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Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

What grade would you give the Marvel Cinematic Universe? (Ever-Changing Question)


  • Total voters
    185
Read the THR article. Bottom line seems to be, they should have treated their writers with a lot more respect. Maybe in a two-hour, three-act movie, one can get away with outlining a story, planning the action sequences, and then writing a script to get from beat to beat, but when dealing with even a six-episode series, and five hours of screen time, the writing has to be on point.

I don't necessarily mind Marvel Studios making limited/miniseries as opposed to multi-season shows. In theory, as long as the quality is there, the audience should be happy with whatever. But it does seem that if they decide to do a miniseries, there should be a strong reason to make it close-ended, and there should be a clear, dramatic conclusion. Covid difficulties aside, WandaVision should have ended with Wanda as a clear villain, to properly set up Multiverse of Madness. Falcon/Winter Soldier should have ended with Sam either battling and defeating Walker, or Walker ending up a major villain to be faced again in Brave New World. The show should also have given audiences a clear update on Old Steve: he's either passed away since Endgame, or Sam and Bucky are still secretly in touch with him. (A Old Steve appearance, maybe even featuring a meeting with Isiah, would have been even better, but there should at least have been a clear update.)

And Secret Invasion should have been a movie, because doing such a story without the main actors was always doomed to fail:

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It was fine for Hawkeye to have a lower-stakes story, but it probably should have come out the Christmas before Kate's big-screen debut to maximize hype, and Ms. Marvel should also have come out closer to The Marvels. Otherwise, movie-only audiences may feel annoyed that they either have to do "homework" or miss crucial info re: the characters they're paying to go see, and audiences who watch the shows may figure that they might as well wait for the movies to come to streaming, since they already associate the characters with the small screen, and the long gaps between movie/show appearances mean they don't feel a sense of urgency to catch the next chapter.

As Screen Crush recently pointed out, the gold standard for movie/TV synergy remains The Winter Soldier and Agents of SHIELD S1, where, in a matter of days, Agent Sitwell walked off a TV scene, appeared (and died!) on the big screen, and the events of the movie permanently changed the very premise of the series. While the production scheduling excuse given for featuring so little movie/series interaction from then on was mostly credible, it should be far easier to coordinate said interaction now that Disney+ can premiere content whenever they like. (Granted, the need for content on the fledgling service at height of the pandemic was a big exception to this.)

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Not that every D+ series needs to directly impact/interact with the movies. Agatha and Daredevil can do their own thing. (She-Hulk... is a bit more debatable.) But when they do share major characters, it should be both timely and important.
 
Read the THR article. Bottom line seems to be, they should have treated their writers with a lot more respect. Maybe in a two-hour, three-act movie, one can get away with outlining a story, planning the action sequences, and then writing a script to get from beat to beat, but when dealing with even a six-episode series, and five hours of screen time, the writing has to be on point.

You know, it's weird for me to learn this, because I'd gotten the impression that the MCU movies were being approached more like a TV series than movies usually are -- that Feige was essentially the showrunner, bringing in directors to make installments that fit into the coherent overall plan he had. I guess it wasn't like that after all, or that trying to do the same thing with series TV instead of movies didn't work.


As Screen Crush recently pointed out, the gold standard for movie/TV synergy remains The Winter Soldier and Agents of SHIELD S1, where, in a matter of days, Agent Sitwell walked off a TV scene, appeared (and died!) on the big screen, and the events of the movie permanently changed the very premise of the series. While the production scheduling excuse given for featuring so little movie/series interaction from then on was mostly credible, it should be far easier to coordinate said interaction now that Disney+ can premiere content whenever they like.

As I recall, the reason they stopped tying the TV series into the movies was because of a corporate split between the movie and TV divisions, with Ike Perlmutter getting pushed out of his role in the movie division, after which the movie people didn't want to work with his TV division anymore. It was never really a scheduling issue, because the references only ever went one way -- the TV shows, which had far less lead time, were able to incorporate tie-ins to the movies, but the movies never referenced the shows. And they did it very well while there was the corporate synergy in place to allow it. It was when the lines of communication were broken that it stopped happening.

But you're right -- since it's all one company now, that should make the coordination easier.
 
You know, it's weird for me to learn this, because I'd gotten the impression that the MCU movies were being approached more like a TV series than movies usually are -- that Feige was essentially the showrunner, bringing in directors to make installments that fit into the coherent overall plan he had. I guess it wasn't like that after all, or that trying to do the same thing with series TV instead of movies didn't work.
I imagine Feige and his team were probably just overwhelmed by the explosion of overall content production, and didn't have time to massage the D+ series' scripts and edits to nearly the same degree they were used to with the films.
 
Oof, I assume you meant "deaf." Dang autocorrect...
Yeah, that was supposed to be deaf, but it wasn't autocorrect, I just hit the wrong key, the d is right next to the f.
I thought those 2 were annoying together. The macaroni joke wasn't funny at wll
I loved Kate and Yelena's relationship, and from what I can remember I thought the macaroni joke was pretty funny.
I'm basing box office on this:

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchise/fr541495045/ and to me it shows a signifcant drop in the lifetime gross revenue since Covid ended with very few exceptions. Only 3 movies post Covid in the Top 10 have earned enough money to be in that category and to me it just shows that the movies are not as well received as they used to be. We can argue about the cinematic reasons but that would go nowhere since it is highly subjective, the numbers are about the only thing one can objectively and accurately measure.
One thing to keep in mind when it comes to Marvel's box office post COVID, is that the majority of the big blockbuster have been failing at the box office, so this is a problem with all movies, not just the MCU.
 
I loved Kate and Yelena's relationship, and from what I can remember I thought the macaroni joke was pretty funny.

Agree to disagree. I found them juvenile. In fact I don't think either black widow and either Hawkeye are well written or watchable. Kate didn't learn anything and yelena is another Russian spy cliché

To me they're exactly what people always criticize (sometimes incorrectly) other mcu projects for: unfunny quips
 
The MCU needs more Yelena, lots more Yelena. Pugh is one of the finest actors of her generation and Marvel need to use her or lose her.

And I loved Yelena and Kate in Hawkeye. I'd promised myself last Christmas that I'd do a Hawkeye rewatch and didn't get around to it so will try again this year.
 
I don't find Pugh to be that good. She's fine but doesn't elevate the material liek many other actors do. As far as I'm concerned any Yelena is too much. I don't see the appeal of another generic powerless spy
 
The MCU needs more Yelena, lots more Yelena. Pugh is one of the finest actors of her generation and Marvel need to use her or lose her.

And I loved Yelena and Kate in Hawkeye. I'd promised myself last Christmas that I'd do a Hawkeye rewatch and didn't get around to it so will try again this year.
She'll be back in Thunderbolts, which had either finished filming or was pretty deep into filming when the strikes hit.
 
How are you disappointed in a movie that does not exist....?

That's like having opinions on a person you never met.

I mean in what I hear so far of it. I don't like yelena or Alexei, or their version of Taskmaster. I hope I'm wrong

Whereas the Marvels ans Armor wars have characters I like so I'm looking forward to them
 
Read the THR article. Bottom line seems to be, they should have treated their writers with a lot more respect. Maybe in a two-hour, three-act movie, one can get away with outlining a story, planning the action sequences, and then writing a script to get from beat to beat, but when dealing with even a six-episode series, and five hours of screen time, the writing has to be on point.

Agreed.

Falcon/Winter Soldier should have ended with Sam either battling and defeating Walker, or Walker ending up a major villain to be faced again in Brave New World.

Walker was a troubled man (to say the least), but he was pretty much a lock to make his next appearance in The Thunderbolts, so his major flaws (well, some of them) had to be resolved in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. That, and considering TFATWS's Spellman writing Brave New World (with Spellman saying it will be a "paranoid political thriller"), I don't see that as the place to continue to work out Walker's issues / make him a full-on villain.

The show should also have given audiences a clear update on Old Steve: he's either passed away since Endgame

In episode 5 ("Truth"), I believe Sam said the following to Bucky: "...but Steve's gone.It doesn't matter what Steve thought.". I took that as Steve not merely living his retired life somewhere (in the six months post Endgame), but he died, since both had to find their way without him.
 
I went into Hawkeye with low expectations. Was never impressed with Renner/Hawkeye in the films. He was a bit bland. Though I was a fan of the comics version. The cocky hot head with a big mouth who thought he was God's gift to women. Kate, eh her comics version didn't resonate with me. But on the small screen they worked. Clint the family man trying to get home for Christmas. Kate the wanna be hero. Yelena was fun. I liked her in Black Widow too as the snarky pain in the ass little sister.
 
Surprisingly I liked John. I didn't like how they killed off Lemar

It was a reference to Walker's storyline in the comics: The Watchdogs kidnap his parents and they get killed when Walker tried to rescue them and this drives him insane and he screws up repeated missions because of this until the Government Commission that fired Steve and replaced him with Walker have to call Steve back to get Walker under control

It would have been outdated and tasteless to have the Flag Smashers kill Johns' wife, so they used Lemar instead.
 
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