10 and the "OMFG this is the best thing ever I can't believe this shit" is maybe a 7.5/10.

It all watchable fluff, and it's all *so* formulaic.

Eternals isn't great but it's not the worst way of spending a couple of hours of your life if you want to watch something very undemanding.

For me Eternals was the weakest, I was over BW as soon as it started as it didn't really add anything to her story but I was entertained to a degree. But Eternals was boring as hell, with people I didn't really care about, a plot I didn't really care about especially a plot that had end of the world stakes to it without the sufficient build up to it to earn it. I'm ok with saying I'm very much a fan of the Marvel machine but this was not the one.

When 90% of them are mediocre and produced at the same level of basic competence, a stinker really stands out.

I mean, that was kind of their selling point. They delivered a consistent, repeatable experience so getting something that actually sucked out loud is a fairly big deal.

That Ant-Man 1 was my least favourite for awhile speaks to how consistent they are in general I think

I have enjoyed all their movies that I've seen, which I've said before is a pretty impressive feat when they're at 20+ movies and most franchises jump the shark around movie 2 or 3.

I find their tv shows much more inconsistent. I think it's because they can manage a fun ride 2hr movie in their sleep, but once it gets up to 10-12 hours the flaws start to show much more clearly.

Wandavision was half dull, half ok, with a fun villain. Falcon+Soldier was half good and then went to shit. Hawkeye was fun enough based on the great 2 main characters, but it was definitely dragged out far too long.
Swamp Thing was the best one!

Watched ep1 and 2 of Moon Knight and yeah I'm liking this a lot.

They’re all competent or better. They’ve essentially replaced things like Armageddon and Independence Day type blockbusters but in successful franchise form.

I have no problem watching them, and the better ones I enjoy a lot for those crowd pleasing moments. The most recent ones have struggled to achieve that because they don’t have the character history of several films and it will feel like they’re worse without those peaks. They have also been some of the lesser films in the franchise, but still ok.

They absolutely are, but they're doing it in a different way, which is to say, they're creating this whole "interwoven" approach to movies, the U in the MCU, which is not something that has really been done before - it's been touched on, but never in the same way, or to remotely the same degree. It's a more meta approach than an approach contained in a single movie, but it's absolutely having the same level of influence as SW or the Matrix, in terms of how its impacting movie-making. It has impacts within movies too, because they're conducted in a different way when they're part of a "universe". Also people are definitely more forgiving of mediocrity in the context of a "universe". Not just with movies - this is very obvious with long-running book series too - Brandon Sanderson has his "cosmere", which is a Brandon Sanderson Literary Universe - and the amount fans forgive the mediocre books because they're part of it is staggering.

I'm not saying this to praise Marvel particularly, but I think it's easily as big a deal as SW/Matrix in terms of what its doing. I largely agree with "skin deep and interchangeable". One of the things I liked about No Way Home was that it had at least a scintilla of emotional depth, and the plotline was definitely not interchangeable with any other MCU movie, because it was about healing and forgiveness, not, basically vengeance or just stopping a baddie. It's actually been weird with stuff like Ant Man 2 where, you'd have thought healing/forgiveness might have been a theme, but it totally wasn't - they're just horrible to the villain, troubled as the villain clearly is and this despite Ant Man supposedly being a "good guy".

It's still baffling that they were just making things up as they went along with the current star wars film. But then I personally feel that they were like it's Star Wars people will just lap it up, maybe the Marvel formula had changed people's expectations of what a series of films could be, or more likely younger people who don't have the nostalgia that has made us look past the many many problems with the franchise.