I’ve been bored with them for a long time. And Superman. And Batman. But what ya gonna do? They revoke your citizenship if you don’t go.
Spider-Man still holds some appeal though. FYI: In the latest franchise reboot, Peter Parker’s friend Ned is from here in Honolulu.
I used to read comic books when I was a kid, but not superhero comics (I was a comedy and later a 2000AD fan) and for me the superhero movies suffer from a lot of the same problems as the comics do that turn me off. Very samey plots, solving problems with a fist-fght, snappy dialogue when they should be getting on with things, and mega-maniacal bad guys who want to destroy the universe for nebulous reasons that don’t bear close scrutiny.
Some have tried to buck the trend, but largely they stick to the formula because there’s a reason comics fans love superheroes, so don’t rock that boat too much. They aren’t making them for me, they’re for the mega-fans. I just have to eke the entertainment I can from them.
If you were to line all the MCU movies up, I’d probably say I like about just over half of them enough to rewatch, and the rest I can live with never seeing a second time.
I liked the new Avengers as an experience, I think it used the character team-ups really well, it was fun and funny, and somewhat unpredictable. But it’s more of a culmination than a story, the final step of a long-game set-up. When it properly concludes next year I will be able to judge it a bit more objectively.
And was cast as David Hasselhoff, so really, Ultimate Nick Fury is the better option.
Stranger
I burned out on the superhero movies before the interlinked MCU stuff started. Of that set, I’ve seen only the first Thor and the first GotG. Haven’t watched any of the new DCs, either. The last superhero movie that really caught my interest was Old Wolverene Gets the Sads.
(That also–coincidentally or not–reflects my childhood comic buying habits. I read all of the X-Men relateds but none of the other franchises unless it was a crossover.)
The only one I really like is Thor, and that’s just for the Earthbound portion. I lol at the petshop scene.
It occurs to me that the movies are hyped all wrong. It’s the big crossover ones like Infinity War that get the most hype, and so you’re going to get people who haven’t watched the others seeing those. But those are precisely the ones that suffer the most from lack of familiarity with the universe. On the other hand, the likes of Black Panther, Doctor Strange, or Ant Man can stand alone perfectly well, and Guardians of the Galaxy wouldn’t even be called a superhero movie if the others didn’t exist. You’ll get a little more out of those movies if you know the other ones, but nothing critical.
So I guess the message is, if you’re not a fan of the series as a whole, then don’t see the big crossover ones. But go ahead and see any of the standalone ones that happen to catch your interest (and, of course, not the ones that don’t).
Don’t care.
Those movies were kinda boring too, though. I’d agree they’re, on average, better than the Avengers movies, but they’re still not great.
MCU movies are the McDonald’s of movies. They’re inoffensive and good for a Saturday afternoon, I guess.
They’re inoffensive and good for a Saturday afternoon but “McDonald’s of movies” makes it sound like they’re a low baseline. In reality, most movies in their action/adventure sphere are (in my experience) far less entertaining. You get a few gems like Fury Road or Deadpool and then a lot of stuff like Atomic Blonde or Alien: Covenant or Valerian, World of Blah-blah-boring that can’t even pull off a couple hours of “good for a Saturday afternoon” with the same competence. Most MCU stuff is in the top 80% when compared against the whole catalog of options.
You can believe that all you like, opinions being what they are, but honestly you come off sounding like someone trying to elevate their tastes from the “unwashed masses.” It sounds pretentious.
Anyone can knock out a McDonald’s quality burger. DCU has been trying for at least a decade to capture even part of MCU’s “inoffensive and good for a Saturday afternoon” flavor and success.
Last MCU movie we saw, I leaned over and whispered to my wife: “Annnnd… fight scene.” In a bored tone of voice.
And I realized I’ve been whispering that to myself since the 70s. Even as a twentysomething, I was waiting for the fisticuffs/bombing run/gunfight/epic battle to end, so they could get back to the characters and the plot.
Even great battles like Spartacus and Braveheart and Goku vs Broly :} (and needless ones like “They Live” – yeah, it was classic, but I was waiting to see more aliens!)…
And don’t get me started on the “Two heroes meet up, so they have to fight first, then realize they’re both good guys” trope… I wearied of that in Marvel comics as a kid.
I think I went and got a popcorn refill while the Avengers and Ultron were duking it out.
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BUT, I think some of the MCU movies have much more than fight scenes. I may have whispered “Annnnd… fight scene [retro SDMB rolleyes]” during Black Panther, but there was enough plot and characterizations to make it a thing of beauty.
I’d pay good money to see a Captain America movie which consists of Cap and the Black Widow talking in a restaurant for an hour-and-a-half. If you must have action, I suppose they could stop a mugging or something, but nothing more than that.
It is difficult to see how the MCU movies which have had not only commercial success but a nearly unbroken run of popular and critical accolades could be regarded as the cinematic equivalent of fast food. People eat at McDonalds, but few people over the age of ten rave about it, and you don’t see restaurant critics making positive (or indeed, any) reviews of it. They have their flaws to be sure, and they follow a formula because that is what most entertainments do, but they’re hardly the textureless pap that the critics here are making of them.
It seems as though for the o.p. and other posters who disdain these films that they are just not the kind of entertainment they enjoy. While this is perfectly fine, making claims that the films are universally terrible and mindless does not square with the reality that they are widely liked and objectively well-made movies in any technical sense. This isn’t the blender-of-consumer-electronics approach of the Transformers films or Adam Sandler fulfilling his contractual obligations to Netflix to grind out yet another non-humorous comedy; the MCU films are carefully constructed and organized to create a larger narrative universe which is (mostly) consistent and that has produced some of the highest grossing and most popularly acclaimed movies to date. They’re not Wim Wenders talkies or brooding Michael Hanake dramas with no conclusions, and if you go into the films with the mindset that if they feature yet another CGI battlefest then you are a masochist looking to be disappointed.
Stranger
There always seem to be people who think that showing disdain for what’s popular makes them look more sophisticated.
Some of the posts here make me imagine myself going to see a RomCom. “Oh sure, here comes the meet-cute! Yup, right on schedule. A quirky best friend!? Man, I bet there’s a misunderstanding here. Oh God, a grand romantic gesture…”
Rather than complaining that the product is just as it claims on the box, I just don’t go watch RomComs. Iron-Man came out in 2008. If you’re still watching MCU movies and thinking they they’re boring, bland, dull, etc then that’s on you for watching them at this point.
Actually, let me stop you here. Because, these are exactly the type of movie I enjoy, and when done well I love this shit. The first Avengers movie, the first Iron Man, the first 2 Captain America movies, Thor Ragnorok, and Black Panther were all quality flicks. Heck, the first Captain America was maybe the best telling of the Captain America origin story in any medium ever. But, most of these just haven’t been good. Even Guardians of the Galaxy which gets a lot of love was so very “follow the formula” it literally put me to sleep. Robert Downey Jr. has been phoning in Tony Stark for 7 years now the rest of the main cast (Hemsworth excepted) feels like they are doing the same at this point. The plots are all so overstuffed that nothing can breath and nothing has stakes because there is no time to build any with all the next plot points they are having to set up.
Hats off to them for the narrative creativity they have put together but, while these are not bad movies, most of them are not actually good either. And the simple failure to be good when it is obvious that with a little less fan service and a little more focus on script writing (and fight choreography that is comprehensible) these could be AMAZING movies is frustrating beyond belief to people who really really want them to be the amazing movies they should be.
That’s your opinion and you have every right to it, but you should also understand that the vast majority of people don’t share it.
I kinda have to like them because I am in them.
I’m not sure that’s true. Although I probably overstated my argument. I should have said while they are not bad movies they are mostly not great movies either. They are fine. Solid B- action flicks. But I WANT them to be A+ movies. And they can be. Black Panther was.