Pre/Early MCU Any Forums times were so comfy...

Pre/Early MCU Any Forums times were so comfy. We had so many theories on what might happen and what stories could unfold. Overall the MCU has been a letdown for me in the sense that none of them characters seem to have many adventures outside of what we see onscreen. Especially the Avengers. They group together a handful of times instead of being a unit that works together often. The only small glimpse we get into a "regular" mission is the opening to Age of Ultron. How has the MCU turned out to you? I'm mostly looking for those of you who have also been here since before Iron Man came out.

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The company wars shittery started when Avengers toppled the Nolan films, the DCEU started underperforming the MCU, culminating in BvS wildly underperforming Civil War.
DCfriends have been damaged ever since, claiming that (WB's own) RT conspires against WB movies, fake box office, sabotage and generally creating a shitty environment to discuss capekino.
The MCU as a whole has been pretty solid, I've seen them all in theaters and Eternals was the only one I regretted. Some are obviously head and shoulders above the other efforts, but I'm looking forward to the Multiversal stuff, it seems off to a good start.

I agree completely. I feel like there's no implication they had any villains we didn't see, and in particular Captain America felt shorted out of his solo efforts. And then they all get celebrated massively and weirdly in-universe.

If you really are old enough to see these all in theatres and not starting as a toddler you'd know there has always been company wars. Do you think people didn't compare Xbox to PS2?

>none of them characters seem to have many adventures outside of what we see onscreen
This feel backwards to me. The MCU usually feels like to much is happening of screen between movies. Every Avengers feels like it starts right after a big timeskip of them doing Avengers stuff, even before endgame literally did that.

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DC dropped the ball on a lot of their movies, but the MCU set the bar really high for them in the public eye. Any movie they put out that wasn't as hype as Avengers was considered a failure, even the decent ones they pulled off. They only tried to do a cinematic universe because everyone expected them to, even when they had no set up or plan for one.

Early MCU isn't as perfect as people as you're making it out to be, a lot of it is bland. Look at Iron Man, outside of the Tony Stark character, the main plot is rather bland and the villain is boring too. Captain America and Thor had a bunch of blandless. Iron Man 2 was a bit of a mess with what it tried to do. And the early cameo of Stark in Incredible Hulk had to be retconned by The Consultant short.

>How has the MCU turned out to you?
Ehhhhh. The general formula is: specific/strong characterisation + weak story/villain + shared universe = success. I cannot fault the strength of Kevin Feige at making money. I like Guardians of the Galaxy even though it was another boring macguffin plot. Guardians of the Galaxy 2 had so much strong character stuff but weakened it with all the humour undercutting everything, every single thing. Sometimes their style gets in the way of itself. The formula still works in general, they change just enough of the background to keep it fresh for normal people.

I am not one of those "sky is falling" types who has to keep talking about super hero fatigue because one of these days it'll be right. That being said I find the new streaming age of these shows to be scary. I haven't minded the Disney+ shows but its like stretching out the blandness. Some interesting hooks like Wandavision were ruined.

I don't think we have reached saturation, most people will choose which things they watch over others. But it certainly feels like there is more just bland stuff ruined by production issues or other things. Falcon and Winter Soldier feels completely ruined by the pandemic and rushed. Eternals didn't know what it really wanted.

I'm pretty bothered that Star Fox was introduced into the MCU after endgame when introducing him in the first 2 GOTG movies or Infinity War. Like he's Thanos brother

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it is implied the secret avengers had missions together

Iron man 1 was so good

>Look at Iron Man, outside of the Tony Stark character, the main plot is rather bland and the villain is boring too.
Yes, but if you can absolutely sell the main character, he's fun and charismatic and everyone cheers for his victory, then you've won.
Now you have a franchise, you can spin off movies and make crazy money.
Having some scenery-chewing villain is FINE and all, but it does not sell a franchise to the masses.
Unless the villain is going to be a near-constant, then you can keep the franchise rolling with a super charismatic villain, See: Hiddleston Loki.

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Also, Obidiah Stane is a great villain, Iron Monger is not very great, and used too briefly.

>The only small glimpse we get into a "regular" mission is the opening to Age of Ultron.
You seem to be forgetting the beginning of Civil War.

Well yeah no shit. I literally stated this in my post when it came to the formula they are using. I know it works and sells and changes just enough to keep it working.

I suppose I just want something a bit more or different, which obviously they won't do.

The very core of a superhero movie is a charismatic audience favorite hero. They'd be stupid to deviate from that. And when they combine a mess of them, they literally print billions of dollars. Don't fix what ain't broke.

They are going to have their hands full selling the F4 to audiences after all the misfires (I have confidence here) and re-introducing the X-Men in some fresh way. They have plenty of solid villains, some still around from old movies, and plenty of others relatively unexplored.

Really their biggest challenge is somehow realizing the heroes that don't really function in a PG-13 environment.

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>The very core of a superhero movie is a charismatic audience favorite hero. They'd be stupid to deviate from that. And when they combine a mess of them, they literally print billions of dollars. Don't fix what ain't broke.
I feel like you've misunderstood what I am saying. I am not talking about getting rid of that main core, rather that a lot of the stuff around it has grown to be uninteresting and that they could try harder or something different. As opposed to something like Wandavision that tried something and deviated back to a similar pattern.

You seem to think I want to get rid of the fundamentals here. I fully understand why they do what they do but hey, some of these shows/movies could be far better.

It's mostly disappointing how they refuse to recast actors even though no one had any problems with the initial two. Captain America in particular should not be done in the MCU just because Evans was done. Black Panther 2 was one of the few phase 4 movies I was looking going to see in theaters and now I'm not watching it either

The only real miscalculation I think is that some movies should have been shows (Black Widow, Eternals) and some shows should have been movies (Loki).
There should have been Black Widow series in parallel to the Hawkeye one, coming first, and exploring Budapest, her childhood, her Russian family, the Red Room and then culminated in the events of the movie.
I wouldn't mind some off-beat stuff (I feel Moon Knight may well be) or some horror stuff (Blade and Ghost Rider and so forth) and some Heroic Nuclear Family adventures with F4 in the Incredibles vein.

It is truly amazing how weak some of the villains are. Some of them I honestly can't remember, or even if I can kinda remember what they looked like, I don't remember their plan other than "do some evil".

I don't want pure villain (OK, antihero) movies like Sony is doing, just some more memorable villain characters.

Also I do think we're getting pretty close to saturation. It's fun to see some Z-listers like the Guardians get turned into something watchable (for one movie, at least), but how long can that sustain itself?

I think we've had a good run and seen some of these characters realized far more successfully than could be reasonably expected. And I would for them to keep making cape movies.

Maybe just not so many of them. Spread the money around and create some room for other content, specifically stuff not based on old stories written for children.

Marvel has some weak villains
Sony has some weak villains
Fox had some TERRIBLE villains
WB had underwhelming to awful villains.
The difference is that Disney didn't lean on the villainry too hard.
And the MCU had plenty of great and memorable villains.
Fox relied almost exclusively on Magneto, with few other memorable villains like Stryker.

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Feel like I'm in the minority here, but I like that they're not recasting major roles. I like that the characters get proper endings to their stories and we move on to new stuff.

I remember being skeptical as fuck. Iron Man seemed like such a weird choice. And I really liked Hulk but it sucked at the box office if I remember right. But It was a huge surprise, Iron Man was great. Thor was great, I got so hyped for Hawkeye (and it only took until last year for him to get a solo project, with his replacement). It was all fairly solid mostly. Some disappointments but nothing that just really bothered me. Except for Loki, By Thor 2 which was bad for a lot of reasons I was kind of sick of Loki. And I think what i hated about Loki is what bothers me about Marvel now. They're coasting on popularity, they're coasting on perceived public opinion about everything. About the tone of the movies and the content all being connected. 1st phase Marvel movies, most of them could stand on their own and it was cool that it was shared but they had their own bubbles. Now, it really is You need to see the show and the last 3 movies to understand what's going on.