“My Dinner WIth Natasha” *
With Wallace Shawn as Ms. Johansson’s stunt double
(except in the Hundred Ninja Waiters scene, that was Mrs. Shawn).
While “resolve everything with a big punch-out” is fairly standard for the genre, and I’ll admit that most of the Marvel movies do so, several haven’t. At least two of them have had the heroes realizing that the punch-out wasn’t working, and that they could best accomplish their goals by losing. And one ends with the hero challenging the villain to a dance-off, for crying out loud.
Here is William Goldman’s take on comic-book movies (from a book written decades ago that I read just years ago.)
I know you’re not. But I’m fairly certain.
And actually, most people think the Marvel movies have gotten much better with each phase.
Just to check things out, of the 19 movies only 9 have over 85% on rotten tomatoes (a fair approximation of a letter grade of over a B, I think. Of those I would say that Civil War, and Guardians of the Galaxy are likely over rated, and Doctor Strange is a hot mess of a movie and I don’t understand why it’s so well rated, but fair is fair. All 9 count.
Now I will give you, Spider-Man, Thor: Ragnkrok, and Black Panther are better movies than have been made is a while and are all pretty recent. So maybe an upswing is in order, but Infinity War is bloated as heck, and under cuts its own emotional stakes at every turn. It’s better than Ultron was, but that’s not a hard bar to clear.
I like McDonald’s just fine. Are we allowed to have an opinion about the MCU movies that differs from “they’re awesome,” or is it axiomatically pretentious?
And I think we’ve established that’s your opinion. We have not established that as fact or an opinion that the majority of people share.
All I’ve seen recently are GotG 2, which I liked even if they did nonsense like claim Ego is a Celestial… and Spider-Man Reboot again which was okay when not focusing on colorwashing every one at his highschool but him.:rolleyes:
Because a STEM high school in New York City would only have white students? Is your knowledge of the ethnic composition limited to watching Friends and Mad About You?
As for the ratings of the MCU films, it is certainly true that there have been better films and less well regarded ones, as well as some that people are split on. (I personally think Thor: Ragnorak was brilliant and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2 was a better film than its predecessor even if the first one was funnier). But overall the films have been more successful than not, and relying less on any kind of popularity of the characters or name recognition of the actors than in crafting engaging characters, well placed humor, and appealing visuals. I can’t think of another franchise of films which has managed this degree of consistent critical and popular appeal. And given both the audacity of some of the premise of the characters–a guy who can shrink and talk to ants?–it is even more remarkable how few of the movies have fallen flat. That isn’t to say that the movies don’t follow a formula or apply some standard tropes of superhero and action movies–the physics of the MCU is as laughable as Michael Bay movies–but they’re often at their best when acknowledging the trope and then subverting it.
But if the MCU movies bore you, there is a simple solution: watch something else. There is such a vast variety of entertainment available today that there is no reason to watch something that doesn’t appeal to you.
Stranger
If there’s a Spider-Man: Homecoming movie, is there also a Spider-Man: Junior Prom? Or plans for one?
I wouldn’t go quite that far-- Marvel has been doing an admirable job of nodding in the general direction of the real physics. Yes, the physics is usually wrong, but with the likes of Michael Bay, it’ll generally be not-even-wrong. For example: When Natalie Portman talks about the Bifrost, she refers to it as an “Einstein-Rosen bridge”, which is in fact a theoretical phenomenon which (if it existed) would have approximately the right properties for the Bifrost, she’s the right kind of physicist to be studying Einstein-Rosen bridges, and the math we see her doing is the right math for Einstein-Rosen bridges. Now, there’s a heck of a lot of extrapolation to get from there to the Bifrost, and the appearance of the Bifrost owes a heck of a lot more to artistic visual appeal than to the real physics of what it’d look like (for that, you want Interstellar), but that’s still a lot better than having a character who’s a Scientist, with a degree in Science, who therefore knows all of the Sciencey stuff, and you can tell it’s Science because he draws funny-looking symbols on his paper.
I think this is a key point. We take it for granted now that it’s possible for a huge mega-corporation (Disney) to make a massive series of tentpole franchise blockbusters, each of them costing hundreds of millions to make, with complexly interwoven plots, cameos, and team-ups; and to for the movies to generally have unique tones and genres; and for most of them to be popular and critical successes (or at least not failures). We take that for granted because we see Marvel doing it. So we complain about what they could be doing better (many of those complaints being quite legitimate…)
But we forget how hard that is. How unlikely it is. Look at how many series of big budget SFX-laden blockbusters there have been which have petered out and gotten terrible, or were never good to begin with.
Lord of the Rings - three amazing movies, then three Hobbit movies (oops)
Batman - Two well-regarded Burton movies, then Batman Forever (poor) then Batman and Robin (awful), then a long pause, then three Bale movies (well regarded), then two DCU teamups (awful)
Transformers - Horrible from the start
James Bond - massively variable in quality
Star Trek - massively variable in quality
Not to mention all the attempted franchises that never made it past one movie (The Golden Compass)
Sure, the Marvel movies aren’t perfect. And if they’re not for you they’re not for you. But pound for pound, they’re as good as any remotely similar project in pop culture has ever been, and a lot better than most.
So what? The title of this thread is “MCU movies have begun to bore me.” Emphasis, you will note, on ME. It is purely the opinion of a cranky old man who never read superhero comics but who wants amazing movies. Read this again to see what I mean:
And nobody has any stakes because they are immortal and coming back in their own standalones in six months.
And how do I know which I won’t like? 
I watched Black Panther over the weekend and it was good, touching on all of Campbell’s points of a Hero on a journey of discovery. A well-trodden path, but one that has kept us coming back to the campfire for thousands of years. And maybe that’s why I find The Odyssey more satisfying than The Illiad, with the former the story of one man’s journey and the latter an overstuffed crossover.
Black Widow? Is that Johanson’s superhero name? I would enjoy that because there is potentially a lot to her character that we aren’t seeing because we only see her in the crowd, and Cap has some issues to work through, which he won’t because he’s a guy of the Greatest Generation :rolleyes: and they don’t talk about things. 
I’ve read only half of the books I’ve been involved in. I helped, but that doesn’t mean the books are any good.
Yeah, Rogers and Romanoff never talk.
Stranger
Oh, FFS! It’s a minute and a half, versus the hour and a half I was responding to!
Marvel movies are incredibly trope-y. Even if they’re above average to great, they’re trope-y. Like, I wonder if the powerful tribe leader who refuses to help the others suddenly shows up at the last second when all seems lost? Oh, there he is.
If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t have much patience with that kind of thing, you’re the kind of person who’s going to enjoy very few of these movies. They’re fun action movies.
As a comic fan, I always found the ‘big fight’ action issues to be the most boring ones. I prefer the movies that try to do something different even if they fail. I enjoyed Ang Lee’s Hulk. BvS is a C-grade movie, but I’ll probably watch that more often in my lifetime than I’ll watch Black Panther, which was great but I knew most of the beats in advance.
Different people (and comic fans) like different things, etc.
Well then I think you should be campaigning at Marvel to make this movie.
Seriously, it seems that superhero movies are not what drives your boat, and you (and others) are basically manufacturing reasons why they are not good movies that do not square with objective facts, which is odd because even the best of these films have some gaping plotholes sufficient to fill a series of twenty minute videos each, and yes, they do follow a pretty standard plot template because all major films do, and audiences generally get upset about movies the deviate from the three act structure. There are plenty of movies that have two characters just talking to each other about deeply personal issues in long, unbroken shots, and with the advent of streaming services dedicated to revered classic movies you don’t even have to get off the couch and change discs like a poor peron.
It’s clear that most people go to see superhero films to see, well, superhero stuff even if the actual movie is terrible; Marvel at least has the benefit of good casting and generally appealing characters. Inveighing Marvel for not making Douglas Sirk-esque dramas with their superpowered characters is like getting upset at an elephant for being too large to fit into a minivan.
Stranger
I watched part of Suicide Squad over the weekend and the only memorable things were Margot Robbie (an interesting actress I was unfamiliar with) and her butt, which I think got (and deserved) top billing. 
And except for her and Joker I’d never heard of any of the characters.
You will ask why I watch superhero movies if all I do is complain (when I saw Thor 2 I complained about the audio mixing in the theater with the surrounds drowning out the dialog). I like adventure movies and they are most of what’s available.
So you want to watch “adventure movies” which are an hour and a half of people just talking to each other? Here you go.
Suicide Squad was a terrible movie by any standard. I have yet to meet anyone who thinks it to be even a watchable film other than Margot Robbie’s scenery chewing bad girl performance and Will Smith doing Will Smith things.
Stranger
This is true. But it’s far from absolute. For instance, is the end of CA:Civil War a trope? The old “two friends fight each other because one blames the other one’s best bud for the death of his parents, and their friendship is ruined and half the good guys are captured by other basically-good guys, and the actual villain of the movie is captured, but that’s basically a sideshow” trope?
For anyone who thinks the Marvel movies are predictable, that’s super easy to test. Bring a piece of paper and pencil with you to the movie. After 15 minutes, write down what you think will happen for the rest of the movie. Then check to see if you were right!
I’m not saying you’ll never get it right, but I think that MCU movies are generally less predictable than the average big-budget action blockbuster.