There’s been a lot written about the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the last decade, and its impact on franchises across media. We’ve seen Star Wars start aggressively expanding its media o🐻ff⛎erings, especially with the announcements brought by the recent Star Wars Celebration. Mario actors Chris Pratt and Charlie Day 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:joked about a Nintendo Cin꧅ematic Universe after the launch of their first movie. Zack Snyder decided he wanted 🗹to launch a massive RPG based on his unreleased movie and its sequel.
I’m an avowed Marvel꧃ disliker. I’ve watched almost everything that’s come out before 2022, because of a ter🧜rible fever I had while bedridden and in the claws of Covid. It cemented my belief that there are only a handful of actually good Marvel movies and shows. Standouts for me include WandaVision, Thor: Ragnarok, and the first Ant-Man movie, but most everything else felt like filler.
That’s the thing about the MCU – it makes filler, because filler makes money. I’ve written about the lack of critical thinking that Marvel fans seem to have when it comeꦍs to this specifi🐟c franchise, and if anything, watching more franchises copy the formula has made me sink into a pit of existential despair. Of all the art people could🐷 be making, of all the creativity people could be using to come up with cool new settingsꦚ, compelling characters, and themes relevant to contemporary culture, they are making Marvel movies. They are spending millions of dollars creating what is, essentially, set up for future, bigger, in-universe events.
And the movies that do this are not good. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania flopped, because it was 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a whole lot of nothing. All it did was showcase Jonathan Majors’ strength as a villain, but the VFX was bad, the acting was mediocre, and the writing was awful. This studio has access to some of the best, most charismatic talent of our generation, and they are squandering it on mindless drivel that serves only to tie together characters without actually telling us why we should care about them. Marvel🐟’s approach has only spread to other big franchises, with more and more studios deciding it’s best to follow 𝔍the formula to make big bucks instead of consistently making things that people want to watch.
It’s a shame, because these cinematic universes could be good. I do🀅n’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with linking different shows and movies together – it’s conceptually interesting, gives you fodder f👍or new conflicts and character relationships, and makes the world built feel more alive. If every movie and TV show was treated as a standalone work of art and executed according to a talented director’s vision, they could each stand on their own as excellent pieces of cinema.
But they aren’t, because of the speed at which these shows and movies are churned out, and the fact that they can’t be too different from each other because they’ll eventually all end up in the same film. I think Star Wars, so far, has had the right idea, with different shows and movies expanding on different time periods in 🎀the universe. The canon li꧃nes up, but the television shows and movies have room to play. But they’re starting to move in the wrong direction and there are now a whole three TV series connected to The Mandalorian alone. This is the opposite of fostering new, creative ideas that people actually want to watch.
We’re starting to see movies in these big franchises flop, which is a sign that people are getting sick of shelling out for disappointingly bad movies several times a year. DC’s Shazam 2 and Black Adam, and Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Eternals were all flops. When it comes to cinematic universes, I’m a big fan of voting with your wallet – if 💛something looks shit, simply don’t go watch it. You don’t need an endless train of content to watch mindlessly, which is how the ♌majority of my Marvel consumption went. Your life will not go off the rails if you use your sweet, sweet purchasing power as leverage against massive corporations trying to make money off you with increasingly bad films. After all, it’s not about the art for them, it’s about money. So don’t give it to them. Demand a higher standard. They’re making these films for you.