You're presuming this is by design, though. I don't think it is. I think Feige & company wanted the Multiverse Saga to be similar to the Infinity Saga, but Disney's demand for more streaming content pushed them to greenlight a bunch of ancillary stories that otherwise wouldn't have been told (or, if they would have been, would be 2-3 hour movies, not 6-hour miniseries.
I'm not convinced. After all, what we retroactively call the "Infinity Saga" began with
Iron Man in 2008. It started slowly, laying the groundwork of the characters and world in individual stories before building up to the crossover. The mistake other studios have made was to try to rush into building the saga and crossovers and whatnot right off the bat, instead of taking their time to establish the foundations first.
See, this is my position: That it is
not wrong for the MCU to take its time and focus on the individual works. People who want a fast buildup to another team-up are making the same mistake DC made when they did BvS as their second movie, that Sony made when they turned ASM2 into a Sinister Six setup, that Universal made by having
The Mummy split its focus by trying to set up the Dark Universe instead of just telling a solid Mummy movie. You need to make the parts worthwhile on their own first if you want to
earn teaming them up later. The reason
The Avengers was possible was that audiences already liked the characters individually and therefore wanted to see a team-up.
And, to be clear again, I am 100% fine with the approach of more content, more loosely tied together. But Marvel never said this was the intent, and never gave fans any reason to expect that was what was happening.
You think so? I always expected it. It's just common sense that after something as huge and exceptional as
Endgame, you ease off and go slow for a while instead of trying to duplicate it right away. That's what the Arrowverse did after
Crisis on Infinite Earths. Even before the pandemic blew things up, they intended to ease back and do smaller crossovers for a while. They understood it would be a mistake to try to force another huge event they hadn't earned. You
should start out slow and take your time building to something like that.
This is not a fair comparison, because Marvel Studios lacked either the capacity or the goodwill within the industry to build to an Avengers movie quickly. They now have the ability to put out three movies a year, rather than 1-2 movies every year or two.
"Fair?" You're talking as though there's something bad about taking their time, as though it were some kind of failure that needed to be justified. My whole point is that there's nothing wrong with that approach. Sure, they can put out three movies a year, but those movies don't
have to build up to some big crossover. The priority for any movie should be that movie in and of itself. Crossovers and interconnections should be secondary.
Riri had no agency whatsoever in Wakanda Forever, let alone a character arc. She was a bystander throughout the film, having nothing to provide outside of two action scenes other than some sassy comments.
You're making the mistake of judging a story exclusively on the basis of plot. Stories are about character, theme, and setting/context as well. Riri was essential as a catalyst for the characters' conflicts and decisions and as an embodiment of the idea of Wakanda's importance to the African diaspora. Maybe she doesn't perform many actions of her own, but everything the other characters do is
about her, and the conflict wouldn't have happened at all with a different character in her place. Characters don't have to take direct actions to be essential to a story.
Oddly enough, although the use of America Chavez in MoM was somewhat similar to Riri (a young character that the villain is trying to capture because of special powers), America felt integral to the plot in a way that Riri did not.
I don't see a difference. And again, there's more to story than plot. Riri was integral in terms of character, what she meant to Shuri and why Shuri and Ramonda felt compelled to defend her against Namor, and she was integral in terms of the themes of the
Black Panther series, although I do think that could have been made more explicit (e.g. by having her be a student of one of the outreach centers T'Challa had built in America at the end of the first movie). I don't feel America had as direct a thematic or character resonance with Strange.
I don't really think Scott changed over the course of the movie. The decisions he makes in the third act are the same as those he would have made in the first.
It's a mistake to assume a lead character
has to change over the course of a story. Some stories are about how a character changes the people around them. Some stories are about a character's values being tested and reaffirmed to have been right all along.
Besides, Scott already had two movies to change and grow. This was Janet & Cassie's movie. Let them spread the wealth.
I don't mind the ensemble nature of the Ant-Man movies, but the decision to leave Luis out was a huge fuck-up. He was the heart and soul of the Ant-Man movies. That, plus the change in tone (from the lighter, to the darker side of the MCU), a change in setting (from relatively grounded, to the weird/cosmic side), and a change in stakes (from lower-scale to epic) made it feel like this was a different kind of superhero movie masquerading as an Ant-Man movie.
I don't disagree. I can find a film imperfect but still enjoy it. It had its weaknesses, but it wasn't some horrible disaster.
As for pitting Ant-Man against Kang, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I would've liked to see the trilogy conclude with a movie that felt more of a piece with the first two (and had Luis in it, of course), but on the other hand, I respect the idea of introducing the next big bad through the last character you'd expect. As I've said, it's a good thing to challenge audience expectations, so if the Ant-Man movies are seen as a silly litle sidebar, I have to admire the chutzpah of making this one the anchor of the next big cosmic epic.
I agree with this. Would you mind elucidating then what you think is the problem?
That's what I'm saying -- I don't think there
is a problem. I think the MCU is doing fine overall. I don't get the doom and gloom.
If there is a problem, it's that people are trying to look at the MCU as just one big series, instead of a franchise that includes multiple series with a degree of overlap. In a franchise, in a shared universe, not everything has to work equally well. Individual parts of it may not succeed, but the universe is still there to tell other stories in. There's no sense holding every distinct part of it to the same expectations.
I do think there's a bit of an issue that coming off the Avengers saga people feel they are supposed to see everything to follow what's going on. People that haven't watched the Disney series don't know what they need to see to enjoy a particular movie or show.
As I've said before, that's a fallacy. If a story is competently told, it will fill the audience in on any prior events they need to know about, whether it's something that was seen in a previous installment (like Bucky's apparent death in
The First Avenger informing
The Winter Soldier) or something established for the first time in the current story (like the death of Killmonger's father in
Black Panther). You should never "need" to have seen any prior story to understand or enjoy the current one, because it's a basic part of the storytellers' job to give you that exposition within the current story.
How is a casual Marvel viewer to know what to watch?
It's sad to me that people see continuity as a chore, as if they were taking a college course and had to study everything so they can pass the final exam. It's entertainment! You can watch as much or as little as you want, and if the storytellers have done their job right, you can enjoy any individual movie or series without having to see anything else. The added context that comes from seeing everything should just be a bonus on top of the enjoyment of the individual stories.
Yes, a central, key part.
And that's my point -- it doesn't need to be. It should always be possible to enjoy a shared universe
either on the level of the individual works
or on the level of the interconnected whole. That's the entire objective of such a thing, to allow the audience to have that choice of how much or how little of it they want to experience it. The whole value of a shared universe, especially one as diverse as Marvel, is that it can appeal to a range of different tastes. Nobody's expected or required to have an exhaustive knowledge of the whole thing, not unless they want to.
Sure, but it's not just that the projects are less unified, it's that major character appearances are becoming less frequent.
"Major?" The major characters in any individual movie or series are its own lead characters. Like I keep saying, the interconnections are supposed to be secondary and optional to the enjoyment of the individual works.
I myself am glad there's been no Avengers movie since Endgame, and I think a narrative slowdown was absolutely the right move. But I do think we should have learned by now who if anyone is leading the Avengers, and which heroes are ready/readying themselves to band together the next time the world needs a "suit of armor" to protect it. The problem isn't a slow pace or a lack of Avenging, but rather the fact that we're getting both those factors at the same time, in the midst of far more hours of content.
I still don't see that as a problem. We had seven years' worth of Avengers stories. Why should what happens next be limited to that same formula?
I mean, even during Phases 2 & 3, the Avengers never really existed outside the Avengers movies themselves. The individual heroes in their solo movies pretty much had to handle things on their own. It always seemed to me that, at least between the first and second movies, the Avengers weren't a permanent team at all but just an occasional thing.
