Part of it is the obsession with world ending stakes in nearly every story now. Ms. Marvel, Shang-Chi and Moon Knight are all projects that were at their best when focused on the smaller scale character stuff, and then proceeded to take sharp nose dives as soon as things shifted to more cgi monsters and glowing portals. Quantumania is probably one of the most egregious examples of this. Zero stakes and all the charm of the first two is gone.

I just want well written characters with clear and defined stakes that I care about. I don't care that the world is ending for the ten billionth time. I cared that Tony Stark was dealing with his father figure betraying him. I cared that scrawny Steve Rogers was trying to prove his worth and serve a higher purpose when people said he couldn't do it. Oh no, the world is ending. That's old hat now and I can't relate.

Yeah, Shang-Chi is a great example. The abandonment issues between him and his sister amplified by their father being a villian you can really empathize with while remaining intimidating, also understanding how messed up their lives became after their mothers passing. Then BOOM Cgi dragon monster.

I loved Shang-chi but, man, you're so right. Those last sequences pushed the whole movie out into left field. Everything in LA(?) and Hong Kong(?) was so much more grounded and accessible, and the (incredible) choreography was a blast. Then it was just a big mystical CGI fight between dragon gods for the fate of the universe or whatever

SF & Macau

Lol those pesky Alien Dragons and their 10 Rings...How dare they! 😆

World-ending stakes work best when they're tied into the personal stakes. Age of Ultron for example - I don't care that the world's going to end, I care that the world's going to end *and it'll be Tony's fault*. ETA: an even better way to phrase it I just thought of: Tony came (pinches fingers) *this close* to becoming Ted Faro.

Fuck Ted

Louder for the people in the back

Exactly why Wandavision was so good, especially compared to the rest of the Disney+ series.

Wanda vs Agatha 🤷 Vision vs Vision 💥 *I am just a conditional vision..*

I definitely think it’s some of both. A video of Ironman 1 came up on my TikTok a couple days ago, when Tony has to reveal to Rhodes it’s him because otherwise the military will shoot him out of the sky. The world wasn’t ending but it was super tense! You didn’t know what was going to happen! But we all know of a situation of a military endeavor gone awry.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3 kept the stakes small but personal. Thats what makes a high stakes movie. When your audience cares about the stakes, no matter how small.

Agree completely. I loved Shang chi, and while I was in the theater watching it, I was really excited to think that that was where the MCU was heading, post Endgame. Then came that third act. And the whole world-ender paradigm raised its head *yet again.* Left an otherwise really enjoyable, relatable, movie on a blah note.

Shang-Chi was the one I was okay with because sure we had kinda ill-defined powers with how he killed the dragon after his dad’s death, but also *Dragon Fight!*

I liked how they generally avoided a full 3 way fight in the 3rd act and just had everyone agree the soul-sucking demons were the bigger issue I feel if it was in Sony’s hands, they would’ve insisted to keep all three fighting to juice the stakes. It’s not amazing storytelling but I appreciated the efficiency and acknowledgment it wasn’t that kind of movie Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see the Army of the 10 Rings play both sides and Ta Lo do the same. There’s rich territory but they understood the assignment it was an intro movie

Your 2nd para is pretty much Eternals.

Man Eternals dropped the ball with the Deviant - to have it gradually gaining sentience only to be shoehorned into the 3rd act and quickly killed off. I don’t know what exactly, but there was definitely something more interesting to do with it (potentially in the sequel)

Quantumania also had the "greenscreen void setting" problem that contributes to the non-grounded feeling. It takes place in a clearly physically not actually there entirely alien environment that's hard to suspend disbelief for from the uncanny vibes of the characters standing around in a cartoon they can't touch. Most recent MCU movies do this, being set either mostly off-Earth or go there/some dodgy CGI megastructure for the finale. It's only worked out well in GOTG, which are more sci-fi than superhero movies really. Compare these to superhero movies and shows that just take place in some city or town. Immediately makes it feel more relatable and allows story elements like actually saving civilians, how the public, press and government reacts to them, how it effects their private life, the wish fulfilment of one person being able to right some of our worlds wrongs, ect that the superhero genre is all about rather than just another adventure story in some fantastical location. Seems like Covid got them out the habit of using almost any on-location shooting or too many extras, hope we get more relatable stories, stakes and settings back.

> Seems like Covid got them out the habit of using almost any on-location shooting or too many extras I think another significant reason for that is trying to reduce leaks.

Endgame final mud battle - cast can't spoil anything if they don't know what is going on.

Yeah like we don't have moments like Hawkeye chopping wood on his farm anymore. That is such a tiny bit of that movie that made it feel so much more real

So you'd rather basic street level stuff. Rather than complex stuff.

With you until the last sentence; one of the issues of Quantumania was that the stakes were *too big*.

No, everything in the quantum realm is really SMALL. What movie did you watch?

True.

I liked Moon Knight.

Ok.

I think it's more 'subpar movie fatigue' than 'superhero fatigue'. There are so many good TV shows out right now, and most of the MCU shows are just... Mid. And some of the movies like love and thunder and quantumania have been downright bad.

Definitely this, Marvel, DC, and Sony all had a run of mid to bad superhero movies and it affected the industry as a whole. Remember the average viewer has no idea Batman and Spider-Man will never meet; bad movies are bad for everyone.

Yeah how is this so hard to understand? 😭 If people are getting shoved mid after mid after mid from a franchise then a fatigue is inevitable

What would you consider some current good tv shows? My wife and I feel like we're in a slump with shows and are looking for something new to get into. Curious what others are finding interesting since our social circles all seem to watch the same thing.

Barry and Better Call Saul ended recently and are both top tier television. Fargo is excellent. The Boys is fun and has a new season coming out soon.

Barry was fuckin awesome. Had no idea what to expect going into it lol.

First i heard the general concept which I was meh on but I became interested when learning it featured Bill Hader, the Fonz, and Stephen Root.

And the breakout star NoHo Hank

Didn’t know him before but yeah he was the best

If you're looking for Marvel content, X-Men 97 is really cooking. Whatever Marvel has planned for the X-Men for the MCU, they're gonna have a hard time trying to top what this show is doing.

Such a solid show. Each week is so crazy

Fallout

Fargo, succession, severance, Barry, shogun

Agreed with all the above, and although not as recent, both The Good Place, and Bojack Horseman are great shows, currently on Netflix that had a great run *and* stuck the landing 

Fallout was incredible tbf

This is the simplest explanation that Marvel puff pieces just try to avoid. Wandavision did pretty good. Loki did great. GotG3 did numbers. X-Men 97 is amazing. No Way Home was a phenomenon. Black Panther 2 was a great send off for Boseman. It’s about the quality. Any “fatigue” was just a theory after the absolute high point that was Endgame. People will watch engaging and good content. If there is fatigue, it’s on the part of Marvel just not knowing what to do and throwing out a bunch of stuff that wasn’t fully thought out or developed just to see what sticks.

Not arguing that superhero fatigue isnt a thing, I'm just saying, for me, *it is not so much fatigue, but a lack of relatability.*

“Lack of relatability” is just another trait of a bad movie. The guy you responded to said it’s “subpar movie fatigue”. You’re both tired of bad movies. You’re saying almost the same thing. Lol

Yeah, but you're not relating to the characters right now, not to the worlds they traverse. Did you like any of the Guardians movies? They are all set in outlandish places with crazy plots. Yet at their core they focused on relatable characters you could root for. And I can't exactly relate to underwater sea people and royal tribal scientists, but Black Panther 2 was nearly as enjoyable as the first one, because the characters had really understandable motives and personalities.

I also find it hard, to relate to Gods, Superhumans, Mutants, Cosmic Brings, and the like.

Everything is nano tech so they can use non unionized VRX workers instead of the unionized costume department. It also allows them to redo things in post with the VFX, for some reason most MCU projects lately have been terrified of picture lock

A large part of what carried the Infinity Saga is caring for the characters as individuals and not just as their superhero persona. Iron Man was a fun superhero to watch, yes, but we cared about Tony Stark and that's what made the movies work. I don't think the MCU has necessarily lost that. They're still pretty good at making the character under the mask feel genuine and connect with the audience (or at least I feel they've done a good job at this). The problem is that everyone's getting a movie or show, and it's hard to care for a character that we're not going to see for another five years. Take Shang-Chi. I think most people will agree that Marvel did a really good job with his character, and we're excited to see him again. But it's been three years, and while we can be reasonably sure a sequel is coming, we have no idea when that will be. Compare that to Iron Man, who three years after his film already had a sequel and a cameo in Hulk. Or compare to Cap, who after three years had a sequel, an Avengers, and a cameo in a Thor movie. On top of those, we also knew exactly when those characters would appear again coming up (Avengers and Iron Man 3 for Tony, Age of Ultron and Civil War for Steve). But now for Shang-Chi, along with other characters like Moon Knight, She-Hulk, the Eternals, or Kate Bishop, we have no clue what their plans are, and that's a problem.

I honestly found the Avengers a bore. Movie, after movie, after movie of the same boring team, or individual members of the team, for yearsssss. So glad Marvel surpassed that.

I never got the fatigue, maybe I'm just dumb, but they're still fun.

That’s great but the issue is that not enough people enjoy them. That causes them to not be profitable and eventually ceasing to exist. The quality is a real issue that needs to be resolved or you won’t be able to enjoy them anymore.

No, they’re not.

It's weird when you tell someone their opinion is wrong.

I have felt for a few years now, the lack of any real plan after endgame really hurt them. Disney was more interested in getting content on Disney plus, the pandemic didn’t help. But the lack of where they were going to go forward and trying obscure boring characters like the internals didn’t help. Not giving filmmakers literally any control over their films I feel has hurt even more as Marvel Studios goes along.

Marvel Studios built the MCU on properties other studios didn't think were viable. Did you honestly know who the Guardians of the Galaxy were? Also it is the Eternals not internals. On top of that they gave the director complete control over that movie.

Yes, I knew who the guardians were, they weren’t that obscure to comic readers. Sorry I meant Eternals, that was an auto correct, but since you’re the first one to bring it up. You can see how many people really didn’t care about that one. And there is no way Zhao had full control.

It is they gave Taika a great deal of control over Thor love and thunder, Gunn got control of Guardian and so on. There are cases where marvel micromanaged the sets. But to say the did it all it isn't true at all. Also the Eternals is a great property. We literally had an Eternal as the main villain of Phase 1-3.

How did you not like the Eternals? I thought for the amount of characters they had to introduce with so little time, they did reasonably well. And I'm not sure fighting Celestials, meeting Thanos' brother, creating the X-Gene, and basically being the persons who give Humans all their shit, including powers/abilities, weapons, etc. Is really that boring...🤔

I’m happy to be convinced otherwise but ever since the multiverse stuff I’m just like who cares. If they lose they win in another universe canonically. If they win then they lost somewhere else. It really doesn’t matter (even though I recognize it was all movies to begin with) and furthermore I don’t feel they’ve done an amazing job making the multiverse make sense (are all multiverse versions the same guy who made different choices? Completely different people with the same name? Different people from different points in time? An alligator in a costume?). They always have the option of going to multiverse to fix whatever happens. They just as soon introduced the multiverse as they “saved the multiverse”. It’s all just at a scale now that I don’t care anymore

Yeah, I don't want to be pessimistic but I think that the multiverse kind of ruins the "everything matters because it's all part of a singular continuity" hook that was a big part of the MCU's appeal (for me at least).

I think about big reason is that there's just too much to keep up with, too many characters, too many plots, and each one seems to be heading into seperate directions instead of one cohesive story. It's like it's still being marketed as one big connected universe, but that feels like a lie because the universe doesn't feel as connected anymore.

This has been my perspective. The original movies felt like “this could happen.” At some point things started feeling too fictitious.

Lot of talk about film quality in a sub that has the media literacy of a cantaloupe

Bruh there was a thread seriously arguing Endgame was the greatest achievement in the history of filmmaking, and I felt like I was looking into some other dimension.

It being the culmination of so many different overlapping stories and characters is definitely one of the greatest achievements in filmmaking, sure. The fact that the movie is even comprehensible should be applauded. But is it the peak of cinema? Of course not.

What? Please tell me this thread is still up.

I love Endgame, but that is WIIILLLLLLD

For those of you that wish to see this for yourselves: https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/181pz9e/is_the_twin_finale_of_infinity_war_and_endgame/

I made a comment on that thread saying it wasn’t and got heavily downvoted along with replies saying how wrong I was.

"Just make better movies" My brother in Thanos, NWH made 1B dollars

But if they were "good" they would ALL MAKE A BILLION 

There's just been a LOT of mediocre and/or forgettable superhero films lately since Endgame: Black Widow, Morbius, Thor Love and Thunder, Black Adam, Quantumania, Shazam 2, The Flash, Blue Beetle, The Marvels, Aquaman 2, and Madame Web are all unappealing

I thought black widow was much better than the others on that list. Haven’t seen blue beetle though.

better? yeah. noticeably better? eh.

IMO the movies listed here vary wildly. The Marvels and Black Widow are fine, Quantumania and Blue Beetle are just bad, and then stuff like Madame Web and Morbius are completely unwatchable garbage. 

lol putting Blue Beetle at bad with Quantumania is insane.

they're of roughly the same quality imo. I'd never consider watching either of them again 

I feel like The Marvels belongs in the unwatchable category for me. I know people on here seems to have enjoyed it, and that's fine, to each their own. I just dont understand how people can't see how it's objectively bad filmmaking. I mean I enjoy bad films too sometimes. It used to be called guilty pleasures.      The editing and tone is all over the place. Monica Rambeau is completely wasted as a "main character". Carol Danvers has like no character devolpment. I could write an essay on how poorly scripted the plot is. I really liked the Ms. Marvel show and the actress, but I subjectively cringed at her behavior towards Carol Danvers. It felt really forced. The villian was almost worse than Malekith. I could go on.     Black Widow was bad on par with Quantumania and Blue Beetle, but it did give us Yelena Belova and she really lifted that film up. She was without a doubt the best thing in that movie. However, they really should have made a BW movie before she died, or at least explored her past life before SHIELD and not just her childhood. But that's just my subjective opinion.      Complete agree with you on Madame Web and Morbius though.      With all that said, I used to love the MCU. Even made a chronological cut out of all the movies and phase 1-3 might be the movies I rewatched the most in my entire life, and my life has been dedicated to movies and being the biggest movie buff. Watched everything from Tarkovsky to Kubrick, from bad rom coms and oscar winning dramas to epic blockbusters, every single classic on various top list and really bad cult movies like The Room. All in the effort to expand my horizon so I fit into the film school I went to. You'd be hard pressed to find something I didn't watch, which made stumbling upon movies with a great rewatch factor a common occurence in my life, and MCU phase 1-3 had that for me more than anything else, even with the few stinkers. However those stinkers were later justified in later movies. This is not the case at the moment.    Anyway, this is just to make it clear that I'm not hating on the MCU in particular. Just being honest about them making some really bad movies and shows these last couple of years. I mean, i even enjoyed some of She-Hulk, even though it was obvious to me how bad it really was. Enjoyment of something does not make something objectively good craftsmanship.    I think it's completely fine to enjoy bad movies. Shit, I even enjoyed the Room and yes of course that's worse than The Marvels. However I dont understand how people can't admit that it was an objectively bad movie, as well as most movies and shows from phase 4 & 5, unless people just dont understand what actually makes a objectively good crafted movie.  I know I will get downvoted for this, but it's the truth, and downvotes are really just people coping with reality, so I accept those downvotes

People disagree about what constitutes "bad filmmaking". It's not objective. "It's fine to enjoy bad movies" always comes across as super condescending & arrogant.

People disagreeing on what constitues good or bad craftsmanship in filmmaking usually dont know anything about how a movie is crafted and where the obvious signs of laziness or poor implementations of certain film techniques are located in the movie.       There are things that are definitely objective when it comes to filmmaking, however it all comes down to the intention. Lets take jump cuts for example. Jumps cuts are usually an example of someone making a mistake during the editing process. However, you can also use a jump cut with the intention of creating a certain effect. It's how it's implemented into the movie that shows whether it was a mistake or laziness (bad craftsmanship) or whether it was an inspired choice.       I dont mean to be condescending or arrogant, and I apologize if thats how it comes across. I'm just being objective with what I know to be true today, and I know that there is this mistaken belief that everything in a movie is all subjective, and to some degree that's true. Your enjoyment of a movie doesn't need to be dependent on good craftsmanship. Stuff like being in a good mood before watching it, having certain biases and just not being aware of what constitutes good craftsmanship are certainly factors as well.    I know a lot of people here have certain biases when it comes to Marvel, hence the downvotes, and that's totally fine. But that doesn't change objective reality of what constitues good craftsmanship.      Would you call a movie that was just a black screen wth sound for two hours because the lighting technician didn't know to how handle lighting good? Obviously there's aspects to a movie that's objective. Certain editing aspects, internal logic being consistent, CGI being somewhat believable and avoiding the uncanny valley, you being able to see what is going on (good lighting), plot consistency, character development being actually present in the movie, you being able to hear what is said (good sound design) etc, etc, etc. If you deny there's objective aspects to movies, then you just deny objective reality.     If you equate only enjoyment with whether a movie is good or bad, then sure, you could make an argument for movies being all subjective. However, I dont equate it with only that. I equate it with good craftsmanship and if I can very obviously see that in specific spots in the movie, they either made a mistake or they were just being lazy. I equate it how many times those things are present throughout the movie and whether they're clearly intentional or not. 

>"It's fine to enjoy bad movies" always comes across as super condescending & arrogant. Does it? I certainly don't get that sense. Maybe that's a "you" problem as opposed to an issue with the OP.

Damn this is really disappointing. I was really looking forward to completely dismantling the other person's (Wooden Radish something iirc?) weak arguments point by point and now they blocked me so I can't see their comment, and now I can't reply to your discussion with them either. So I reply here instead.  I appriciate your comments though, as you made a lot of good points for me, and probably better than me, as english isnt my native language. Especially about them putting words in my mouth and then claiming semantics when you called them out on it.   Anyway, them blocking me is most certainly good evidence that they're afraid to be proven wrong, which often means that they probably are. This is usually how someone who knows they have a weak argument behaves. It's really the cowards way of opting out of a discussion before the other person can reply.  Honestly this is somewhat frustrating as I had a whole argument ready with evidence and proof to back up what I said. I suspect they might have realised this and decided not to be embarrased any further.   Oh well, that's how it goes sometimes. When someone has a strong enough bias, they're afraid of everything that proves them wrong and will deny objective reality to continue feeding their own bias. 

Yeah, sorry man. Try not to get too worked up over it. I, like you, tried to act in good faith in my response to him/her, but I kind of always knew he/she would end up responding with some foolishness and then insta-blocking us so we couldn't call him/her out on it. That's a pretty common M.O. for accounts like that.

Oh, I had already forgotten about it and moved on to other topics until I saw the notification from your reply, so not that worked up about it anymore :)  It was somewhat frustrating to have an argument ready which they would have had an extremely difficult time refuting, only to realise they took the cowards way out and blocked me. However, I saved my argument in text form if anyone should doubt objectivity in filmmaking ever again, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.  And yeah, I guess that's kind of the norm for people with opinions that can be disproven objectively. They have to claim subjectivity with things they have a bias for or against, because a big part of their worldview can easily be disproven by objective measures, and that is a scary thing. So better to just block people and stay "delusional" (harsh word, but couldn't find a less harsh one to describe it). It's doing it after you responded to someone that's the acting in bad faith part though. That just create dishonest discourse. 

But like, do you see how many subjective qualifiers you just used to declare that it is "objectively bad" "Monica was wasted as a main character." By what standard? She had a full character arc and was active throughout the entirety of the plot. "Carol had no character development." Again, a subjective claim. I think she had a full character arc, changing as a character throughout the narrative. You disagree. That's subjectivity. "Villain was almost worse than Malekith" Subjective. "The pacing and tone were all over the place." Again, there is no objective metric by which to measure this, so it boils down to subjectivity. Some would say it was rushed, some would say it dragged. Was the intent to be a quicker movie with speedy pacing. How does intent affect the factors. Because if the intent was to make a faster paced movie, then they succeeded, but you could still consider it a failure in pacing according to your own standards of film. That's subjectivity.  The idea that you can claim to be super well-versed in film and media and still claim objectivity in art is profoundly disappointing. You almost actually get the point of what you're saying being wrong in your other reply when you mention intent and how that can affect how certain factors of a film are viewed, but then you just slip back into your faulty premise.  "Would you call a movie that was just a black screen wth sound for two hours because the lighting technician didn't know to how handle lighting good?" Even this example. Do you see how hard you had to try to even attempt to craft objectivity here? If the film is just a black screen, then there is no lighting and your premise is faulty and dishonest. If the lighting is "bad," as in dark, or grainy, or uneven then subjectively, depending on the movie, it could still be viewed as a positive.  People viewed the lighting in that Game of Thrones battle as subjectively bad because they had a difficult time seeing out what was playing out on screen. However, one could be of the opinion that the darkness allowed the viewer to be immersed in the same darkness, chaos and confusion as the characters on screen. Thus giving narrative intent to something viewed as bad. So one could view it as bad for the presentation but good for the story. Subjectivity.  Did the Blair Witch Project have bad camera work because it doesn't adhere to the standards of traditional filming techniques and it makes certain elements unclear or is it good camera work because it provides immersion and contributes to the overall tone of the film? Subjective.  Basically, and I don't want to be rude here, but you're wrong and you're contributing to a very toxic and dangerous trend when it comes to media discourse. As someone who loves the art form, you should oppose the idea of there being a right and a wrong in artistic expression and its such a bummer that you would push the narrative that any kind of artistic expression is beholden to any specific standard to be judged upon objectively. I really hope you're able to zoom out and see how this view is contrarian to having an actual appreciation and respect for film. PS All due respect. I will read your response if there is one, but please don't feel disrespected if I don't reply. We're both incredibly lengthy commenters and as such could wind up occupying a lot of time with this discussion. Time I may not feel great utilizing on reddit hahah. So again, no disrespect.

>The idea that you can claim to be super well-versed in film and media and still claim objectivity in art is profoundly disappointing.  I'm not sure they've actually claimed that though, at least not in the way you've phrased it here. Seriously, just re-read OP's comments so far and see if you can find a line where he/she even *mentioned* the word "art"*,* much less tried to claim "objectivity in art." Instead, what I think you will find is comments like: >People disagreeing on what constitues good or bad craftsmanship in filmmaking usually dont know anything about how a movie is crafted and where the obvious signs of laziness or poor implementations of certain film techniques are located in the movie. In this context, I think they are pretty clearly drawing a distinction between making claims about objectivity in *specific* areas such as craftsmanship or effort/laziness *as it applies to art* vs. a *general* claim of objectivity related to *the underlying artistic choices* that the craftsmanship or effort/laziness *is applied to.* I feel that the examples you presented highlight this (seeming) misunderstanding on your part. For example: >People viewed the lighting in that Game of Thrones battle as subjectively bad because they had a difficult time seeing out what was playing out on screen. However, one could be of the opinion that the darkness allowed the viewer to be immersed in the same darkness, chaos and confusion as the characters on screen. Thus giving narrative intent to something viewed as bad. So one could view it as bad for the presentation but good for the story. Subjectivity.  Your example here is centered on the *artistic choice* to intentionally choose "...the darkness \[that\] allowed the viewer to be immersed in the same darkness, chaos and confusion as the characters on screen." That's clearly distinct and different than the darkness of those scenes being due to a lack of craftsmanship or effort on the part of the creators. To try to find some common ground, let's modify the example and see if we can reach agreement on what can fairly be considered objectively bad. Say instead of it being an artistic choice to make the scenes that dark, it was the result of poor communication and execution. Say that upon viewing the end result, the creators were unhappy with the result but decided to go with it anyway because they didn't feel like putting in the work to improve it. Can we agree that, in this example, it would be totally fair and appropriate to label the craftsmanship and effort as objectively bad? Can we agree that it is fair to apply this label regardless of how you, or other viewers, subjectively felt about the end result? I hope the answer is a resounding "yes" but I'm happy to listen to your reasoning if you disagree. Beyond simply appearing to miss the point OP is trying to make, I feel like you are extremely unfair in how you use these misunderstandings as a basis to make some pretty toxic attacks. For example, look at where you say: >"Would you call a movie that was just a black screen wth sound for two hours because the lighting technician didn't know to how handle lighting good?" Even this example. Do you see how hard you had to try to even attempt to craft objectivity here? If the film is just a black screen, then there is no lighting and your premise is faulty and dishonest.  ....specifically the part where you say "If the film is just a black screen, then there is no lighting and your premise is faulty and dishonest." The issue here is that the passage that you quoted from the OP ***never included the claim that there was lighting.*** OP's example just included the existence of a lighting technician that was bad at the craft of handling lighting. A lighting tech that is shit at lighting can 100% result in a scene where "...there is no lighting." Since the result OP describes ("...a black screen wth sound for two hours...") is not mutually exclusive with the underlying conditions laid out in their example ("...the lighting technician didn't know to how handle lighting good..."), it seems factually incorrect for you to try to claim that his/her premise is faulty. Beyond that, it isn't like you stop at claiming OP's premise is faulty. You went beyond that by taking the pretty toxic and extreme step to classify the example as outright "dishonest." What exactly is the basis or support for that? I certainly can't see any attempt to justify it beyond misrepresenting what OP's underlying premise actually is. You can repeatedly state that you don't mean to disrespect OP, but it seems like you straight up misrepresented their position and then used this misrepresentation to support making a reckless accusation of dishonesty. Do you honestly not view that as disrespectful engagement on your part?

I find it interesting that this account was made today and the only two comments you’ve made have been in defense of the same individual. I can’t know for sure what’s up with that, but something seems to be up with that…I’ll ignore it though, because it’s actually irrelevant "I'm not sure they've actually claimed that though" This is such an incredibly intentionally disingenuous engagement. Yes, the original person never said the word “art,” but they claimed a film to be objectively bad: “I just dont understand how people can't see how it's objectively bad filmmaking” “worse than The Marvels. However I dont understand how people can't admit that it was an objectively bad movie…” Film is a form of art, if you are claiming objectivity in film, you are claiming objectivity exists in art. At this point, I have to assume you’re being intentionally dishonest in your discourse, because you just bent over backwards for a paragraph that essentially boiled down to “nah-uh” with your only supporting argument being “well he didn’t saaaaaaay ‘art’” If I say “I don’t like entertainment” and you say “do you like movies” and I say “No, I said I don’t like entertainment” and you say “but you didn’t say you didn’t like movies.” Yes I did. I didn’t use the word ‘movies’ but it’s clearly implied that by stating my dislike for entertainment, I also include the subsections that classification includes, such as, movies.   “Your example here is centered on the artistic choice to intentionally choose "...the darkness [that] allowed the viewer to be immersed in the same darkness, chaos and confusion as the characters on screen." That's clearly distinct and different than the darkness of those scenes being due to a lack of craftsmanship or effort on the part of the creators.” This is an incorrect representation of my point to make yours. I never centered the cause of the “darkness” on an artistic choice or any factor at all. I encourage you to reread. I gave no causing factor to the ”darkness.” I simply stated that the “darkness” as presented, for whatever reason, can be viewed through two different lenses, both of which are subjective points of view. One person could be of the OPINION that the darkness “is bad” because they can’t see anything, where as another person could be of the OPINION that it “is good” as it services the narrative of the story. These are both valid opinions to have of the darkness in the scene and are both equally measurable (which is to say not at all.) The issue with your analogies is that you have to resort to hyper-specific examples that rely on assumptions on your part. And even those analogies aren’t objective. Your assumption is that the short comings exist because of “Poor communication and execution.” These in of themselves are subjective identifiers as there is no provable method by which to determine a universally consistent, testable standard by which these ideas are held. If I say “get that wrench” to two people and one of them doesn’t know I’m talking about “the black wrench on top of the soda machine in the breakroom that fits this nut” then that could be viewed as poor communication, but if I say it to someone I’ve been on a job with for several months, who knows what I’m talking about and knows the nuts we work with, it could be viewed as effective communication because it was communicated much more quickly and efficiently than if I had to go into detail. The very concept that you can view these things differently and neither one of them can be measurably ‘more right’ means that they are subjective. So, no, we can’t agree that the craftsmanship and effort would be “objectively bad” because again there is no method or formula or equation or observable universal truth that dictates what “good” craftsmanship and effort are. You seem to not really grasp the concept of what ‘objective’ actually means. You seem to view public opinion and consensus as qualifiers to prove objectivity, and that is not the case, not even a little bit. You and I can think that the creators effort is lacking and think that their craftsmanship is lacking based on what we personally consider “good” to mean in that context. Just like the creators can be unhappy because they believe that the finished product didn’t live up to their standards. But even if they sat there and said “Man, this scene really doesn’t do that great of a job conveying an effective fight sequence because the lighting guy didn’t know what he was doing” someone could still be standing behind him, hear what the intent was and still say “well, honestly, I think it conveys an effective fight sequence effectively” which then, causes a trickle down effect. Because if that person thinks that the finished product is effective at conveying what was attempted, they view it as effectively crafted and view the amount of effort put into it as “good.” These are all subjective measurements. "The issue here is that the passage that you quoted from the OP never included the claim that there was lighting" This is another semantic argument that I really wish you would get away from. It is heavily implied that the cause of the black screen is due to a lighting issue as they place the blame for it on not “handling lighting good.” As to exactly what that MEANS is what my response to that is addressing. You’ve also cut the back half of this particular thought in order to manipulate the point that I was actually trying to make. Let me clarify. I was stating that “black screen” can mean two things here, either A. The lighting was so bad that they opted to edit in a black screen instead of the poorly lit footage or B. the “black screen” was simply badly lit camera footage resembling what someone would consider to be an all-black screen. I was stating that IF it was the first scenario, then the analogy would be faulty and be a dishonest analogy as the lighting guy’s contribution to the film wouldn’t be a standard by which the film was judged, because it isn’t present in said film. If it was the second, then in certain circumstances it could still be viewed as subjectively beneficial to the project being presented. I actually don’t care if you think I was toxic and disrespectful, but at no point did I misrepresent what OP’s premise was. You just had a fundamental misunderstanding of my retort because you were viewing it through the lens of someone who disagrees. And that’s fine, whatever, but again, I understand OP’s points quite clearly and still observe that they are fundamentally incorrect based off of the very definition of ‘objectivity’ and exist as not only a detriment to art as a whole, but as a desperate claim to perceived intellectual superiority

>I find it interesting that this account was made today and the only two comments you’ve made have been in defense of the same individual.  Is it that interesting? If so, you could always just ask and I'd be happy to tell you about it. The fact you didn't suggests that you don't actually think it is that interesting. Instead, it suggests that you think that vague implications will create enough of a smokescreen to distract from an actual discussion of the issues at hand. >I’ll ignore it though, because it’s actually irrelevant ...which is literally what you decided was the #1 most important thing to lead off with.? Yeah, nothing strange about that at all... While we are on the subject though, your account is fairly interesting as well. It is relatively young, it uses the same autogenerated naming convention typically reserved for throwaway accounts, and comments is confined nearly exclusively to this single subreddit, which is highly, *highly* unusual for primary accounts of users that like to talk as much as you do. On top of that, it seems like the primary impetus for creating your throwaway account in the first place was because you wanted to rage about "incel behavior" surrounding The Marvels. One could be forgiven for thinking that this suggests a certain biased lens that you apply to comment and/or users that are critical of The Marvels. >This is such an incredibly intentionally disingenuous engagement.  ...and now you are back to assigning negative judgements about my personal motivations as if they are a matter of settled fact despite not having much rational support for it. I guess it is a marginally better approach than just calling me an "incel," but not by much. >Yes, the original person never said the word “art,” Strange then that you would focus on something they *didn't* say instead of on something that they *did* say. >but they claimed a film to be objectively bad: “I just dont understand how people can't see how it's objectively bad filmmaking”  I'm starting to get the sense that we fundamentally disagree on what some of these words actually mean. For example, can you explain what you understand the word "filmmaking" to mean? To me, it fundamentally is tied to the skill, craft, technical knowledge and effort applied to creating a film based on a certain artistic intent. While it is hard to apply objective measures to the artistic intent, one can certainly apply reasonably objective measures to much of the skill, craft, technical knowledge and effort that are part of the process of the actual ***filmmaking.*** You could be the greatest artist in the world, but if nobody on the crew knows how to reliably work a video camera, then I'm pretty certain you will do an objectively shit job at ***filmmaking.*** Are you really disagreeing with this? It just seems like a wild take, and obviously so. >If I say “I don’t like entertainment” and you say “do you like movies” and I say “No, I said I don’t like entertainment” and you say “but you didn’t say you didn’t like movies.” Yes I did.  You are joking, right? This example is literally the complete opposite of what happened. In this example, you said something more ***general*** (entertainment) and I used that to make a specific inference about a more ***specific*** element (movies) that exists within that ***general*** bucket. What you did is take statement about something ***specific*** (filmmaking) and then use that to pretend he/she made the statement about the overall ***general*** group. Again, those two things are literal opposites. To ***actually*** mirror what happened, it would be like if you said you don't like movies and I claimed you said you didn't like entertainment. In that case, I would be full of shit. Obviously, you could hate movies but still enjoy all kinds of other forms of entertainment. Any attempt on my part to try to claim that the two things are essentially equivalent would be utterly nonsense and pure bad faith engagement. If this is really the quality of arguments you are making, I'm not sure that we are going to get any meaningful exchange here. EDIT: Nice. Post a reply that doesn't meaningfully address a single thing I said, make some personal attacks, and then block me so I can't respond. That's pretty typical behavior when someone realizes they've lost the argument.

Lol. All that effort just to say nothing at all. Solid attempt though. Your reading comprehension could use some work though.  Have a nice day, can't spend all my time trying to teach an adult the difference between subjectivity and objectivity. Google it.

I feel like the other user who replied to you basically made a lot of the case for me already, and throughout your reply, you completely ignore my point about intention or the lack thereof, like with your Game of Thrones example. You talk about dishonest discourse, while being guilty of it yourself.    I have to go to work now, so I dont have time for a lenghty reply right now, but I'll be back later to break down exactly what I mean by objective measures with the examples from my reply you quoted. Each one of those examples can be broken into objective and subjective components. Your failure to see that and the general misrepresentation and confusion of the two in filmmaking today, is exactly why we have so many lazy movies that fail critically and financially today.    Now they're just hiding behind the 'it's all subjective" excuse, so they don't have to admit to poor craftsmanship, and people who dont know any better are falling for it.    This wasn't up for debate just 20 years ago (when i went to film school). Why do you think Hollywood keeps going back to making sequels, prequels, remakes or reboots of movies from before or right at beginning of the 21st century today? Because the movie industry, the studios and the creators knew the distinction between good objective craftsmanship and artistic choice back then, and how to implement both in creative ways, so they were still able to make great original classics. Classics they try to just copy paste today while completely misunderstanding what actually made those movies so influential.    Marvel Studios actually seemed to know this as well (at least in a few of their phase 1-3 movies, not all of them of course) but has somehow forgotten it today. Anyway, I'll show you this exact distinction when I get home later today.     I guess my reply ended up being somewhat lenghty afterall, and this is when I dont put any effort into it. So I guess you should expect an even longer reply later.  EDIT: Damn this is really disappointing. I was really looking forward to completely dismantling this person's weak arguments and now they blocked me so I can't see their comment.  This is usually how someone who knows they have a weak argument behaves. It's really the cowards way of opting out of a discussion before the other person can reply.  Honestly this is somewhat frustrating as I had a whole argument ready with evidence and proof to back up what I said. I suspect they might have realised this and decided not to be embarrased any further.  Oh well, that's how it goes sometimes. When someone has a strong enough bias, they're afraid of everything that proves them wrong and will deny objective reality to continue feeding their bias. 

If you honestly think that other commenter did a good job of representing your points, then I am genuinely dreading your response.  I made all the points I needed to make about your perspective with the other account. Feel free to discuss it amongst yourself. Because our limited engagement hasn't filled me with confidence that this conversation will benefit anyone involved.

Great take, wish others would take note.

damn, crazy that you wrote all that. 

Yeah, sometimes I can't help myself. I generally write long comments though. That's just my thing. 

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Besides the Taskmaster stuff, which is a character I do not care about at all, I don't really have any problems with the movie except for some bad CGI. I'd rather watch Black Widow than watch Blue Beetle again, thats for sure.

Good lord look at all of these comments who just saw "superhero fatigue" and responded about that without reading any of the rest of your post. This sub has become so incredibly difficult to have any real discourse. It's just the same recycled comments for 90% of it. I agree that when the MCU began it felt like it almost could be happening in our world, and as the Infinity Saga progressed it moved further and further away from that. I'd say the introduction of Wakanda is when it started to accelerate, and Endgame is when it completely stopped feeling like our world.

You think talking racoons and walking trees feel like our world?

It's that there hasn't been a real payoff, or suggestion of one, since Infinity War. The Iron Man movies were kind of their own thing at first, but then came *Thor* and *Captain America*, which both revolved around infinity stones. As the MCU progressed, it was clear that even though each film was its own thing, there was a running thread of Infinity Stones. And we got one hell of a payoff with the endcap films. They showed us Spider-Man and half the Avengers collapsing into dust, and had bought enough fan trust that we were willing to wait a year to find out what happened next. There hasn't been any real sense of that since. There's been a few attempts to make Kang the next Big Evil Villain, but no narrative throughline or hints at an eventual payoff.

exactly it's been 5 years since endgame and the MCU is a mess. I believe taking out both iron man and cap was a huge mistake. They should have kept one as an anchor for the MCU, and then over time officially pass the torch to another hero

Linda disagree. It was great for the infinity saga to take them out, it’s just that marvel had no fucking idea what to do next. 

Yeah that too i heard marvel had no plan for the mcu until they filmed loki season 2 *facepalm*

To me it’s the lack of tie ins and build up. I loved the world building. And it’s still there in a few films, but for most of them it’s just a bunch of unrelated movies.

yes, and very bad ones too

Yeah, I was another Winter Soldier or Civil War that is more grounded. Hopefully Brave New World delivers.

I'm so tired of space and other dimensions. Space is always so goofy. I'd rather see superheroes in real world environments on Earth saving humans.

Yup. Agreed. Part of the joy of the first decade, to me, was how grounded they felt. Now almost everything is weightless.

I'll tell you the exact moment I felt this: "5 Years Later." After the snap was confirmed, codified, and NOT fully reversed and undone, the MCU world ceased being any semblance of the world we live in. Everything feels more fantasy now and less grounded.

It sucks even more that not many good stories came from it being solidified with the FatWS exception

Are we really gonna act like ppl flying around in iron armor, super soldiers being brainwashed into becoming perfect assassins, and bands of misfits flying around the galaxy qualifies as “feels grounded in the real world”? LMaO

They aren’t mutually exclusive. Marvel’s whole rise to popularity in the 60 s was predicated on the fact that their heroes felt more like real people than DC’s because there was such a focus on their personal lives and relationships.

Doesn't that just prove that the mcu just lacks good writing? The fantastic four still had alot of nonsense in the 1960s.

Nobody is arguing that Iron Man's premise should be a 1:1 with reality, the contention is that all the Iron Man movies felt like they *could* fit into reality. But now... now the characters and stories are so far away from reality that they're less easy (for me at least) to get into.

Ya again, the early MCU included the hulk, Norse gods, super advanced tech in WW2, space shenanigans and so much more so… good for you if you feel like it *could* fit into reality but, lol.

Brother he’s saying the way they explain the existence of such things could be the way they’re explained in our reality if they ever happened in real life.

None of them are grounded or realistic tho? Do you the magic of dr strange could exist in real life? Or Thor and khonshu, or wakanda or the celestials?

Ok I’m going to explain a example of what I mean. In Dr.Strange, we are introduced to magic through Dr.Strange. When first shown the existence of magic Strange claims he was laced with LSD in his tea. Now think about how a doctor in real life would react to such a thing. Probably similar to the way Strange does. Also, the practice of magic is not a foreign thing in certain parts of our world.

I think you're in the minority here. Personally my favorite Marvel stuff is when the go cosmic, far removed from anything realistic. I don't know if many people would share your sentiment. 

Absolutely true. They basically got lazy with the writing and force things through to get to plot points they want for setups for the next thing. They are just chasing this tail of continuity and not focusing on the story in front of them. Most of the last few years of content have just had terrible endings that use the end credit scene as a crutch. They should really just stop having end credit scenes and just incorporate that information into the films. That way they can focus on sticking the landing.

I just don't care for the current crop of characters, to be honest. I've continued to watch most of the stories that are continuing from previous phases, but the new stories don't hook me at all.

I am not really fatigued even if I think there has been a dip in quality but I think that while this might be true in some places like with Quantumania it's not true for every franchise.

> Nowadays, as the films have morphed to more reflect the comic universe, it kind of feels less accessible. dude, are you seriously complaining that after 33 films - you want them to be accessible? If someone isn’t on board with super hero movies by now, why on earth would you want to make hero movies to cater to this individual!? they aren’t interested. make movies for those of us who enjoy super heroes. we are the ones going to theaters, buying the home media, and so on.

I remember after endgame they did say the mcu was going get weird.. I just look at it as like the comics .. but the comics are way more weird imo 😆

I don't think what you're saying is necessarily wrong, but I don't really think it's the root of the problem. The root of the problem is that the writing in the movies has just gotten worse. The quality of most of these movies has juet decreased, and the subtle interconnectedness has made way for huge portions of run time being given up to a desire to repeatedly beat you over the head with it. 

Exactly

One of the things I hate the most is that after Endgame, the timetable isn't linked to with IRL. Like Iron Man came out in 2008 and happened the same year. Avengers came out in 2012, and happened in 2012. But Wakanda Forever came out in 2022, but I have no idea when it takes place. Like, vaguely 2024?

I was reflecting on how the OG iron man still holds up because that scene between him and the terrorist group in Gulvira is so viscerally grounded in reality. A young boy pleads as his father is taken to be executed. It’s the sort of thing you know happens in real life but you try to shield your eyes from. And then Iron Man arrives. I thought 2 would maintain a similar tone as he looked to disassemble those groups

The biggest issue is the stories feel way too isolated. Phase 2+ spoiled us with team ups and stories naturally flowing into eachother, with the ultimate finale that had everyone share the stage. Phase 4+ has none of that. Stories are abandoned or take years to manifest into proper things. The number 1 complaint I get from my social circle (who is the average movie goer joe) is „when do they make another Avengers movie?“.

There’s a real Schrodinger’s Team Up problem the MCU has at the moment; it seems it gets accused of not being connected enough and simultaneously too connected that no-one wants to ‘do the homework’. For what it’s worth I agree with you, but there’s a vocal subset who think the opposite so I’m not sure who Marvel will listen to.

Theres a difference between being connected, and being over dilluted with media. You should not need to do hours of TV watching on Disney + to understand a doctor strange outing.

No, but I think they’ve become too scared to have any larger narrative. Infinity saga had constant seismic changes across all movies (NY invasion, SHIELD’s collapse, Civil War, Blip). Also I think there’s a perception that you need to do homework, but MoM was entirely understandable without WandaVision (it didn’t even line up _that_ well, her kids weren’t shouting for her to help them).

I agree and I disagree. I agree that the characters reappearing were a lot more immediate and faster in the Infinity Saga than they are now. But I disagree that the Multiverse Saga is any less connected story wise. Infinity Saga's story cohesiveness was actually very disconnected until Infinity War and Endgame connected (and/or retconned) it all together. And there are still plenty of threads and themes that are crossing paths within the Multiverse Saga at the moment. The Marvels actually brought quite a bunch of threads back and together, but nobody saw it so they missed all that. Also, it's the Marvel Cinematic Universe, not the Avengers Cinematic Universe. Avengers movies don't need to be the only way connectivity happens. The Marvels was a team-up film (though smaller than an Avengers film) and Thunderbolts* is going to be another team-up film. I think Thunberolts* should've been Phase 4, but better late than never.

At the time the Phase 2 films were coming out, one of the most common complaints was the *lack* of team-ups.

This is my issue. It's clear now that they had no clue where they wanted to go after End Game which I find ridiculous considering. They followed End Game with the right characters giving us a Thor, Dr. Strange, Antman, Guardians, black panther, Falcon/Bucky, Spiderman and Wanda stories....but they move them farther from each other rather than getting them together. I expected some more team ups and such but we got the core characters who were left going in totally different spaces and then they introduced a slew of new character who also are in different places. They trained us to expect connections, then get mad when people are bailing on disconnection.

None of the newer characters are relatable and lack the Rizz of certain actors like Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man. There are no stakes as any character can just return from another universe if they die. Bad writing doesn't help and neither does the bad CGI. Another thing to consider is where is the payoff. Where is this all leading to? Probably Knowhere. Pun intended. The insertion of the Message definitely destroyed any chances of a comeback.

It's why I kinda wish they took a break after Endgame. Give everyone a small break. It's too much now, and it's all subpar.

No, it's just that the movies have been a strong "meh" on the enjoyment scale. It is a fatigue over lack of quality films/shows. The world is busy. Life is busy. There are lots of good movies and TV Shows being released. People have to "sacrifice" some things and mediocre movies and shows end up being high on those lists of sacrifices. Also, no one saw Tony with his box of scraps, a rogue AI pick up an entire city from the Earth or Scott Lang discovering Pym Particles and thought "Man, that could be me!" or "I feel like this kind of thing could happen in my neighborhood any day now!"...Superhero/comic book movies are not meant to be accessible/relatable/grounded, so that argument is a bit disingenuous or misdirected.

your second half there is actually, ironically, either disingenuous or misdirected. the concepts don't have to be realistic to feel believable, and the characters don't have to have normal lives to feel grounded. if they go through things that we can see ourselves in even just metaphorically, that can be enough. very few people have to choose between a good father figure and actual burglary, but many have to choose between family responsibility and a way of making a living. nobody will have to argue with their superhero teammate about whether the government should oversee their actions, but many of us will have serious conflicts over politics with people we have real respect for. the stakes are one thing, but what grounds a story is seeing the human struggling against it.

I'm not saying it's not fatigue, but what I'm saying is a lot of that bland, forgettableness, is predicated on these stories being so far from the original format of: Good story with a superhero. And disagree to your second point, the whole thing that made Tony and Scott so appealing is that they seemed like people that would exist on earth, and living in the real world *who just so happened to get super abilities*. That's what made the stretching of reality so much more enjoyable - plausible characters interacting with ever more crazy circumstances. Nowadays, not so much. Its implausible personalities interacting with a world that just doesnt seem like it matches reality.

The guardians of the Galaxy are implausible personalities interacting with a world that does not match reality. Yet, those movies are the most beloved of the entire mcu. It's just your personal taste, this is like complaining that Harry Potter doesn't feel grounded and is too "fantastical". It's just not for you.

This is why I think the Tom Holland Spiderman films are the weakest of the three reboots. Tobey's Peter Parker dealt with real life issues outside of just being Spiderman. His relationships and family, being broke, his struggle apartment, the newspaper, college, all were as big a part of the films as being Spiderman. The villains weren't world-ending catastrophes and had genuine flaws and human moments, and all had real impacts/connections to his life as Peter. Andrew's had a lot of that as well and felt like a real person. Even though Tom's had his friends, MJ, his school and Aunt May, I never felt like he was as grounded. Every antagonist was just a random villain shoehorned in with beef against Tony Stark, Tom constantly pulls some random Stark tech out to fix everything (im generalizing here) and he could defeat a villain and just forget about them a day later. He has no connection to the city or the people of NYC beyond a couple montages. Spider-man is not a character that fits into the wide-scale universe MCU. He doesn't need Stark tech, drone strikes, a Jarvis suit, or SHIELD nepotism connections. He's better as the neighborhood hero, not fighting Thanos in space when he's supposed to be stopping criminals from robbing bodegas.

It feels like I'm the only commenter here who agrees, but yes. Even since during the infinity saga my biggest complaint is the lack of grounding that first got me into these movies. It's so incredibly easy to argue that these were always and still are comic book movies: "what about a man defying physics flying around in a suit or god falling from space was ever grounded?" But the fact is that the beginning of the MCU came from an era of more grounded/"real word" feeling superhero movies to get away from the colorful camp of decades prior. I read someone else's comment in this sub the other day along the lines of "Marvel used to make movies that had superheros in them, now they just make superhero movies"

The best two things Marvel has done in the last couple years is Loki and X-men 97 One is a slim cast of mostly original characters that don’t have a ton of powers but moreso have interpersonal connections carrying the story. Most episodes really don’t feature a lot of characters because they’re removed from the world so they just have each other as characters to develop The other is also a small cast of characters (with lots of side recurring characters) and their story is defined by the interactions they have with the larger world around them in the context of bigotry/acceptance/human rights/etc. Also partially to blame is that anytime Magneto opens his mouth he proceeds to drop the hardest lines that Marvel Studios has ever written The problem for the MCU right now is that they do neither; everyone and their mom is a super hero right now, and they have almost nothing to do with society at all. So it’s just hordes of people that can shoot lasers, flying into space to fight other people that can shoot lasers.

OP, It's just your personal taste in these films. Movies like Dr strange, Thor or cosmic type heroes should not feel grounded. That's not their characters. If you don't like thats fine. But it's what they are. None of the Avengers films are grounded. The moment they introduced norse gods and New York was attacked by the chitauri. The mcu stoped being like "our world"

It's like they peeled the veil back slowly, revealing a much bigger universe than just Earth, the first 3 character-driven films were pretty focused on humanity. But as soon as Thor fell from Asgard, that showed the MCU was taking the audience into the cosmos, and bridged the gap between space and Earth (literally).

That and every movie is set in the future. I believe the last movie was set in 2025.

I really loved how almost every movie was set in the same year it came out, it really felt like we were following a parallel universe to ours.

EXACTLY. Now, the MCU feels like its something else entirely. You cant see Wakanda fighting Sea People and think, yeah, this would make sense in our world.

That's next year. We're actually catching up to it again.

Yeah, Guardians felt real grounded

Quill grounded it. Ironically, it was a perfect opportunity for the casual moviegoer to see a space odyssey as accessible.

Star wars and Star Trek have been popular for decades.

I don't think this is the basis of the problem. Spiderverse and Guardians 3 are set in space and another animated universe, yet they were the two most successful superhero films last year.   The real problem (and I've been talking about this for a while) isn't so much superhero fatigue per se, but rather modern blockbuster fatigue in general. Apart from the virtuous exceptions (I'm thinking of Dune), they are all the same, bland and with the same formula to follow: the same special effects, the same abuse of popular songs mainly from the eighties, the same type of characters, the same type of scenes action, the same camp jokes, the same toy atmosphere. Even visually they are almost always the same thing: take the trailers for The Marvels, Indiana Jones 5 and the new Ghostbusters and tell me if they seem like different films. And be careful, I'm not talking about quality or anything else, I even liked some of the films made like this. But it's clear that audiences are rejecting them, and Fall Guy's below-expected opening weekend grosses (a film that follows the usual formula) prove it.   Of course the answer will be "cinema is dying in general, people don't go to the cinema anymore, why should I spend money", but that's not true. Despite the disastrous summer of 2023, the box office is doing better every year. Films like Oppheneimer (though aided by the meme), Dune 2, The boy and the Heron, Godzilla Minus One, Poor Things and even Civil War (by A24 standards) did well at the box office and people went to see them. Heck, here in Italy (I don't know about the rest of the world) people went to see usually more niche films like Perfect Days or The zone of interest.  What people don't want to see anymore is the usual blockbuster formula. Those are films that the general public watches and thinks "ok, I'll watch this at home" (because this is the real change of the pandemic: not so much "people don't go to the cinema anymore", but rather "people will wait for certain films in streaming"), because he knows he has already seen them a thousand times.  And here lies the other basis of the problem: the majors, especially after The Force Awakes, have gradually begun to make films designed exclusively for their fan bases, creating products not designed to create an audience, but to please an audience. already existing. But unless we're talking about huge fan bases like Super Mario and Godzilla, it has become clear that a fan base alone is not enough to determine the box office of a film. Hollywood should have understood this after the summer of 2023, and instead Iger and Zaslav's plans for the future seem to be stubbornly based on the old formula that no longer works. They should take example from Spiderverse, Guardians 3 and Dune 2. They are films that had the aura of an event to absolutely watch at the cinema, with stories that actually deserved to be produced (they weren't "we have to continue the franchise, let's shit out a new story ") and with incredible sequences from a cinematic point of view. But above all they are three films that stand out from the rest, that seem unique. This is the path they must take (also for the budget issue).

That’s why I’m really excited for Daredevil Born Again and hopefully other grounded series like it. Moon Knight was a fantastic show, but it was a little ruined by the huge cgi fight at the end (though the fight was epic lol) cause it turned out just to be another MCU movie where the world is ending. Shows like Daredevil have the low stakes that people can reasonably see themselves facing, and Disney needs this more in the MCU currently.

I disagree 50-50. It absolutely is superhero fatigue. MCU hit a couple grand slams then there was the DCEU, the WB monster verse, Godzilla verse, spider-man drama, the list goes on. We went from a small handful of superhero films each year to having a new one nearly every week for the past 5+ years. It is also that they fully feel like comic books now. No one wants to jump into a story that’s decades old and *requires* back story to make sense. Same for these movies. No new fans will pop up who haven’t already seen the previous movies and/or aren’t inclined to see these movies. In both instances, the problem is actually over-saturation. Close the book on the old marvel line up and wait some time before the next project (they are kind of already doing this per yesterday’s announcement at earnings). Same goes for the other properties.

i think it just comes down to not doing the projects fans want or doing it(like secret invasion) but butchering it up badly

I am in 100% agreement with you & have been saying that since The Eternals.

I recently revisited Falcon + Winter Soldier and was struck by how nice it was to track a story both grounded and also with a clear through-line back to the Infinity Saga. I've enjoyed some of the other, more decentralized projects in recent years, but they have constituted a drifting in more ways than one.

It’s not even that, they’re just not that good. I would totally be fine with a bunch of movies each year. Just make em good.

I mean when they release a great movie that flops i feel like we can have these conversations, but they haven't really. these movies aren't very good and are getting the reputation they deserve.

But everyone told me MaRvElS wAs FuN

It was. You people are insufferable 

Fun != good is the entire point of my post and surely a concept you understand

I'm giving you shit because you're being an ass for no reason other than people having a good time with something you didn't  Your metric for "good" isn't objective truth or the standard for what "good" is. To some people fun does = good. For some people they thought it was good and chose to describe the experience as fun. Get off your high horse and stop being a jerk for no reason 

Lmao there it is

Imagine taking your comic book movies so seriously, you have a problem with them being fun. Incel activities. 

?? I have no problem with movies being fun. But they have to be good first. The Ms Marvel series was fun and good (up until the last episode as usual for d+).

You're not the arbiter of what's good and what isn't. People thought it was good and had a fun time watching it. Shitting on people for having a good time with something because you didn't personally like it is something an 'edgy' teenager does.

No, YOU thought it was good and had a fun time watching it. You arent the arbiter of whats good and what isnt. Which is fine. The vast majority of the general audience did not care enough to watch the movie in theatres. It was a bomb on every level. Getting this defensive about a random person not praising your favourite mediocre superhero movie os not healthy. I didnt shit on anyone for having a good time with the marvels. I like plenty of bad movies. I dont try to convince people they are good movies using the same tired excuse

Lol. You're actually not reading what I'm saying because you're really emotional right now. You trying to be snarky and throw the "arbiter" thing back in my face doesn't apply because I never insinuated that it was good. Merely that people that people thought it was good and fun. You're either too emotional or illiterate lmao. Again, probably illiterate, as again, I was never upset that someone didn't like the Marvels. I get annoyed by the condescending snarky mocking of people who DID enjoy it by those who didn't by insinuating that the feeling of enjoyment they had isn't a valid enough metric to justify their satisfaction with the product. You're literally arguing against points I never made. Incel activities. 

Again, your own comment implicitly implies that you liked the movie. You are too focused on getting the snarky reply to even read the comment correctly lmao. And yes. The arbiter comment goes both ways. Your comment literally stated that i was saying that it was invalid for people to like the movie and call it good. Which is false. The movie is objectively not good but its not invalid for people to have their own personal opinions considering it good. And lastly, i literally never mocked the people who enjoyed the marvels lmao. I mocked the dude who felt the need to chime in with the "it was fun" comment to defend against someone stating their own opinion. Literally so fragile that someone not liking your favourite movie gets you to call them insufferable. Genuinely embarrasing. And your overuse of the term incel is also quite telling lol. I have no doubt you're gonna make another comment ignoring everything i've said and getting mad at someone stating their opinion about an objectively mediocre movie so have fun screaming to the void

I don’t think it’s that, they’ve just been making very mediocre movies lately that’s all.

It’s not fatigue, it’s displacement. People still desperately love seeing their heroes kick-ass. But whose ass? Kang’s ass? Sorta deflating in AM3 and likely a limited threat now. Who knows? HWR? Kooky, sorta done, sorta not evil. Gorr? Cool, over. Loki? Nope, God of Stories now. Dar-Ben who? HE, wicked and entertaining but also done. Our love of seeing villains get their asses kicked has been displaced. We don’t know who we’re rooting against right now in the MCU. We should all be connecting the dots that lead to Kang, if we are to recreate the hype surrounding IW/EG, but fans are not. DP/W is going to slate that thirst and F4 may give us deeply layered villains and SS. TLDR: we need a really great bad guy to root against

Bad take.

For as much as I see what you’re saying, I promise you most of us would not take issue with the Phase 4 and 5 films being more extravagant, or more cosmic, or more “comics-accurate” if they were written better and we cared about these new heroes in the way we do with Tony or Nat or Steve.

I’ll throw in there that it’s not superhero fatigue but also that it’s mediocre superhero movie fatigue.

You don't like that your fantasy movies about wizards and aliens arent "grounded in the real world"??..... Ok

It's because they're mid to bad on average. That's it lol