Marvel Cinematic Universe

I think people don't give the MCU movies enough credit for trying new things, within the strict confines of being MCU-ish.

Captain America did the classic retro hero movie thing.
Thor 2 did a kind of war movie thing.
Avengers was something pretty ambitious and innovative at the time.
Iron Man 3 did the whole PTSD thing, plus the out-of-left-field plot twist.
Guardians was a pretty huge change in style and a big gamble that could easily have gone wrong.
Winter Soldier was a cold war thriller kind of thing.
Black Panther was pretty original in terms of culture and design.
I haven't seen Shang Chi, but I hear it's their spin on kung-fu movies.

I mean, if you compare them to indie movies then they're hardly that disparate in style, but if you compare them to other AAA blockbusters then they're at least trying to do their own spins on different genres, within the confines of the superhero genre.

Why did it confuse you, did you not play Fortnite to get enough background and info on what the Emperor had been doing all this time???

The moment has probably passed completely now but I’d still love to see Wright getting his shot at an MCU property. Ant-Man is fine but I think a few Wright trademark flourishes could’ve made it a lot of fun.

I think AM2 is the better film because it has the sort of fun with the concept that I think someone like Wright could have added to the fairly pedestrian first.

But then Eternals is probably the one of all 27 that is most distinct in looking like it belongs to its director and their style just fell completely flat in the MCU so maybe be careful what we wish for.

Starting a petition for David Lynch’s Return of the Jedi now

Yeah I also disagree. MCU is it’s own genre at this point. They took the idea of sequels and blew it apart to be a series of interconnected media which has cribbed from comic books the idea of having a house style, which I’m not sure I’ve seen since Hammer Horror movies, never on this scale.

And that style itself was largely invented with Iron Man, a movie that was largely improvised, if you can believe it.

like it always has with comic books, the house style will change, experiment and adapt, but only as a reaction to flagging interest. Given Spider-Man 8 just destroyed the world box office, they probably won’t be doing more wacky creator-led stuff for a while. In fact, eventually we’ll probably have an Image Comics-esque counter reaction to marvel. Maybe we are already seeing that with Deadpool, Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Boys, The Umbrella Academy etc.

Image wasn't so much as a counter-reaction as a cash in, which doubled-down on elements that juvenile dudes loved (violence, tits, edgelord-ism, etc.) not as a reaction against, but because juvenile dudes were the primary market for "collectors editions" and also the sort of creators who were super-into this stuff were, well, juvenile dudes. The idea wasn't change, nor like really thinking about comics hard, it was making $$$ off pushing limited editions and so on, whilst letting creators do the (often ill-conceived) projects they'd always wanted, which "the man" might have stopped them doing (because tits, violence, etc.).

The real "reaction against" actually started far earlier, with Watchmen and so on, and really was most focused just after the Image era in the '00s, with the deconstruction and then later reconstruction of comics. All the while Marvel did their very commercial thing. Alan Moore of course did work on both sides of the equation here.

The Boys is a late-deconstructionist comic and the show follows suit, Deadpool is certainly mostly deconstructionist, though Deadpool 2 is so well-executed and has so much heart it's kind of more than that, Invincible tries to do both deconstruction and reconstruction but leans towards the latter (I feel), The Umbrella Academy is kind of its own thing and I don't think really a reaction. Everything Everywhere All At Once is certainly a reaction to something and looks intriguing, but I don't know much about it. Stargirl is pure reconstructionism - it might be kind of boring but it's actually a really good example of that. There was a fairly dire Netflix superhero series which tried a bit of both but leaned reconstructionist too, I forget its name.

I think what we're seeing right now isn't really a reaction to the MCU per se, rather aside from Deadpool, the Watchmen TV series, and Everything, it's just people making old ('80s through '00s) deconstructionist and some reconstructionist comics into TV shows. Even Deadpool seems more like a reaction to the X-Men movies than the MCU so far.

But I think you're right that we will see a reaction.

I just don't think we'll really see it for a while yet, because I think a lot of it will come from younger filmmakers/writers. For now we're just seeing echoes of an earlier reaction, for the most part.

Yes. Yes it is. It's what happens when you're on the bus to school and you've forgotten you need to direct the final film in a trilogy and you haven't written the script yet.

The Watchmen film had a few decent bits. The opening montage, and a few other scenes.

I also think getting rid of the Cthulu genetic abomination and using Dr Manhattan as the "villain" in Ozymandias's plan was actually a decent idea and a good way to streamline some of the story.

But yeah overall it was a bit naff.

Well your main issue is Zack Snyder, he's got a great vision in terms of visual aesthetic but my god he's so EdGy you could cut yourself on him. He just needs to be kept away from the writer's room and someone to tell him he doesn't need to make every film from the mindset of a 15 year old boy with anger issues.

Whenever I see someone at a convention dressed up as Rorschach, I'm always a bit weirded out. Like... you understand that he's a complete sociopath, right.

You don't say anything. You just back away slowly.

‘Why do you have a tattoo of my dead mother on your arm?’

Is it any different to cosplaying or getting a tattoo of the Joker or Darth Vader or someone similar?