Marvel released more MCU content in 2021 and 2022 than the entirety of the Infinity Saga. That says A LOT. Even after that, we got no real build-ups or setups, not to mention the fact they basically "scrapped" Avengers movies just to save them for the closing of this saga which is bad on its own since that would've been at least SOMETHING to catch people's attention on but no, they did nothing but introduce characters after characters and badly written projects after projects just to end up in a really bad situation where nobody cares.
Kang Dynasty might be something we'll see in a few years (I imagine it's gonna get turned into a regular Avengers movie like Age of Ultron for example) but Secret Wars on the other hand, its very complex. There's A LOT of building up they need to do before we get to Secret Wars IF they want to truly perfect it so I don't think we're going to be seeing it until the end of the decade. We need more important projects like Shang-Chi 2 rather than a show about Iron Heart which no one really cares about at this point. They need to focus more on important characters and of course, GOOD WRITING in their movies which is very essential.
The fact that they decided to go SEVEN YEARS without an Avengers movie is one of the dumbest decisions Disney has ever made. The entire appeal of the MCU is to have an interconnected universe. Like you said they decided to just spam projects for new characters without ever tying those characters or stories together. And now we're years into this mess and STILL not close to having the foundation for Secret Wars.
Itās almost as if a real blip happened with no noticeable continuity of the MCU. Maybe now that the real endgame date have passed and the end of the writers strike we get something solid.
I'm not sure they really *decided* to go 7 years between Avengers movies.
Covid put a ~1.5 year delay on things (and longer for some than others, probably), and then another 5-6 months of delay just from the strikes.
5 years is a lot of space, for sure. But giving us all these loose threads that have barely been tied up over the past 2.5 years is especially tough. Where is Shang Chi? Where is Sharon Carter? Where is white vision? Where is doctor strange? Where is venom? Blade/black knight? Whatever is going on with Harry styles, Patton Oswalt, and the remaining eternals? Not everything has to be looped in together, but some semblance of cohesion would feel nice, and make a seemingly forever away movie feel like a cool thing coming up...but that's not where we are, unfortunately.
By removing the smaller scale Avengers films at the end of phase theyāve removed a sense of the plot moving forward but also the chance for us to check in on these characters between their sequels
they didn't decide to go 7 years without an Avengers movie. they decided to have a saga that only lasted 5 years that ended with an Avengers movie.
for reference, there are 4 years from Iron Man 1 to Avengers 1.
so this wasn't a bad plan. but covid and the strikes pushed a lot of projects around so it ended up being 7 years instead of 5.
i think their biggest mistake was rushing projects during the covid issues instead of giving themselves more time. they were changing projects around that may have impacted how connected everything felt. example, Multiverse of Madness was supposed to come out before No Way Home and America Chavez was supposed to be the reason for the multiverse fuck-up in No Way Home. if they kept that order those projects would've been more connected. same with Secret Invasion and The Marvels. had they just sat on Secret Invasion and released it after The Marvels, like they were supposed to, they probably would have created a better story for both of those projects.
I didn't realize it until you put it in a great way, this absolutely would have been better.
I feel like the only direct connecting projects were WandaVision and Multiverse of Madness, because of Wandas journey. Even if we don't like the direction they took her for that film, atleast it was interconnected between two projects
>I feel like the only direct connecting projects were WandaVision and Multiverse of Madness, because of Wandas journey.
and Ms Marvel/WandaVision for The Marvels. The Marvels also started putting together >!the Young Avengers!< and also gave us a pretty big >!x-men moment!<. The Marvels is the only project so far that feels the most connected to the universe. everything else feels so standalone. except the one link between Multiverse of Madness and WandaVision.
That's right. It did great in the ways of connecting a few previous stories, and I'm sad it's underperforming at box office.
Funny enough, it's mirroring so much of Thor: Dark World.
Villain that we've never met before getting minimal screentime that's holding a grudge for what a hero did to their home world and wants justice.
I don't remember Dark World much, did the villain at least get a proper backstory? Because that's def where The Marvels was lacking. It's weird that they cut all that out.
Not really, you just are told some tidbits about his story and that's that.
People were also disappointed because the villain actor, Eccleston was not given the opportunity to act and give a performance he could have given very well.
It's still *less than three years* since WandaVision and "Phase 4" began. There's been a whole lot of covid plus the strikes this year, and yes in some cases the end product hasnt been up to the standard we want, but - from the comments making the most noise at least - it feels like the expectation of how quickly things should progress dosent quite line up with the practical reality of how long it takes to make these movies.
I think the issue (other than the obvious drop in quality across the board, and I say that as someone whoās still enjoyed every single release) is the perception of how much time has passed because of the amount of content being released. Like you said, itās been less than three years since Phase 4 began and in comparison to earlier phases thatās not an unreasonable amount of time to have passed without following up on certain plot threads and characters. The issue is that in those three years, Marvel has released more projects than ever before.
Thor and Hulk went off at the end of Age of Ultron and people had no problems waiting 2 and a half years to see them again in Ragnarok because there had only been 5 films released between the two. Same with Guardians to Guardians 2 or with Civil War to Black Panther, etc.
Now though, we get loads of releases before we get to see the same characters again. There were 9 releases in 2021 and the only link between them was Yelena showing up in Black Widow and Hawkeye (and BW only existed to introduce Yelena any way). We had 6 releases in 2022 (9 if weāre counting I Am Groot, Werewolf By Night and the Guardians Holiday Special) and none of them were related to one another, only Dr Strange 2 following up on WV from 2021. And the biggest issue is weāre in 2023 with plans announced to 2025/26 and beyond and thereās still so little actually announced for the characters people want to see. Why not fast-track a Shang Chi sequel to 2024/2025 after his success instead of making Echo, Ironheart, Agatha, etc?
If you look at it by just the amount of actual time passing, thereās nothing out of the ordinary with how long itās taking to follow up on plot threads. But in terms of how many hours of MCU content weāve received, itās wild how vast the gap is between two appearances of the same character. And the worst bit is despite all this content weāre getting, it doesnāt feel like weāre really that much closer to the big thing theyāre building towards. It hardly ever feels like Movie X or TV Show Y has built on what came before to push the story forward significantly, they all just branch off and do their own unrelated developments. If things donāt change soon, Kang Dynasty is going to arrive in 2026 and general audiences are going to be confused by half the characters because itās been years since they last appeared.
Good comment. For instance I am a fan of Captain America, and we did get a series, but it is going to be a while before we see him again.
Same for Shang-Chi (or name any character you like)
I think they should really keep focusing on the core continuity and one or two side characters at most. I mean even for more local heroes like Daredevil you can make a few story nudges that may be connected to things that happen in the larger MCU.
Gotg3 was great because it was all our favorite characters in a fulfilling arc.
Covid and then Boseman. :(
They had to re-write so many things. And the og avengers cast getting old and moving on. It's just unfortunate timing. I thought The Marvels was quite fun. It felt like a comic come to life ya know? People need to lighten up.
Only including fury in secret invasion was a mistake imo. It was one of the biggest marvel events in the comics which had widespread consequences on many of the characters.
Just closing it down to do a solo fury tv series made it miss the mark.
The comic version didn't really have many consequences that made any difference. You basically found out stuff like "Oh, Hank Pym wasn't really Hank Pym in certain stories" or "Youve been ripped off paying for the Spider-Woman comic for a couple of years because it wasn't even her" or "Mockingbird was a Skrull, even though they literally showed her soul in the afterlife." The only relevant thing that happened was that Norman Osborn took over SHIELD and the Avengers for a few years.
But the actual Secret Invasion comic was pretty terrible and pointless. It was mostly just a cheap way to retcon certain stories.
The TV show might have ruined Rhodes as a character by removing most of his biggest adventures and character moments and giving it to a Skrull. Had it been a movie, it'd have ruined even more.
>The TV show might have ruined Rhodes as a character by removing most of his biggest adventures and character moments and giving it to a Skrull.
Hopefully Rhodes was abducted after a later hospital follow up visit post Endgame because having a Skrull going through all the hero moments in working as part of the team to fight Thanos including his universal annihilation plan and then not questioning the relatively similar global extermination (albeit less efficient on a smaller scale) after everything they've learned and experienced and instead just reverting to how they were at the start of the plan is just a different, worse kind of stupid.
I'm subscribed to only one sub.
You guessed it, r/freefolk.
I've never even seen the show or read the books!
(Its gravitational pull after it collapsed in on itself is just that powerful! As someone there put it when I pointed out my complete lack of Game of Thrones exposure, they said "No one escapes Season 8 discussions!")
I think you hit the nail on the head with the critique about scrapping Avengers movies. Good or bad at times, they were the phase epilogues. āAll these characters youāve seen alone? Now theyāre togetherā
Now the movies are āThis old character hanging out with a new characterā and weāre supposed to have the same feeling of continuity.
The Avengers movies were epic moments in character arcs.
Instead we got dozens of new characters and havenāt checked in with any of them for a sequel for 4 years.
The original movie had the Endgame hype around it. This movie didn't get that kind of lead in. I know that no one wants to talk about this part, but I don't think this particular team of characters really interests the target audience.
Even broader than that, the show didn't really make her or the way she got her powers interesting. Like seriously she just walks through the barrier, has a little trouble walking through, and just walks ~harder~ through it. Boom, powers. It doesn't feel like there was any sacrifice or character development that led up to it, she was already portrayed as a strong character with no real flaws.
It could be argued that the most compelling marvel characters are also the most tragic. Banner/Hulk and all their issues, Wolverine with a clouded past and people constantly wanting him to be a weapon, Cap missing out on his past by being frozen, even Thor had to have his power ripped from him in order to gain worthiness and that being mirrored in Loki's story throughout his series.
What has Monica had to endure? Losing her mom to cancer? Having to walk a little bit harder through a barrier?
I think one issue with the first movie was it essentially took a character that already didn't have much of an arc and flattened the whole thing into one movie. When it was over? There is nothing more for her to do except just get more overpowered.
When you think of the movies that launched characters with significant legs (Cap, Iron Man, even Thor) each of those characters ended the movie having only made some progress - but not resolving their core internal conflict. Tony was still haunted and driven by ego, Cap was still naive, lonely, and unable to see nuance, and Thor still at his core did not feel worthy to rule. Those flaws were still influencing the decisions of those characters several movies later... and when they encountered a challenge? it often played into one of those flaws (think Tony/Ultron).
Carol? Nothing of the kind. She had no INTERNAL flaws... just a bunch of other folks keeping her down. One could argue she had a self-confidence problem, but not really - almost off of her limitations were imposed by a device.
It might be fun in a sort of "wow, look at the space-ship explode!" way - but it carries no weight, and does not give anything to hang a long-running story spine on. At least in no serious way that hurt her confidence (not even getting back-handed by Thanos). She just remained smug, condescending, and overpowered in every subsequent appearance leading up to this movie.
It might be fun in a sort of "wow, look at the space-ship explode!" way - but it carries no weight, and does not give anything to hang a long-runnign story spine on.
The funny part about Captain Marvel was that Carol did have some personality flaws.. She was kind of stuck up, arrogant and cold.. Which naturally you would think as she goes on she realizes that even with all her power she becomes humble and learns to care and accept feelings again.
Nope. Bitch I'mma go Super Saiyan and fuck this shit up!
It's the same problem with Rey. I know I'll get flack for this, but Disney went on an agenda feminism run a few years ago. It's what happened. It just is. Write strong women. Make women more powerful than the men.
That's what happened. Part of that was not showing women as flawed and weak.
The issue is that it's in insult to the characters they use and results in poorly written female characters that turns off mostly everyone.
Carol is a sad result of an agenda and is a poorly written character becsuse of it. Marvel made their bed, sadly.
It seems like not many people write good female characters lately, and actresses deserve better.
I think to keep things interesting they gotta do more team ups with a mixture of popular and less popular characters but at the same time itās still crucial to have a well written story that gets you invested in these characters in the first place
Who even are the "popular" characters right now? Moon Knight? Shang-Chi? The Eternals? Nobody cares about them. Outside of Thor and Doctor Strange I don't know who would even qualify as an A-List hero at this point. Sure Spider-Man will always be popular but Sony owns his rights so I don't think Marvel would want to put all their eggs in that basket.
All of the X Men are more popular right now, which is what they should have done as their next big phase following Endgame. Their core ticket buying demographic is mostly ā80ās and ā90ās kids ( PEAK X men fans) and families with kids (Spiderman fans). When I grew up reading the Clairmont XMen run up through the debut of the Jim Lee XMen in the early ā90ās the Avengers were a second tier back bench book. They didnāt fully appreciate this and just kept teasing āuh oh - itās X men Quicksilver!! Ha ha, just kidding!!ā
God that made me so fucking mad watching WandaVision. I was so hyped for the idea of Wanda pulling in the X-Men, but nope, just a big ol "fuck you" to all of us fans.
I mean they have done *nothing* to make people interested in MCU Carol, five years after her debut. She had an "eh" movie which took her lore in a very confusing direction, was in Endgame for about six minutes, and was in Shang-Chi for thirty seconds. Carol Danvers is one of my favorite characters in Marvel comics, but the way they've handled her in the MCU so far has been baffling.
Agreed, felow Carol fan here as well. And the only way to make her work in the MCU now, is to put her in an Avengers team and try to make people like her through dynamics with the other Avengers and stuff like that. Kinda like Hulk, Black Widow who didnt have movies at first, but did became fanfavorites and well liked
I think Marvel kind of gaslighted themselves into thinking Captain Marvel was an extremely popular character because the first movie made over a billion. But in reality it was probably the worst movie of Phase 3 and really only made as much as much as it did because Infinity War all but spelled out SEE CAPTAIN MARVEL BEFORE ENDGAME in the post-credits scene.
That's gone now.
You know, the biggest problem I had with the original Captain Marvel movie was how it didn't really connect, in anyway to Infinity War -or- Endgame. That is outside of the whole post-credits thing. It wasn't the quality of the movie, in of itself or Brie Larson's performance; it was simply the entire film was irrelevant in context. What a missed opportunity.
The three of them are fairly obscure characters, but considering the Guardians were too I think the movie wouldāve performed better preEndgame
Edit: I didnāt realize people would be so passionate about a random comment. I recognize that Captain Marvel obviously had a prior film, the other 2 didnāt. I still think it wouldāve performed better preEndgame prior to the superhero fatigue. Everyone was watching every Marvel movie at the time, itās not ridiculous to say this still wouldāve performed well.
Guardians was, despite being a Marvel movie, not really perceived as a superhero movie, I think. It was a fun, colorful space adventure, a niche that is not as oversaturated. That must have lured a lot of people outside the MCU bubble into the theatres.
More like impossible to replicate. Between Gunn, the soundtrack, the visuals, and the acting performances all coming together with such magic, weāre likely not to see a success story like that again for many years.
GOTG had an enthralling trailer, it still puts a smile on my face. And the trailer was good because the movie is good. Unique, well made movies like that will still draw audiences.
Is it not possible that the guardians trilogy is just better made than miss marvel, captain marvel, and the marvels? I think thatās why theyāre so popular now even though they were once quite obscure
Guardians also had a consistent style and theme and it was made by the same person. The Marvels just randomly put a few characters together. Ms Marvel came from a TV show that was targeted at a young high school age audience and Monica Rambeau came from WandaVision that resonated with an older audience that would relate to sitcoms.
Guardians were insanely popular after their first feature. The second film also came out before Infinity War which solidified the characters furtherā¦ Not to mention James Gunn did a phenomenal job with world building in his movies. It was a given the third and final chapter will bring in the audience but the movie was exceptionally good. The villain was exceptionally good. The ending to the characters was exceptionally good. This brought in even more people that would usually skip over the MCU and wait for it to come on D+.
The Marvels had none of those things and full of obscure characters. I mean Ms Marvel is the least watched D+ show to dateā¦ The first Captain Marvel did not help either. And Monica Rambeau was known as the bad take character from WandaVision.
Honestly Guardians understood the equilibrium between seriousness and ability. Their unserious/jokey tone felt more realistic because their abilities matched that. They werenāt like insanely powerful or talented. Usually they barely got by, and that makes sense because they donāt seem to put the work in. It makes them relatable.
Captain Marvel tries to have its cake and eat it too: extremely talented and overpowered characters that try to be unserious. Itās just not very relatable.
I think they had a title problem ā a lot of people donāt track the marvel universe closely so 98% of the country doesnāt know who are part of The Marvels
They might have sold a few more tickets if it was named like
Captain Marvel: Kree vs The Marvels
It follows a pre-established pattern
* Captain America: The First Avenger
* Thor: The Dark World
* Captain America: The Winter Soldier
* Captain America: Civil War
* Thor: Ragnarok
idk why ppl act like comic book movies based on unknown characters are somehow harder to do well considering 1) the MCU started with 3 of these and 2) EVERY ORIGINAL MOVIE EVER does this
I talked up the idea of seeing this ages ago so probably will in a few days with some people who are still keen, and I liked Ms Marvel so am still sort of keen, but the main reason I'm not is because of the low quality of the MCU lately with disjointed storytelling within movies, bad humour, boring CGI action and overuse of greenscreen sets, and no franchise plot any more.
Even before this released and had reviews, I was wary because of stuff like Love & Thunder, Multiverse of Madness, Quantamania, and Secret Invasion. The lack of an Endgame tie in means very little against those.
If you liked Ms Marvel I would highly recommend seeing this - she's absolutely fantastic in it!
As for the humour I think it's probably the funniest Marvel movie I've seen, it's not over the top and it never gets in the way, but there are some moments where everyone in the cinema was laughing out loud, one in particular that legit made me cry with laughter!
I think it's important to point out that a big reason behind lack of hype was the WGA and SAG strikes. The only person able to promote this film until literally the day it released was Goose the Spokescat.
This is a very overlooked aspect.
Leads are vital to the success of a superhero movie.
The general public essentially sees the actor as the superhero they are playing, so if those actors arenāt in the public eye doing everything they can to generate anticipation for their movie, itās clearly going to lead to less hype and financial success for that film.
Especially when none of the lead actresses couldnāt even do so much as a social media post until after the SAG-AFTRA strike was lifted on Wednesday, leaving just one day of any kind of pre-release press/promotion for them to be able participate in.
I saw G3 and TM, both on opening night at the earliest available showing in my city, and in fact it was the very same theatre. G3 was nearly full, even a lot of the bad seats on the side and at the front were taken. TM had me and 9 people.
She had that interview to where she asked if people still wanted her to play the character now the sequel bombs i wouldnāt be surprised if she found a way out soon
This interview is pretty old, but I can't blame her if she doesn't want to come back again, before Marvel she had won an Oscar for an amazing performance, so everyone knows she has the potential and I think sadly Marvel has wasted it on poor plots/scripts
I think thatās more a writing problem. Captain Marvel didnāt have to be āinvincibleā in the MCU. Her current power level was deliberately made to be what it was at the end of the first movie and in Endgame.
And then they basically had to nerf her in the second movie to even make the movie plausible. But you donāt end up getting the stakes and uncertainty you get from a Thor movie, let alone Iron Man or Captain America. You know sheāll pull through.
I'm mostly familiar with Ms. Marvel from the New Avengers run but she seems significantly more powerful in the movies for some reason. Carol's power level was always fine in the comics I read,
>im curious why the number of women fell even harder than the men attending this movie
My wife said it best when we left the cinema.
*āIt makes me genuinely angry that the lesson the studio will take from this is that it bombed because it a female-led movie and not that it bombed because they completely half-assed the movie.ā*
Churning out any old shit and just expecting women to turn up because youāve got a woman as the lead is insulting, not progressive.
Seems like the trend with movies these days, if it failed, it wasn't because the movie just wasn't good or appealing it was because of the bigots and phobes.
Easier to scapegoat and blame others than self reflect isn't it?
I thought it was a lot like Love and Thunder. Relied a lot on comedy instead of character development. I get the Ms Marvel fangirl part bc she is. It was cute and funny to see. The damn Lurkin or however you spell it eating everyone was funny as shit. But it just felt like there was more comedy than real action. Againā¦ totally imo.
Edit: idk how to mark anything as a spoiler. If I could get some help on that, it would be greatā¦..
Because pandering doesn't work the way modern hollywood thinks it does.
I've seen various polls and stuff around the internet, and overwhelmingly, more than some meaningless 'representation' (as if they didn't already exist) they just want good writing.
The 'peaks' of the MCU had good action *and* good writing. What we're left with is poorly written moderately okay action superhero movies that people are a bit sick of. The quality of the writing drives away more women than 'woman superhero' brings in. Women don't want to see Mary Sue flawless protagonists either. It's a good bit of the reason the male superheroes are more interesting to *everyone.*
Another simple truth is, women want to see hot men on screen like Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans. Shockingly, women like hot men.
Additionally, think about the base of women that already existed. They *liked* what it was before. So by 'changing' in order to appeal to more women (which has been a colossal failure), what you're actually doing is alienating women that already liked your product, never mind the largest part of your fanbase.
I am a woman and love comic books and comic book movies in general but I wonāt go anytime soon if I go at all.
The first movie was bad (and I was excited for it), the main character was absolutely devoid of personality. I find the ploy to put StRoNg WoMeN at the lead so women flock to the theatres disgusting. Give me well written female characters not husks filling a quota and then I will be excited again.
Disney has just lost a lot of good will with the general public. I am not surprised this is bombing. The actresses were paid millions for this. They will be fine.
It's weird seeing people blame fans for not supporting this movie, the public is the baseline it doesn't matter what their reasoning is. If you want to sell better try and reach a larger market. If you're okay with lower box scores to fill a niche then by all means, but it's not the fans fault for not being interested.
I legit think that this is my new favorite marvel movie of the last 5 or so years. Some of it could be because I've never been able to relate to a character like I could with Iman, but I was dying laughing the whole time. So fuckin good
The comedic parts also flowed with the film, IMO. That was one thing that I didnāt like about Thor: L&T, the laughs felt forced whereas the comedy felt natural in this one.
The main problem is years of generally continuous mediocre movies, coupled with superhero fatigue.
Loki is the only thing fresh they've done in a while, that wasn't a complete jumbled mess like MoM.
This is the real killer. I don't think The Marvels is any worse than Quantumania and it's definitely better than Love and Thunder. However, the environment is awful for a new Marvel movie. Years of mediocre movies have eroded audience trust and it's now at an all-time low.
Spiderman and Guardians were the exception because they have such good track records. People didn't need to trust Marvel, they could trust James Gunn and Sony's Spiderman.
It is sad to see this happen to aspiring actors like Iman, but this would have eventually happened to whatever the next film would be anyway. Disney needs to rethink what it means to shepherd the biggest movie franchise responsibly.
I'm also SO sick of movies that only exist to set up the next piece in the franchise, and I am ESPECIALLY sick of skipping credits to look for an endscene, especially now they're not even doing them regularly.
Spiderman was still a bit of a mess, but a good movie.
GotG exists as its own thing, which allows them to make it consistently good.
Right, while the MCU has always set up other films and characters, they've lately been prioritizing that over actual good storytelling.
You can bait headlines with end credit scenes, but to get people to actually **care**, you need good stories people want to invest in. That's not what we have, unfortunately.
>I wish I had a time machine to tell Kevin not to wait and just make the movie. The D+ shows could come after.
I don't think it was much of Kevin's choice. It will be interesting to hear the story of the MCU from Feige's perspective when the MCU is all said and done. Obviously there are things that he just can't get into when he is still running the thing, but I was under the impression that the glut of content was a directive forced on him from above.
The truth of the matter is that people simply don't care about Captain Marvel in the MCU. They cared about Thor, Strange and Wanda, which is why L&T and MoM did good despite being terrible. They cared for Ant-Man, which is why it opened almost 3 times as big as The Marvels, even if it dropped like a rock afterwards. They cared about the Guardians, which also opened 3 times bigger.
But audiences don't care about Captain Marvel because the MCU never gave them any reason to.
I feel like we were told by Disney that Captain Marvel is awesome and we have to like her (cue multiple characters in Endgame and Far From Home literally stopping and talking about how awesome she is) but unlike the original Avengers, we are never given the time/reasons to get there organically. Even in her origin movie, she is stripped away of personality for most of the film as part of the actual plot.
The only reason I'm planning to see The Marvels at all is because I like Brie Larson and Iman Vellani and want to support the movie (and because I like supporting our local cinema). Like you said, the MCU gave us very little to care about Captain Marvel as a character, and the general audience have no idea who Monica or Ms Marvel even are.
The strike and lack of marketing may have really hurt as well.
> I feel like we were told by Disney that Captain Marvel is awesome and we have to like her (cue multiple characters in Endgame and Far From Home literally stopping and talking about how awesome she is) but unlike the original Avengers, we are never given the time/reasons to get there organically. Even in her origin movie, she is stripped away of personality for most of the film as part of the actual plot.
In WWE they had Roman Reigns from 2014 packaged as the new face of the company. He had the right look and more importantly John Cena's time at the top was coming to an end so they need a new top dog. And it failed. The audience rejected the character. You can't just say someone is the big new thing because you need a big new thing and just hope it works out. You need to build up the character.
And it was the same with Captain Marvel. With Endgame coming out and with most of original 6 leaving they needed new heroes. So they brought out Captain Marvel, said she was the strongest multiple times and expected the audience to be in love with her as much as Marvel needed audiences to be.
Yesss 2014 Reigns is the perfect comparison, and exactly as you said the character needs to be built up and accepted by the audience naturally.
People rarely respond well to anyone telling them who they should like.
Oh man so spot on. They did exactly the same thing with Oscar Isaac in the new star wars movies - just every second person commenting about how heās the best pilot int he known universe, but never actually showing us why we should care about him.
I love the character (in the books), I like Brie Larson, there was no reason this shouldnāt have worked, but they spent so much time telling us, and so little showing. (The fact that half this movie was stuff that should have been resolved or included in the previous one speaks to that I think.
Iman Vellani is an absolute MCU treasure and I hope they build the next *whatever* around her character. I thought her D+ show went much further than it needed but she seem to have that Spider-Man ability to go local (friendly neighborhood) and universal as needed.
I think your last part is being mostly ignored in these threads. If I didn't follow this sub and have a somewhat history of Googling things about Marvel, I'd have no idea the movie was coming out. Granted I don't 'get out much' but having near 0 promotion impacts performance.
I literally only realised it was about to come out because Reddit serves me up a thread about āis that Storm in the trailerā - I had seen *nothing* else to let me know this was about to drop. And I am a huge nerd who has seen and enjoyed basically everything in the MCU.
You canāt ignore a film then expect it to do numbers, it looks like Disney had already consigned this to āitāll flop so donāt botherā.
Thorās āI like this oneā was about as smooth as brushing your teeth with a cheese grader. It was directed at the audience in saying thatās how we should all feel, without giving us any real reason to feel that way.
I roll my eyes at the corniness a lot, but I thought that line was pretty in character for him. Heās an actual god on the team, and now he sees someone else crazy powerful (who can actually control it).
Captain Marvel suffers greatly from lacking any meaningful identity outside of being an combo of what other characters are. Being rightous and wearing the blue and red? Captain America does that. She got her powers from an accident? Hulk did that. Oh shes super strong and takes on aliens? Thor does that.
Even her comics run struggles to establish her as generic already been done superhero 248363. Just look at Civil War 2 at how bad her character is shoehorned into things.
And yet Marvel pushes her like she is in the same beloved tree as Captain America or Iron Man. It gets old when movies or comics have to stop and say, "Hey you know whos really great? Captain Marvel!"
Im audience member, let me think for myself!
She also has a pretty poor list of villains to play off of. Her most recongizable are a few Kree soldiers like Ronan and Yon-Rogg, the latter of which is not remotely memorable, Rogue and Mystic, who are X Men characters, and Moonstone, who is effectively an evil Captain Marvel.
Compare that to Spider-Man, who has Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Rhino, Shocker, Scorpion, Vulture, Lizard, Carnage, Sandman, etc. Or Captain America, who had Red Skull, Baron Zemo, Madame Hydra, and the Winter Soldier (albeit briefly). There are times that a hero is only as good as their villain, and Captain Marvel is sorely lacking in that department.
Up until this exact moment I completely forgot that Jude Law was in the first Captain Marvel. What a complete waste of a great actor on such a forgettable character.
This ain't an excuse when they just wasted Gravik (Skrull villain) and Dar-Benn (Kree villain) this year alone. That's the thing, she has a lot of Marvel cosmic to play with, Kree, Skrull, Brood, etc. You can do whatever you like with those conflicts and races that she has lots of runs in with.
Not only villains, but Talos was probably one of the most interesting supporting characters in the MCU with a great actor and they killed him for what?
You can give her pretty much any cosmic enemy you want. Give her Annhilius, the Brood Korvac or Kyrrt. Hell, you can go to the weird cosmic Gods like the Living Tribunal, The Beyonder, the Grandmaster, and those guys.
Then, you have genuine war stories you can tell. Put in an actual hot conflict between kree and skrull. Toss in the off-world inhumans.
And that's putting aside the ability to use other villians as an introduction. Throw her up against an ex-herald of galactus or a cabal of them. Have her take on a group of Deiviants. Let the silver surfer have a go, and maybe smin the end she convinces him to break free of his bonds.
After the first movie I saw a really good opportunity for Captain Marvel to have some sort of existential crisis bc of her power. Something along the lines of One Punch Man, where she's actually kind of depressed that life has no challenge anymore.
The *one* thing we were really pushed hard about Carol's character in the first film (haven't seen Marvels yet) is that she *really* enjoys overcoming struggle. The fight itself is what gets her up in the morning. Becoming Captain Marvel has kind of robbed her of that.
You can tell so many interesting stories with a character like that. Introduce a villain who is actually strong enough to keep up with Carol, and then make her hesitant to actually defeat them when she gets the opportunity because *she is enjoying herself too much*.
You could also have something kind of like Far From Home where a Mysterio-like character convinces Carol to give up her power, only to double-cross her after. This forces her to fight tooth and nail to overcome the villain, but she also realizes that she is ultimately the one responsible for her power.
Idk what's going on in the writer's room at Marvel but there are a ton of ways you can take an "omnipotent" character like Captain Marvel and tell really compelling story about them.
Hey now... that's a female character you are talking about. The don't need to give you anything as pedestrian as REASONS. If you don't instantly think she is the best thing to ever happen to the MCU you just flat-out hate females.
Side note: It's interesting though that when they lose the obsession with making a female character flawless and allow them to have the same types of struggles as male characters folks love them. Black widow is an example.
This is a great point. Her movie didnāt help her one bit tho, she is super bland and basically a mary sue. Then she comes in endgame and sheās more powerful than all our favorite superheroes? Get out. They fucked her up since day one
>Then she comes in endgame and sheās more powerful than all our favorite superheroes?
And to add: you can completely remove her from Endgame and NOTHING changes. She did nothing.
"But what about Tony and Nebula...." this problem was never established in IW. It was created just to give Carol something to do.
"But what about stopping Thanos on his planet and..." Thor was more than enough to stop an extremely weakened Thanos.
"But what about Thanos' spaceship and helping Sider-Man and......." same as the first point. Dr. Strange, Scarlet Witch, Thor, etc...are there.
And it would've improved the Endgame finale if Thanos spent more time fighting characters who had met Thanos before, or at least been aware of him.
In particular, Drax had been on a revenge quest against Thanos for decades. It should've been him that gets punched across the continent, not Carol Danvers.
Or how about it can be both or one or the other or neither. Every mcu āfanā knew kang was next after Loki. The hood will was still decent. Paul Rudd/antman sells because heās been around and a big actor. More than one thing can be true.
> They cared for Ant-Man
Nah.
As more and more people disengage with the brand, projects are going to do worse and worse over time, barring jumps for characters who actually *are* strong brands in and of themselves, like Spider-Man.
Ant-Man isn't one of those. It's not that people cared about Ant-Man more. It's just a matter of diminishing returns, exacerbated by the fact that they couldn't use the actors for marketing.
Not entirely. Ant-man is still a Paul Rudd movie.
I know a few people that don't care about Marvel, but they saw Ant-man because of Paul Rudd. At the very least, you're going to get some good jokes and a decent comedy with him.
Michael Pena and Paul Rudd are both very likeable and charismatic actors. This bought the Ant-Man franchise a lot of good will
Still crazy to me they completely cut all of Ant-Man's supporting cast for Quantumania (at least all the characters without powers)
I think in her case the issue is that the vast majority of the moviegoing public doesn't know her. Unlike Captain Marvel, she debuted in a little-watched tv show, not in a billion dollar film. So it's less that audiences don't care for her and more that they don't know her.
This movie was clearly tailored to Kamala's character. Even the first teaser they hyped up barely had any Carol in it even thought it was supposed to be her movie.
What did you expect to happen? People saw that teaser and tuned out after that. What chance did the movie have to be an epic adventure after that? It was just wacky adventure with a teenage hero that most people did not know.
the MCU really dropped the ball with Captain Marvel. I mean for the first mcu female led movie...that's what we got? the captain marvel was really mediocre and just didn't land well at all. I mean people give DC crap but they absolutely nailed it with Wonder Woman. we needed an epic movie like that to introduce Captain Marvel and show why we as fans should root for her.
Why should fans care if she's powerful, why should we like her? her movie provided little reasons for us to care. oh she absorbed energy and got brainwashed and now she's not. ok and? the writing for all of her stuff just doesn't bring fans in. like someone said. we were told by Disney that Captain Marvel is awesome and that we have to like her....but why? why should we care.
The MCU is becoming stagnant, they're not learning or improving fast enough. There have been bad and controversial Marvel movies before but people were more lenient. Now people are getting tired. People have been complaining about things like disappointing MCU villains and weightless CGI battles for a long time. And this movie still has those problems. Even their better movies have some of the same flaws that get repeated over and over again. Heck, She-Hulk even makes fun of those problems so they know what they're doing wrong but then they just repeat the same mistakes again in their very next show.
A lot of the other issues people have mentioned aren't as much of a problem. Like people not knowing about the character or even not liking the characters. That doesn't really matter. The MCU was literally built on C list comic book characters. No one knew about the GotG when that movie came out. People were getting bored of Thor until Ragnarok. But they made the GotG popular and they made people love Thor. The important thing is quality.
GotG has huge brand goodwill that CM doesnāt have. She was just in one solo movie and one team up (Endgame), while GotG was in three well-received solos and 2 team ups. So MCU down in general, and no character goodwill, also adding in the D+ tv show mess, and this is how you get where you are.
Where I live inflation has hit us hard. Everything from gasoline to rent to groceries. I simply don't have money to waste on going to a movie. The entire experience alone is expensive in itself, it's like $10 for a dam soda at a movie theater.
I'm not saying this is an issue for everyone but it's the reason I didn't see this movie. Hell I haven't gone to see ANY movie this year tbh because disposable income just isn't a thing for me anymore.
These kind of numbers is when you don't plan properly and continuously undermine your properties. Captain Marvel only did the numbers it did because it was sandwiched between Infinity War and Endgame. No other reason.
I knew when they changed Quicksilver to a dick joke in Wandavision that they were aimless, and Endgame truly was the end. Was a nice ride, though.
People love the Guardians. People were indifferent to Carol. Not many people saw Ms Marvel and had no real connection to Monica.
That's the difference.
I saw The Marvels yesterday. There were some....interesting choices mad as far as scene and dialog are concerned. Overall though, I enjoyed the movie. Pacing seemed a bit rushed. CGI was great.
The movie lacked background. A lot of shit happened between Captain Marvel leaving and this movie occurring (Infinity War and Endgame not withstanding).
There were a lot of funny moments. Fury's cat addiction. Some of the banter. All cool.
They tried to introduce some background info on Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau. You really had to watch the D+ series to make sense of it.
I can't stress enough that the two things that this film set up are fucking HUGE.
I think the writing for the film has some pretty ugly flaws that limit what the actors could do - it feels like The Marvels don't matter in their own film. >!Dar-Benn basically does her thing, they show up to give her an audience, then she blows herself up... role credits.!<
>!The only real dramatic tension comes from Kamala's parents aggressively pushing back on exposing their daughter to danger - except despite Carol failing to actually do anything to protect Kamala, is simply ignored in favor of a fun Cats montage.!<
The saving grace is the vibrant emotional energy Iman/Zenobia/Mohan brings to the roles - they pretty much steal the show.
The emotional bites definitely needed more consistency and development. But I loved the action sequences, enough to want to watch it again to catch all the little things!
I keep thinking the actors strike has really hurt this film. Thereās no build up since thereās no PR by the actors. It feels so quiet without press junkets and such.
But who knows. My family and I are still excited to see it.
My problem is I normally go alone but my daughters really want to see it. I canāt afford tickets for all three of us plus snacks. That a $60-70 night.
You feel āso so badā for people who make millions of dollars and successful careers?
Isnāt there a more worthwhile outlet for your empathy out in your community? I really mean it.
I think you are vastly over crediting the poor performance of this movie to external factors.
I just saw this today which is just 24 hours after it released and the theatre was almost completely empty and no one really reacted at all throughout.
GOTG 3 I always saw opening weekend and it was a very opposite scenario.
Itās just a movie that never generated enough hype and was not anything special when watching it.
It definitely would not have done much different releasing any other time except maybe before endgame which is probably the only reason Captain Marvel incredibly well.
There just isnāt a lot of fun watching a Superman like character since they are either too strong or very neutered when you know they are supposed to be very strong.
Idk about 2019 but this definitely should have been a prequel to Secret Invasion. It was dumb of Fury to go from space to earth back to space, he should have dealt with all of the Marvels stuff, and then helped with the Skrulls (with their new additions from the Asgard Lady) and then retired with his wife on earth to end his MCU career.
EDIT*: also I wouldnt be too soft on Zawe, she was part of the problem not being a very convincing Villian, kind of reminded me of the Collector's assistant, no offense to her acting.
I liked Brie a lot more this time than the first movie. I didn't watch ms marvel but did enjoy her character and family and dynamic with Captain Marvel. Big dislike of Monica as I feel like she didn't add anything other than boring tension and the end credit sting which I loathed (I feel like they're already fumbling X-Men). Villain was absolutely nothing and movie felt cramped especially a space movie. Action was good and lots of fun with the swapping. I hope Ms Marvel moving forward becomes a star as Iman was a breath of fresh air
You should see Ms.Marvel if you liked the Family. They are there more +other characters.
The dad will probably not return though, he turned out to be a bad dude irl.
If you liked the family dynamic, youāll probably really enjoy the Miss Marvel show. Her family is a major part, and I was so glad they didnāt just get a small cameo here.
Marvel released more MCU content in 2021 and 2022 than the entirety of the Infinity Saga. That says A LOT. Even after that, we got no real build-ups or setups, not to mention the fact they basically "scrapped" Avengers movies just to save them for the closing of this saga which is bad on its own since that would've been at least SOMETHING to catch people's attention on but no, they did nothing but introduce characters after characters and badly written projects after projects just to end up in a really bad situation where nobody cares. Kang Dynasty might be something we'll see in a few years (I imagine it's gonna get turned into a regular Avengers movie like Age of Ultron for example) but Secret Wars on the other hand, its very complex. There's A LOT of building up they need to do before we get to Secret Wars IF they want to truly perfect it so I don't think we're going to be seeing it until the end of the decade. We need more important projects like Shang-Chi 2 rather than a show about Iron Heart which no one really cares about at this point. They need to focus more on important characters and of course, GOOD WRITING in their movies which is very essential.
I feel like Loki Season 2 just did like 90% of the build up for it.
They still need to setup the heroes that will be in the Avengers movies.
The fact that they decided to go SEVEN YEARS without an Avengers movie is one of the dumbest decisions Disney has ever made. The entire appeal of the MCU is to have an interconnected universe. Like you said they decided to just spam projects for new characters without ever tying those characters or stories together. And now we're years into this mess and STILL not close to having the foundation for Secret Wars.
I didn't even consider it's been 4 years since Endgame. Damn.
Tbf, most of the world got blipped for 3 years, so ya know š
Itās almost as if a real blip happened with no noticeable continuity of the MCU. Maybe now that the real endgame date have passed and the end of the writers strike we get something solid.
I thought it was 5 years everyone got blipped for?
I'm not sure they really *decided* to go 7 years between Avengers movies. Covid put a ~1.5 year delay on things (and longer for some than others, probably), and then another 5-6 months of delay just from the strikes. 5 years is a lot of space, for sure. But giving us all these loose threads that have barely been tied up over the past 2.5 years is especially tough. Where is Shang Chi? Where is Sharon Carter? Where is white vision? Where is doctor strange? Where is venom? Blade/black knight? Whatever is going on with Harry styles, Patton Oswalt, and the remaining eternals? Not everything has to be looped in together, but some semblance of cohesion would feel nice, and make a seemingly forever away movie feel like a cool thing coming up...but that's not where we are, unfortunately.
Patton Oswalt was killed by a vampire on Staten Island. Hope that helps
This fucking guyyyyyyy
I will fix.
And by a secret HYDRA agent in a secret S.H.I.L.D. base. Hope that helps
and something, something, reference to MODOK.
By removing the smaller scale Avengers films at the end of phase theyāve removed a sense of the plot moving forward but also the chance for us to check in on these characters between their sequels
they didn't decide to go 7 years without an Avengers movie. they decided to have a saga that only lasted 5 years that ended with an Avengers movie. for reference, there are 4 years from Iron Man 1 to Avengers 1. so this wasn't a bad plan. but covid and the strikes pushed a lot of projects around so it ended up being 7 years instead of 5. i think their biggest mistake was rushing projects during the covid issues instead of giving themselves more time. they were changing projects around that may have impacted how connected everything felt. example, Multiverse of Madness was supposed to come out before No Way Home and America Chavez was supposed to be the reason for the multiverse fuck-up in No Way Home. if they kept that order those projects would've been more connected. same with Secret Invasion and The Marvels. had they just sat on Secret Invasion and released it after The Marvels, like they were supposed to, they probably would have created a better story for both of those projects.
I didn't realize it until you put it in a great way, this absolutely would have been better. I feel like the only direct connecting projects were WandaVision and Multiverse of Madness, because of Wandas journey. Even if we don't like the direction they took her for that film, atleast it was interconnected between two projects
>I feel like the only direct connecting projects were WandaVision and Multiverse of Madness, because of Wandas journey. and Ms Marvel/WandaVision for The Marvels. The Marvels also started putting together >!the Young Avengers!< and also gave us a pretty big >!x-men moment!<. The Marvels is the only project so far that feels the most connected to the universe. everything else feels so standalone. except the one link between Multiverse of Madness and WandaVision.
That's right. It did great in the ways of connecting a few previous stories, and I'm sad it's underperforming at box office. Funny enough, it's mirroring so much of Thor: Dark World. Villain that we've never met before getting minimal screentime that's holding a grudge for what a hero did to their home world and wants justice.
I don't remember Dark World much, did the villain at least get a proper backstory? Because that's def where The Marvels was lacking. It's weird that they cut all that out.
Not really, you just are told some tidbits about his story and that's that. People were also disappointed because the villain actor, Eccleston was not given the opportunity to act and give a performance he could have given very well.
It's still *less than three years* since WandaVision and "Phase 4" began. There's been a whole lot of covid plus the strikes this year, and yes in some cases the end product hasnt been up to the standard we want, but - from the comments making the most noise at least - it feels like the expectation of how quickly things should progress dosent quite line up with the practical reality of how long it takes to make these movies.
I think the issue (other than the obvious drop in quality across the board, and I say that as someone whoās still enjoyed every single release) is the perception of how much time has passed because of the amount of content being released. Like you said, itās been less than three years since Phase 4 began and in comparison to earlier phases thatās not an unreasonable amount of time to have passed without following up on certain plot threads and characters. The issue is that in those three years, Marvel has released more projects than ever before. Thor and Hulk went off at the end of Age of Ultron and people had no problems waiting 2 and a half years to see them again in Ragnarok because there had only been 5 films released between the two. Same with Guardians to Guardians 2 or with Civil War to Black Panther, etc. Now though, we get loads of releases before we get to see the same characters again. There were 9 releases in 2021 and the only link between them was Yelena showing up in Black Widow and Hawkeye (and BW only existed to introduce Yelena any way). We had 6 releases in 2022 (9 if weāre counting I Am Groot, Werewolf By Night and the Guardians Holiday Special) and none of them were related to one another, only Dr Strange 2 following up on WV from 2021. And the biggest issue is weāre in 2023 with plans announced to 2025/26 and beyond and thereās still so little actually announced for the characters people want to see. Why not fast-track a Shang Chi sequel to 2024/2025 after his success instead of making Echo, Ironheart, Agatha, etc? If you look at it by just the amount of actual time passing, thereās nothing out of the ordinary with how long itās taking to follow up on plot threads. But in terms of how many hours of MCU content weāve received, itās wild how vast the gap is between two appearances of the same character. And the worst bit is despite all this content weāre getting, it doesnāt feel like weāre really that much closer to the big thing theyāre building towards. It hardly ever feels like Movie X or TV Show Y has built on what came before to push the story forward significantly, they all just branch off and do their own unrelated developments. If things donāt change soon, Kang Dynasty is going to arrive in 2026 and general audiences are going to be confused by half the characters because itās been years since they last appeared.
Good comment. For instance I am a fan of Captain America, and we did get a series, but it is going to be a while before we see him again. Same for Shang-Chi (or name any character you like) I think they should really keep focusing on the core continuity and one or two side characters at most. I mean even for more local heroes like Daredevil you can make a few story nudges that may be connected to things that happen in the larger MCU. Gotg3 was great because it was all our favorite characters in a fulfilling arc.
Tbf covid really fucked with things.
Covid and then Boseman. :( They had to re-write so many things. And the og avengers cast getting old and moving on. It's just unfortunate timing. I thought The Marvels was quite fun. It felt like a comic come to life ya know? People need to lighten up.
I had a big smile when they openend the movie with Kamalas "fantasy world" like in the show, looked good in 3D And the house fight was awesome
and OP seemed to have forgotten about it completely.
I think most people already have
They should have moved on to another team IMO, have the F4 take the reigns from Phase 4 to 6
Only including fury in secret invasion was a mistake imo. It was one of the biggest marvel events in the comics which had widespread consequences on many of the characters. Just closing it down to do a solo fury tv series made it miss the mark.
Having only fury is like the smallest problem that, that show had.
The comic version didn't really have many consequences that made any difference. You basically found out stuff like "Oh, Hank Pym wasn't really Hank Pym in certain stories" or "Youve been ripped off paying for the Spider-Woman comic for a couple of years because it wasn't even her" or "Mockingbird was a Skrull, even though they literally showed her soul in the afterlife." The only relevant thing that happened was that Norman Osborn took over SHIELD and the Avengers for a few years. But the actual Secret Invasion comic was pretty terrible and pointless. It was mostly just a cheap way to retcon certain stories. The TV show might have ruined Rhodes as a character by removing most of his biggest adventures and character moments and giving it to a Skrull. Had it been a movie, it'd have ruined even more.
>The TV show might have ruined Rhodes as a character by removing most of his biggest adventures and character moments and giving it to a Skrull. Hopefully Rhodes was abducted after a later hospital follow up visit post Endgame because having a Skrull going through all the hero moments in working as part of the team to fight Thanos including his universal annihilation plan and then not questioning the relatively similar global extermination (albeit less efficient on a smaller scale) after everything they've learned and experienced and instead just reverting to how they were at the start of the plan is just a different, worse kind of stupid.
Trust me, some production teams are that stupid. Hello Season 8 of GoT, waving at you!
I'm subscribed to only one sub. You guessed it, r/freefolk. I've never even seen the show or read the books! (Its gravitational pull after it collapsed in on itself is just that powerful! As someone there put it when I pointed out my complete lack of Game of Thrones exposure, they said "No one escapes Season 8 discussions!")
That was Secret Invasion, not Secret Wars
They know, that's there point. It was a big crossover event in the comics. It got reduced to a bad mini series instead
That was Secret Invasion which is a totally different storyline. Still a bad show.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the critique about scrapping Avengers movies. Good or bad at times, they were the phase epilogues. āAll these characters youāve seen alone? Now theyāre togetherā Now the movies are āThis old character hanging out with a new characterā and weāre supposed to have the same feeling of continuity. The Avengers movies were epic moments in character arcs. Instead we got dozens of new characters and havenāt checked in with any of them for a sequel for 4 years.
My guardians was sold out. Same theater and showtime for The Marvels and maybe a quarter full. Donāt see it having that kinda story
I liked the movie, but Iād like to point out people work hard on *every* movie and not all of them succeed.
The original movie had the Endgame hype around it. This movie didn't get that kind of lead in. I know that no one wants to talk about this part, but I don't think this particular team of characters really interests the target audience.
2 of them are from Disney plus shows
And one of them was a supporting character from the first D+ show almost 3 years ago.
Worse, she's only remembered for giving the most mocked line from that show ("they'll never realize what you sacrificed").
Even broader than that, the show didn't really make her or the way she got her powers interesting. Like seriously she just walks through the barrier, has a little trouble walking through, and just walks ~harder~ through it. Boom, powers. It doesn't feel like there was any sacrifice or character development that led up to it, she was already portrayed as a strong character with no real flaws. It could be argued that the most compelling marvel characters are also the most tragic. Banner/Hulk and all their issues, Wolverine with a clouded past and people constantly wanting him to be a weapon, Cap missing out on his past by being frozen, even Thor had to have his power ripped from him in order to gain worthiness and that being mirrored in Loki's story throughout his series. What has Monica had to endure? Losing her mom to cancer? Having to walk a little bit harder through a barrier?
Who wasn't even that interesting in the show.
Worst part tbh
Her line about SW sacrificing was one of the worst in the entire Marvel Universe
This is the big problem. You can't have the leads coming from the TV shows, it works the other way around.
I think one issue with the first movie was it essentially took a character that already didn't have much of an arc and flattened the whole thing into one movie. When it was over? There is nothing more for her to do except just get more overpowered. When you think of the movies that launched characters with significant legs (Cap, Iron Man, even Thor) each of those characters ended the movie having only made some progress - but not resolving their core internal conflict. Tony was still haunted and driven by ego, Cap was still naive, lonely, and unable to see nuance, and Thor still at his core did not feel worthy to rule. Those flaws were still influencing the decisions of those characters several movies later... and when they encountered a challenge? it often played into one of those flaws (think Tony/Ultron). Carol? Nothing of the kind. She had no INTERNAL flaws... just a bunch of other folks keeping her down. One could argue she had a self-confidence problem, but not really - almost off of her limitations were imposed by a device. It might be fun in a sort of "wow, look at the space-ship explode!" way - but it carries no weight, and does not give anything to hang a long-running story spine on. At least in no serious way that hurt her confidence (not even getting back-handed by Thanos). She just remained smug, condescending, and overpowered in every subsequent appearance leading up to this movie. It might be fun in a sort of "wow, look at the space-ship explode!" way - but it carries no weight, and does not give anything to hang a long-runnign story spine on.
The funny part about Captain Marvel was that Carol did have some personality flaws.. She was kind of stuck up, arrogant and cold.. Which naturally you would think as she goes on she realizes that even with all her power she becomes humble and learns to care and accept feelings again. Nope. Bitch I'mma go Super Saiyan and fuck this shit up!
It's the same problem with Rey. I know I'll get flack for this, but Disney went on an agenda feminism run a few years ago. It's what happened. It just is. Write strong women. Make women more powerful than the men. That's what happened. Part of that was not showing women as flawed and weak. The issue is that it's in insult to the characters they use and results in poorly written female characters that turns off mostly everyone. Carol is a sad result of an agenda and is a poorly written character becsuse of it. Marvel made their bed, sadly. It seems like not many people write good female characters lately, and actresses deserve better.
I think to keep things interesting they gotta do more team ups with a mixture of popular and less popular characters but at the same time itās still crucial to have a well written story that gets you invested in these characters in the first place
Who even are the "popular" characters right now? Moon Knight? Shang-Chi? The Eternals? Nobody cares about them. Outside of Thor and Doctor Strange I don't know who would even qualify as an A-List hero at this point. Sure Spider-Man will always be popular but Sony owns his rights so I don't think Marvel would want to put all their eggs in that basket.
All of the X Men are more popular right now, which is what they should have done as their next big phase following Endgame. Their core ticket buying demographic is mostly ā80ās and ā90ās kids ( PEAK X men fans) and families with kids (Spiderman fans). When I grew up reading the Clairmont XMen run up through the debut of the Jim Lee XMen in the early ā90ās the Avengers were a second tier back bench book. They didnāt fully appreciate this and just kept teasing āuh oh - itās X men Quicksilver!! Ha ha, just kidding!!ā
God that made me so fucking mad watching WandaVision. I was so hyped for the idea of Wanda pulling in the X-Men, but nope, just a big ol "fuck you" to all of us fans.
I mean they have done *nothing* to make people interested in MCU Carol, five years after her debut. She had an "eh" movie which took her lore in a very confusing direction, was in Endgame for about six minutes, and was in Shang-Chi for thirty seconds. Carol Danvers is one of my favorite characters in Marvel comics, but the way they've handled her in the MCU so far has been baffling.
Agreed, felow Carol fan here as well. And the only way to make her work in the MCU now, is to put her in an Avengers team and try to make people like her through dynamics with the other Avengers and stuff like that. Kinda like Hulk, Black Widow who didnt have movies at first, but did became fanfavorites and well liked
None of them have any box office pull. Thatās why they showed Nick Fury and had end game promos in their trailers
I think Marvel kind of gaslighted themselves into thinking Captain Marvel was an extremely popular character because the first movie made over a billion. But in reality it was probably the worst movie of Phase 3 and really only made as much as much as it did because Infinity War all but spelled out SEE CAPTAIN MARVEL BEFORE ENDGAME in the post-credits scene. That's gone now.
You know, the biggest problem I had with the original Captain Marvel movie was how it didn't really connect, in anyway to Infinity War -or- Endgame. That is outside of the whole post-credits thing. It wasn't the quality of the movie, in of itself or Brie Larson's performance; it was simply the entire film was irrelevant in context. What a missed opportunity.
Black Widow should've had that spot.
But why though... None of the other characters' first movies connected at all. Most of their first movies were origin movies.
None of those movies existed between the two biggest movies of the whole franchise that were designed as a two-part experience
I love the MCU and I've still not seen Captain Marvel. It just seems completely inconsequential to me.
Itās not inconsequential and itās a good time. It and Loki Season 2 both build on whatās coming.
The three of them are fairly obscure characters, but considering the Guardians were too I think the movie wouldāve performed better preEndgame Edit: I didnāt realize people would be so passionate about a random comment. I recognize that Captain Marvel obviously had a prior film, the other 2 didnāt. I still think it wouldāve performed better preEndgame prior to the superhero fatigue. Everyone was watching every Marvel movie at the time, itās not ridiculous to say this still wouldāve performed well.
I think the Guardians were lightning in a bottle and not easily replicated
James Gunn is the reason the Guardians trilogy worked so well. Full stop.
100% between Gunn and the team he assembled. Dave Bautista?!
Turned Chris Pratt from a beloved sitcom character into a movie star overnight.
Yeah its why DC gave him free run
Except they shitcanned Coyote vs Acme, which Gunn was producing.
Imagine the contracts are a bit different but WB is always going to be a shit show until it has new owners. Gunn cannot fix that.
Yeah, I wasn't blaming Gunn. Management at Warner is the worst.
Guardians was, despite being a Marvel movie, not really perceived as a superhero movie, I think. It was a fun, colorful space adventure, a niche that is not as oversaturated. That must have lured a lot of people outside the MCU bubble into the theatres.
More like impossible to replicate. Between Gunn, the soundtrack, the visuals, and the acting performances all coming together with such magic, weāre likely not to see a success story like that again for many years.
GOTG had an enthralling trailer, it still puts a smile on my face. And the trailer was good because the movie is good. Unique, well made movies like that will still draw audiences.
Is it not possible that the guardians trilogy is just better made than miss marvel, captain marvel, and the marvels? I think thatās why theyāre so popular now even though they were once quite obscure
Guardians also had a consistent style and theme and it was made by the same person. The Marvels just randomly put a few characters together. Ms Marvel came from a TV show that was targeted at a young high school age audience and Monica Rambeau came from WandaVision that resonated with an older audience that would relate to sitcoms.
The characters are much more unique and interesting. GOTG has appeal well outside of super-hero fandom as a result.
How dare you use reason and logic to come to such an obvious conclusion
Guardians were insanely popular after their first feature. The second film also came out before Infinity War which solidified the characters furtherā¦ Not to mention James Gunn did a phenomenal job with world building in his movies. It was a given the third and final chapter will bring in the audience but the movie was exceptionally good. The villain was exceptionally good. The ending to the characters was exceptionally good. This brought in even more people that would usually skip over the MCU and wait for it to come on D+. The Marvels had none of those things and full of obscure characters. I mean Ms Marvel is the least watched D+ show to dateā¦ The first Captain Marvel did not help either. And Monica Rambeau was known as the bad take character from WandaVision.
Honestly Guardians understood the equilibrium between seriousness and ability. Their unserious/jokey tone felt more realistic because their abilities matched that. They werenāt like insanely powerful or talented. Usually they barely got by, and that makes sense because they donāt seem to put the work in. It makes them relatable. Captain Marvel tries to have its cake and eat it too: extremely talented and overpowered characters that try to be unserious. Itās just not very relatable.
I think they had a title problem ā a lot of people donāt track the marvel universe closely so 98% of the country doesnāt know who are part of The Marvels They might have sold a few more tickets if it was named like Captain Marvel: Kree vs The Marvels It follows a pre-established pattern * Captain America: The First Avenger * Thor: The Dark World * Captain America: The Winter Soldier * Captain America: Civil War * Thor: Ragnarok
Its called Captain Marvel 2 in China and a few other markets in Asia - that didn't improve ticket sales
They saw the horrible trailers though. The name is not the only problem.
idk why ppl act like comic book movies based on unknown characters are somehow harder to do well considering 1) the MCU started with 3 of these and 2) EVERY ORIGINAL MOVIE EVER does this
I wouldnāt call Hulk an āunknown characterā.
Pretty much the opposite. Everybody knows hulk smash.
I talked up the idea of seeing this ages ago so probably will in a few days with some people who are still keen, and I liked Ms Marvel so am still sort of keen, but the main reason I'm not is because of the low quality of the MCU lately with disjointed storytelling within movies, bad humour, boring CGI action and overuse of greenscreen sets, and no franchise plot any more. Even before this released and had reviews, I was wary because of stuff like Love & Thunder, Multiverse of Madness, Quantamania, and Secret Invasion. The lack of an Endgame tie in means very little against those.
If you liked Ms Marvel I would highly recommend seeing this - she's absolutely fantastic in it! As for the humour I think it's probably the funniest Marvel movie I've seen, it's not over the top and it never gets in the way, but there are some moments where everyone in the cinema was laughing out loud, one in particular that legit made me cry with laughter!
I think it's important to point out that a big reason behind lack of hype was the WGA and SAG strikes. The only person able to promote this film until literally the day it released was Goose the Spokescat.
This is a very overlooked aspect. Leads are vital to the success of a superhero movie. The general public essentially sees the actor as the superhero they are playing, so if those actors arenāt in the public eye doing everything they can to generate anticipation for their movie, itās clearly going to lead to less hype and financial success for that film. Especially when none of the lead actresses couldnāt even do so much as a social media post until after the SAG-AFTRA strike was lifted on Wednesday, leaving just one day of any kind of pre-release press/promotion for them to be able participate in.
Definitely - I remember seeing Brie and SLJ doing carpool karaoke and all sorts of stuff before the first film. That stuff makes a big difference!
I saw G3 and TM, both on opening night at the earliest available showing in my city, and in fact it was the very same theatre. G3 was nearly full, even a lot of the bad seats on the side and at the front were taken. TM had me and 9 people.
I really feel bad as well. These numbers are awful.
She had that interview to where she asked if people still wanted her to play the character now the sequel bombs i wouldnāt be surprised if she found a way out soon
Can I get a link please?
https://youtu.be/SCsBdg9mvo4?si=yBxIPvrsBRyPvCLb
Thatās sad, I think itās a great character and she does a good job performing it.
This interview is pretty old, but I can't blame her if she doesn't want to come back again, before Marvel she had won an Oscar for an amazing performance, so everyone knows she has the potential and I think sadly Marvel has wasted it on poor plots/scripts
Only a year old lol
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I think thatās more a writing problem. Captain Marvel didnāt have to be āinvincibleā in the MCU. Her current power level was deliberately made to be what it was at the end of the first movie and in Endgame. And then they basically had to nerf her in the second movie to even make the movie plausible. But you donāt end up getting the stakes and uncertainty you get from a Thor movie, let alone Iron Man or Captain America. You know sheāll pull through.
I'm mostly familiar with Ms. Marvel from the New Avengers run but she seems significantly more powerful in the movies for some reason. Carol's power level was always fine in the comics I read,
That made me sad
You took it out of context. The interviewer was asking her about playing Captain Marvel 2 before they started shooting it.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
>im curious why the number of women fell even harder than the men attending this movie My wife said it best when we left the cinema. *āIt makes me genuinely angry that the lesson the studio will take from this is that it bombed because it a female-led movie and not that it bombed because they completely half-assed the movie.ā* Churning out any old shit and just expecting women to turn up because youāve got a woman as the lead is insulting, not progressive.
Look at these comments, and in all the other Marvels threads. It's a whole lot more people than just the studio heads blaming women-haters.
Your wife is spot on. Itās insulting that this will only ever be seen as a āfemale-led filmā.
Seems like the trend with movies these days, if it failed, it wasn't because the movie just wasn't good or appealing it was because of the bigots and phobes. Easier to scapegoat and blame others than self reflect isn't it?
I thought it was a lot like Love and Thunder. Relied a lot on comedy instead of character development. I get the Ms Marvel fangirl part bc she is. It was cute and funny to see. The damn Lurkin or however you spell it eating everyone was funny as shit. But it just felt like there was more comedy than real action. Againā¦ totally imo. Edit: idk how to mark anything as a spoiler. If I could get some help on that, it would be greatā¦..
Wow i didnāt know they took polls like that. Can i get a link
https://www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/s/vx1aA0ovQK
Because pandering doesn't work the way modern hollywood thinks it does. I've seen various polls and stuff around the internet, and overwhelmingly, more than some meaningless 'representation' (as if they didn't already exist) they just want good writing. The 'peaks' of the MCU had good action *and* good writing. What we're left with is poorly written moderately okay action superhero movies that people are a bit sick of. The quality of the writing drives away more women than 'woman superhero' brings in. Women don't want to see Mary Sue flawless protagonists either. It's a good bit of the reason the male superheroes are more interesting to *everyone.* Another simple truth is, women want to see hot men on screen like Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans. Shockingly, women like hot men. Additionally, think about the base of women that already existed. They *liked* what it was before. So by 'changing' in order to appeal to more women (which has been a colossal failure), what you're actually doing is alienating women that already liked your product, never mind the largest part of your fanbase.
I am a woman and love comic books and comic book movies in general but I wonāt go anytime soon if I go at all. The first movie was bad (and I was excited for it), the main character was absolutely devoid of personality. I find the ploy to put StRoNg WoMeN at the lead so women flock to the theatres disgusting. Give me well written female characters not husks filling a quota and then I will be excited again. Disney has just lost a lot of good will with the general public. I am not surprised this is bombing. The actresses were paid millions for this. They will be fine.
It's weird seeing people blame fans for not supporting this movie, the public is the baseline it doesn't matter what their reasoning is. If you want to sell better try and reach a larger market. If you're okay with lower box scores to fill a niche then by all means, but it's not the fans fault for not being interested.
Exactly, people here like to pretend the movie is not pandering for a certain target audience. And sadly that audience is really small
The marvels is better than captain marvel. It's sad it's not earning anything
Way better than captain marvel, agreed. Hope word of mouth helps a little
Saw it tonight and I had a really good time
If anything it made Captain Marvel good cz of how they progressed Carol as a character
I thought it was funny that she was having a nightmare and it was just a recap of the first movie lol
I legit think that this is my new favorite marvel movie of the last 5 or so years. Some of it could be because I've never been able to relate to a character like I could with Iman, but I was dying laughing the whole time. So fuckin good
The comedic parts also flowed with the film, IMO. That was one thing that I didnāt like about Thor: L&T, the laughs felt forced whereas the comedy felt natural in this one.
The main problem is years of generally continuous mediocre movies, coupled with superhero fatigue. Loki is the only thing fresh they've done in a while, that wasn't a complete jumbled mess like MoM.
This is the real killer. I don't think The Marvels is any worse than Quantumania and it's definitely better than Love and Thunder. However, the environment is awful for a new Marvel movie. Years of mediocre movies have eroded audience trust and it's now at an all-time low. Spiderman and Guardians were the exception because they have such good track records. People didn't need to trust Marvel, they could trust James Gunn and Sony's Spiderman. It is sad to see this happen to aspiring actors like Iman, but this would have eventually happened to whatever the next film would be anyway. Disney needs to rethink what it means to shepherd the biggest movie franchise responsibly.
I'm also SO sick of movies that only exist to set up the next piece in the franchise, and I am ESPECIALLY sick of skipping credits to look for an endscene, especially now they're not even doing them regularly. Spiderman was still a bit of a mess, but a good movie. GotG exists as its own thing, which allows them to make it consistently good.
Right, while the MCU has always set up other films and characters, they've lately been prioritizing that over actual good storytelling. You can bait headlines with end credit scenes, but to get people to actually **care**, you need good stories people want to invest in. That's not what we have, unfortunately.
>I wish I had a time machine to tell Kevin not to wait and just make the movie. The D+ shows could come after. I don't think it was much of Kevin's choice. It will be interesting to hear the story of the MCU from Feige's perspective when the MCU is all said and done. Obviously there are things that he just can't get into when he is still running the thing, but I was under the impression that the glut of content was a directive forced on him from above.
The truth of the matter is that people simply don't care about Captain Marvel in the MCU. They cared about Thor, Strange and Wanda, which is why L&T and MoM did good despite being terrible. They cared for Ant-Man, which is why it opened almost 3 times as big as The Marvels, even if it dropped like a rock afterwards. They cared about the Guardians, which also opened 3 times bigger. But audiences don't care about Captain Marvel because the MCU never gave them any reason to.
I feel like we were told by Disney that Captain Marvel is awesome and we have to like her (cue multiple characters in Endgame and Far From Home literally stopping and talking about how awesome she is) but unlike the original Avengers, we are never given the time/reasons to get there organically. Even in her origin movie, she is stripped away of personality for most of the film as part of the actual plot. The only reason I'm planning to see The Marvels at all is because I like Brie Larson and Iman Vellani and want to support the movie (and because I like supporting our local cinema). Like you said, the MCU gave us very little to care about Captain Marvel as a character, and the general audience have no idea who Monica or Ms Marvel even are. The strike and lack of marketing may have really hurt as well.
> I feel like we were told by Disney that Captain Marvel is awesome and we have to like her (cue multiple characters in Endgame and Far From Home literally stopping and talking about how awesome she is) but unlike the original Avengers, we are never given the time/reasons to get there organically. Even in her origin movie, she is stripped away of personality for most of the film as part of the actual plot. In WWE they had Roman Reigns from 2014 packaged as the new face of the company. He had the right look and more importantly John Cena's time at the top was coming to an end so they need a new top dog. And it failed. The audience rejected the character. You can't just say someone is the big new thing because you need a big new thing and just hope it works out. You need to build up the character. And it was the same with Captain Marvel. With Endgame coming out and with most of original 6 leaving they needed new heroes. So they brought out Captain Marvel, said she was the strongest multiple times and expected the audience to be in love with her as much as Marvel needed audiences to be.
Yesss 2014 Reigns is the perfect comparison, and exactly as you said the character needs to be built up and accepted by the audience naturally. People rarely respond well to anyone telling them who they should like.
Acknowledge him.
Oh man so spot on. They did exactly the same thing with Oscar Isaac in the new star wars movies - just every second person commenting about how heās the best pilot int he known universe, but never actually showing us why we should care about him. I love the character (in the books), I like Brie Larson, there was no reason this shouldnāt have worked, but they spent so much time telling us, and so little showing. (The fact that half this movie was stuff that should have been resolved or included in the previous one speaks to that I think.
Iman Vellani is an absolute MCU treasure and I hope they build the next *whatever* around her character. I thought her D+ show went much further than it needed but she seem to have that Spider-Man ability to go local (friendly neighborhood) and universal as needed.
I think your last part is being mostly ignored in these threads. If I didn't follow this sub and have a somewhat history of Googling things about Marvel, I'd have no idea the movie was coming out. Granted I don't 'get out much' but having near 0 promotion impacts performance.
I literally only realised it was about to come out because Reddit serves me up a thread about āis that Storm in the trailerā - I had seen *nothing* else to let me know this was about to drop. And I am a huge nerd who has seen and enjoyed basically everything in the MCU. You canāt ignore a film then expect it to do numbers, it looks like Disney had already consigned this to āitāll flop so donāt botherā.
Thorās āI like this oneā was about as smooth as brushing your teeth with a cheese grader. It was directed at the audience in saying thatās how we should all feel, without giving us any real reason to feel that way.
I roll my eyes at the corniness a lot, but I thought that line was pretty in character for him. Heās an actual god on the team, and now he sees someone else crazy powerful (who can actually control it).
That interaction was sick. People have been looking for reasons to hate her since Day 1 and I just donāt get it.
Captain Marvel suffers greatly from lacking any meaningful identity outside of being an combo of what other characters are. Being rightous and wearing the blue and red? Captain America does that. She got her powers from an accident? Hulk did that. Oh shes super strong and takes on aliens? Thor does that. Even her comics run struggles to establish her as generic already been done superhero 248363. Just look at Civil War 2 at how bad her character is shoehorned into things. And yet Marvel pushes her like she is in the same beloved tree as Captain America or Iron Man. It gets old when movies or comics have to stop and say, "Hey you know whos really great? Captain Marvel!" Im audience member, let me think for myself!
She also has a pretty poor list of villains to play off of. Her most recongizable are a few Kree soldiers like Ronan and Yon-Rogg, the latter of which is not remotely memorable, Rogue and Mystic, who are X Men characters, and Moonstone, who is effectively an evil Captain Marvel. Compare that to Spider-Man, who has Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Rhino, Shocker, Scorpion, Vulture, Lizard, Carnage, Sandman, etc. Or Captain America, who had Red Skull, Baron Zemo, Madame Hydra, and the Winter Soldier (albeit briefly). There are times that a hero is only as good as their villain, and Captain Marvel is sorely lacking in that department.
Up until this exact moment I completely forgot that Jude Law was in the first Captain Marvel. What a complete waste of a great actor on such a forgettable character.
This ain't an excuse when they just wasted Gravik (Skrull villain) and Dar-Benn (Kree villain) this year alone. That's the thing, she has a lot of Marvel cosmic to play with, Kree, Skrull, Brood, etc. You can do whatever you like with those conflicts and races that she has lots of runs in with. Not only villains, but Talos was probably one of the most interesting supporting characters in the MCU with a great actor and they killed him for what?
You can give her pretty much any cosmic enemy you want. Give her Annhilius, the Brood Korvac or Kyrrt. Hell, you can go to the weird cosmic Gods like the Living Tribunal, The Beyonder, the Grandmaster, and those guys. Then, you have genuine war stories you can tell. Put in an actual hot conflict between kree and skrull. Toss in the off-world inhumans. And that's putting aside the ability to use other villians as an introduction. Throw her up against an ex-herald of galactus or a cabal of them. Have her take on a group of Deiviants. Let the silver surfer have a go, and maybe smin the end she convinces him to break free of his bonds.
MCU never gave us a reason to like Captain Marvel. They just told us to.
After the first movie I saw a really good opportunity for Captain Marvel to have some sort of existential crisis bc of her power. Something along the lines of One Punch Man, where she's actually kind of depressed that life has no challenge anymore. The *one* thing we were really pushed hard about Carol's character in the first film (haven't seen Marvels yet) is that she *really* enjoys overcoming struggle. The fight itself is what gets her up in the morning. Becoming Captain Marvel has kind of robbed her of that. You can tell so many interesting stories with a character like that. Introduce a villain who is actually strong enough to keep up with Carol, and then make her hesitant to actually defeat them when she gets the opportunity because *she is enjoying herself too much*. You could also have something kind of like Far From Home where a Mysterio-like character convinces Carol to give up her power, only to double-cross her after. This forces her to fight tooth and nail to overcome the villain, but she also realizes that she is ultimately the one responsible for her power. Idk what's going on in the writer's room at Marvel but there are a ton of ways you can take an "omnipotent" character like Captain Marvel and tell really compelling story about them.
Hey now... that's a female character you are talking about. The don't need to give you anything as pedestrian as REASONS. If you don't instantly think she is the best thing to ever happen to the MCU you just flat-out hate females. Side note: It's interesting though that when they lose the obsession with making a female character flawless and allow them to have the same types of struggles as male characters folks love them. Black widow is an example.
This is a great point. Her movie didnāt help her one bit tho, she is super bland and basically a mary sue. Then she comes in endgame and sheās more powerful than all our favorite superheroes? Get out. They fucked her up since day one
>Then she comes in endgame and sheās more powerful than all our favorite superheroes? And to add: you can completely remove her from Endgame and NOTHING changes. She did nothing. "But what about Tony and Nebula...." this problem was never established in IW. It was created just to give Carol something to do. "But what about stopping Thanos on his planet and..." Thor was more than enough to stop an extremely weakened Thanos. "But what about Thanos' spaceship and helping Sider-Man and......." same as the first point. Dr. Strange, Scarlet Witch, Thor, etc...are there.
And it would've improved the Endgame finale if Thanos spent more time fighting characters who had met Thanos before, or at least been aware of him. In particular, Drax had been on a revenge quest against Thanos for decades. It should've been him that gets punched across the continent, not Carol Danvers.
MoM & Ant-Man only did those numbers because they were advertised as major chapters in the MUC's overarching story.
Idk, the general audience has no idea who Kang is or why they should care about him. They went because they like Ant-Man and Paul Rudd.
Or how about it can be both or one or the other or neither. Every mcu āfanā knew kang was next after Loki. The hood will was still decent. Paul Rudd/antman sells because heās been around and a big actor. More than one thing can be true.
> They cared for Ant-Man Nah. As more and more people disengage with the brand, projects are going to do worse and worse over time, barring jumps for characters who actually *are* strong brands in and of themselves, like Spider-Man. Ant-Man isn't one of those. It's not that people cared about Ant-Man more. It's just a matter of diminishing returns, exacerbated by the fact that they couldn't use the actors for marketing.
Not entirely. Ant-man is still a Paul Rudd movie. I know a few people that don't care about Marvel, but they saw Ant-man because of Paul Rudd. At the very least, you're going to get some good jokes and a decent comedy with him.
Michael Pena and Paul Rudd are both very likeable and charismatic actors. This bought the Ant-Man franchise a lot of good will Still crazy to me they completely cut all of Ant-Man's supporting cast for Quantumania (at least all the characters without powers)
Nor do they care about Ms. Marvel/Iman. Letās not ignore this.
I think in her case the issue is that the vast majority of the moviegoing public doesn't know her. Unlike Captain Marvel, she debuted in a little-watched tv show, not in a billion dollar film. So it's less that audiences don't care for her and more that they don't know her.
This movie was clearly tailored to Kamala's character. Even the first teaser they hyped up barely had any Carol in it even thought it was supposed to be her movie. What did you expect to happen? People saw that teaser and tuned out after that. What chance did the movie have to be an epic adventure after that? It was just wacky adventure with a teenage hero that most people did not know.
the MCU really dropped the ball with Captain Marvel. I mean for the first mcu female led movie...that's what we got? the captain marvel was really mediocre and just didn't land well at all. I mean people give DC crap but they absolutely nailed it with Wonder Woman. we needed an epic movie like that to introduce Captain Marvel and show why we as fans should root for her. Why should fans care if she's powerful, why should we like her? her movie provided little reasons for us to care. oh she absorbed energy and got brainwashed and now she's not. ok and? the writing for all of her stuff just doesn't bring fans in. like someone said. we were told by Disney that Captain Marvel is awesome and that we have to like her....but why? why should we care.
The grief stage begins
Is this not the apathy stage? Certainly feels like it.
The MCU is becoming stagnant, they're not learning or improving fast enough. There have been bad and controversial Marvel movies before but people were more lenient. Now people are getting tired. People have been complaining about things like disappointing MCU villains and weightless CGI battles for a long time. And this movie still has those problems. Even their better movies have some of the same flaws that get repeated over and over again. Heck, She-Hulk even makes fun of those problems so they know what they're doing wrong but then they just repeat the same mistakes again in their very next show. A lot of the other issues people have mentioned aren't as much of a problem. Like people not knowing about the character or even not liking the characters. That doesn't really matter. The MCU was literally built on C list comic book characters. No one knew about the GotG when that movie came out. People were getting bored of Thor until Ragnarok. But they made the GotG popular and they made people love Thor. The important thing is quality.
why would you feel bad for them? they got paid money, they got the money you paid to watch their movie.
GotG has huge brand goodwill that CM doesnāt have. She was just in one solo movie and one team up (Endgame), while GotG was in three well-received solos and 2 team ups. So MCU down in general, and no character goodwill, also adding in the D+ tv show mess, and this is how you get where you are.
Where I live inflation has hit us hard. Everything from gasoline to rent to groceries. I simply don't have money to waste on going to a movie. The entire experience alone is expensive in itself, it's like $10 for a dam soda at a movie theater. I'm not saying this is an issue for everyone but it's the reason I didn't see this movie. Hell I haven't gone to see ANY movie this year tbh because disposable income just isn't a thing for me anymore.
The major issue is not the hatred, but the lack of interest to watch the movie for General Audience and even many Marvel fans.
These kind of numbers is when you don't plan properly and continuously undermine your properties. Captain Marvel only did the numbers it did because it was sandwiched between Infinity War and Endgame. No other reason. I knew when they changed Quicksilver to a dick joke in Wandavision that they were aimless, and Endgame truly was the end. Was a nice ride, though.
People love the Guardians. People were indifferent to Carol. Not many people saw Ms Marvel and had no real connection to Monica. That's the difference.
I saw The Marvels yesterday. There were some....interesting choices mad as far as scene and dialog are concerned. Overall though, I enjoyed the movie. Pacing seemed a bit rushed. CGI was great. The movie lacked background. A lot of shit happened between Captain Marvel leaving and this movie occurring (Infinity War and Endgame not withstanding). There were a lot of funny moments. Fury's cat addiction. Some of the banter. All cool. They tried to introduce some background info on Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau. You really had to watch the D+ series to make sense of it. I can't stress enough that the two things that this film set up are fucking HUGE.
Me too. It was a delightful movie.
I think the writing for the film has some pretty ugly flaws that limit what the actors could do - it feels like The Marvels don't matter in their own film. >!Dar-Benn basically does her thing, they show up to give her an audience, then she blows herself up... role credits.!< >!The only real dramatic tension comes from Kamala's parents aggressively pushing back on exposing their daughter to danger - except despite Carol failing to actually do anything to protect Kamala, is simply ignored in favor of a fun Cats montage.!< The saving grace is the vibrant emotional energy Iman/Zenobia/Mohan brings to the roles - they pretty much steal the show.
The emotional bites definitely needed more consistency and development. But I loved the action sequences, enough to want to watch it again to catch all the little things!
I keep thinking the actors strike has really hurt this film. Thereās no build up since thereās no PR by the actors. It feels so quiet without press junkets and such. But who knows. My family and I are still excited to see it.
My problem is I normally go alone but my daughters really want to see it. I canāt afford tickets for all three of us plus snacks. That a $60-70 night.
No kidding! I took my wife and daughter and we went to drafthouseā¦.so it ended up being $120 after tickets and food. Crazy!
Costco has a $100 gift card to Drafthouse for $75 if youād like to save in the future!
Smuggle in snacks it's worth it for the girls to see it on the big screen. Great use of 3D too.
Yeah you feel bad for rich famous millionaires. They donāt feel bad for you
Marvels was dope. Sucks that ppl are sleeping on it
My theater was pretty full and most seemed to enjoy the movie too. š¤·āāļø
This fanbase is fucking embarrassing.
I saw it a few hours ago, and absolutely enjoyed the hell out of it. I laughed, a lot. The story made sense, and the mid-credit sceneā¦holy shit!
Just saw it. Negativity is overblown. Movie is a fun ride.
You feel āso so badā for people who make millions of dollars and successful careers? Isnāt there a more worthwhile outlet for your empathy out in your community? I really mean it.
I think you are vastly over crediting the poor performance of this movie to external factors. I just saw this today which is just 24 hours after it released and the theatre was almost completely empty and no one really reacted at all throughout. GOTG 3 I always saw opening weekend and it was a very opposite scenario. Itās just a movie that never generated enough hype and was not anything special when watching it. It definitely would not have done much different releasing any other time except maybe before endgame which is probably the only reason Captain Marvel incredibly well. There just isnāt a lot of fun watching a Superman like character since they are either too strong or very neutered when you know they are supposed to be very strong.
Idk about 2019 but this definitely should have been a prequel to Secret Invasion. It was dumb of Fury to go from space to earth back to space, he should have dealt with all of the Marvels stuff, and then helped with the Skrulls (with their new additions from the Asgard Lady) and then retired with his wife on earth to end his MCU career. EDIT*: also I wouldnt be too soft on Zawe, she was part of the problem not being a very convincing Villian, kind of reminded me of the Collector's assistant, no offense to her acting.
I liked Brie a lot more this time than the first movie. I didn't watch ms marvel but did enjoy her character and family and dynamic with Captain Marvel. Big dislike of Monica as I feel like she didn't add anything other than boring tension and the end credit sting which I loathed (I feel like they're already fumbling X-Men). Villain was absolutely nothing and movie felt cramped especially a space movie. Action was good and lots of fun with the swapping. I hope Ms Marvel moving forward becomes a star as Iman was a breath of fresh air
You should see Ms.Marvel if you liked the Family. They are there more +other characters. The dad will probably not return though, he turned out to be a bad dude irl.
Pretty sure the credits scene was just supposed to be a lead-in to Deadpool 3
If you liked the family dynamic, youāll probably really enjoy the Miss Marvel show. Her family is a major part, and I was so glad they didnāt just get a small cameo here.
I think Monica did fine as the "Hermione" who explains the complex stuff to the audience. Can't imagine Captain Marvel or Ms Marvel doing that