The Marvel Cinematic Universe offends me deeply. They spend millions upon millions of dollars to create the heroes for the screen, and to connect them.
All they are really doing is saying "hey, these characters are part of the (OMG, get ready for this) same universe." What they seemed to have missed is that there is no story connecting these characters, no themes, nothing that resonates. In order to bring the heroes together, they had to fight aliens. In order to bring them together again, they have to fight even more aliens, this time, even more powerful aliens, but not as powerful as the aliens they'll fight by the time Phase Three comes to a conclusion, which is well after superhero ennui should have set in. And by then the novelty factor of seeing them fighting together as a team will no longer be new. (this was really the main draw of the Avengers film, more so than who the aliens were and why they were attacking and all of that.. it didn't matter.. just seeing them fighting together was the draw of the film, make no mistake)
The MCU is insulting because now everyone wants to replicate it. It's insulting because it convinces the audience that they are watching real movies. It's convincing people that simply saying "OMG look at that.. a reference to Asgard!" is cool; it's convincing people to wait through credits for no good reason whatsoever.
It's all bright colors and no story. The characters don't learn anything, they don't grow, and they aren't dealing with anything at all aside form fighting big, obvious threats.
The MCU also has destroyed science fiction cinema. If you want science fiction at the cinema, it better have a superhero in it, otherwise it is bound to flop, bound to be dissed and put down. There's no reason to think that Jupiter Ascending will greet the public with a box office and an RT average than Cloud Atlas.
The MCU is all about superhero angst. It's all about "oh kkeewwwwlll" and it's turning critics into apologists.
The MCU offends me. Back when Star Wars came out and "created " the blockbuster, there were some valid criticisms that claimed it ruined cinema, and that the art-house or darker studio films had been pushed aside in favor of formula and spectacle. Maybe true, but cinema needed this. It needed to remember how to entertain and inspire. And it was still a delicate vision that succeeded on a wing and a prayer.
By contrast the MCU is all branding. Marvel slaps it's big name on every movie. It's not the Avengers. It's Marvel's The Avengers. It's all about branding. It's all about a studio having vision and hiring good filmmakers merely as hired guns to fulfill it's vision of dollar signs, and not about the filmmakers having a vision and struggling within limits to bring that vision to life, and to give people something new to think about and experience. There was a time when no one knew what a Star Wars film or a Back to the Future film or an Indiana Jones film or a Superman film would look like: filmmakers had to fight an uphill battle to create these things from fair cloth and lots of hard work. But Marvel studios knows exactly what each of their films will look like, and they know exactly how they will help meet the bottom line.
Oh, but then you can argue about risky projects like Guardians of the Galaxy. Even people taking sides with Marvel will claim that they've already made enough profitable films that if GotG flops terribly, it won't even make the studio flinch very much: the MCU will continue like a juggernaut, eating everything in it's path. And they won't movie CA3 from date of Batman vs. Superman because of this sense of pride that doesn't stem from any kind of vision or creativity, but because of pure cockiness. Yeah, screw it, I know they had the date first, and this Superman project is DC's to screw up an d no one else, but people have been waiting for generations to see those two in a film together, and Marvel are just being disrespectful for trash-talking the shit (I kind of find it funny, but it saddens me the lack of respect for the millions of dollars being tossed around by both sides in this game of chicken, and not one cent of that money feels like it has been used to support anything creative).
More than Star Wars ever could, the MCU has killed cinema.. we are left to watch these shallow films and look at the rotting innards of what should be the greatest artistic and story-telling medium around, and now it's all about bright colors, strong branding, turning big franchises into even bigger franchises, and making sure the number crunchers are happy.
It's slight entertainment without taste, without risk, without soul, all with the "you need to see this" attitude that has brought down every other similar medium that has gone by the wayside in the past.
For the same reason I am offended by Amazing Spider Man 2 even before it's released. There have been countless trailers and clips and photos to this film, all of them championing all the bright colors and nice CGI and cheesy story with a giant sledgehammer that says "you need to see this crap. You really do." Oh my god, Oscorp creates all the villains! Wows! Oh my god, Oscorp has Peter under surveillance. Oh my god! Oh wow, the girl will die in this film, and Peter will get sad, angry and enraged, and blame himself,! Waaah! And Electro is a villain that got into this big vat of water filled with (I kid you not) electric eels and now he is Electro, because, you know, superhero villains can't stop being absurd and derivative, now they have to be both along with just plain stupid.
