Rolling Marvel Cinematic Universe thread (+ a poll: Classic or Dud?)

Again, when you adopt a broad brush approach to any subject, you can generalize to the point where nothing you say is entirely untrue but neither is it especially meaningful. Like, in what way has popular entertainment (children's or otherwise) become ever more infantilizing, exactly? Is there a strain of hyper-erudite pop culture from the past several decades that I somehow failed to notice? What specific works are under discussion here? Because just referring to eg 'cartoons and comics' is like...you might as well issue sweeping proclamations about 'music'.

They both have a point but either take is great, tbh (the rare not-quite-OTM!). The simplicity of the stuff nabisco speaks of (again, the simplicity of what, precisely) isn't at issue as much as the erosion of critical distance among segments of the audience. This is just the pearl-clutching discussion of The Joker all over again, though. If people are transformed in some measurable way by, say, a superhero movie, that shit doesn't happen in a vacuum and it's not because the movie has some special transmogrifying power which thwarts all attempts at resistance.

If anything, these types of entertainment seem to have the most deleterious effect upon those who attempt to criticize them.

Big props to Doc C upthread, though, who actually made the effort to hone in on specific aspects of the MCU and reckon with it on its own terms with some legit + valid criticism. I don't get why it's so hard for so many other people to do likewise.

Oh cool, the argument has reached batshit right wing cartoons phase:

pic.twitter.com/jQSP8TFaZ9

— John Campea (@johncampea) October 24, 2019

That’s no way to talk about the mcu

So batshit reactions from the fringes of an internet discussion are still reliably batshit. Good to know that there are still some things you can count on in this crazy world!

"on its own terms" is a loaded phrase though, OL. it seems like you're responding to dr C's knowledge of comics - which for you lends weight to his criticism of the cinematic MCU - i.e. he's criticizing these movies on their "own terms". but i don't know anything about the comics. neither do my kids. they, and i, experience them primarily as movies (despite all the other happy meal tie-ins or whatever). "the movies" seems like a pretty valid frame of reference for somebody like me, or even a movie director, to use. anyway I'm kind of surprised your defending them so hard - i feel like you're usually pretty hard to please when it comes to this stuff!

i'm probably just still sore from when you comprehensively dismantled every reason i thought i had for loving Solo

to be clear my beefs with the Marvel movies are mostly to do with them sometimes being lame and forgettable movies, followed by them often being cryptofascist. tho maybe my knowledge of the comics reminds me of how truly fantastic they could potentially be. i also loathed solo, but equally as a movie and as a work of star wars product.

xp misread that as "Salo" and was about to jump in

I'm responding more to Dr. C's willingness to criticize elements of the films themselves in terms of what they're actually trying to achieve. The basis of his critique about the role of Vision, for instance, is all there on the screen and doesn't require any knowledge of the comics themselves.

I don't feel like I'm defending the movies themselves as hard as I'm challenging nebulous criticisms of 'the MCU' or 'superhero movies' built around abstract notions of what these movies are or what they supposedly represent. I think they're great fun but I don't in any way think they're above criticism! I just personally value when the critic is able to signal that they've experienced the object of inquiry with their actual sense apparatus.

(Which is not to say that I exactly consider 'oooh, it hurt my ears/eyes!' the apex of criticism.)

Dr Casino’s post literally started with “wins otm”, so presumably at least some of my criticisms would have been “legit + valid” if I’d only taken care to precede them with “I enjoy these films but”

I'm not calling out anyone in particular itt, fwiw. There just seems to be a rising tide of critics (and defenders!) who are engaging on more of a notional level without ever really getting into the weeds.

Solo was good! It had a lot in common with Ragnarok, actually... right down to the Hulk/Chewie meet-cute.

Like okay here: I was really put out by the most recent Spider-Man film's unwillingness to deal seriously with the ramifications of such a radically-altered post-Endgame world. In more skilled hands, the notion of half the population suddenly finding themselves transported years into their own future would be a rich sci-fi vein to tap, so the 'weird! (*shrug*)' treatment of that scenario in Far From Home was kind of a wet fart, imo.

whenever i say “i heard it’s not very good” about anything now my kids pipe up in chorus: “that’s what you said about Solo!!”

the spider-man movies aren’t SF iirc - wishing they were is sort of unreasonable

I'm not expecting a Spidey flick to be a ponderous philosophical treatise or anything but I would appreciate if it felt more firmly rooted in the pre-established world in which it's set.

Also Tracer you may be confusing me with someone else as I never actually saw Solo (although I groused plenty about its existence, hypocrite that I am).

pretty sure this is a marvel film, really impressed by the mid-trailer TWIST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSYjORgaRn4

omg OL i’m sorry! i guess it was a traumatic enough takedown that it fried my memory synapses

xp misread that as "Salo" and was about to jump in

also wtf Solo is terrible

I enjoyed it!

Solo, or the 12 Parsecs of Kessel

I enjoyed it!

I thought the two main actors were great, especially the guy who played Han

Solo was not great or terrible. The kid was terrible, but Woody was great and it was more fun that I expected. About 20 minutes longer than it needed to be though.

Yeah, I would’ve cut down the “assault on the train” scene. I’m prejudiced against Woody Harrelson; I never know if he’s actually good or not!

agreed w/ OL about the five-year "blip" tho i guess they painted themselves into a corner by having the first post-Endgame movie be the one we expect to be a lighthearted comedy. don't need deep philosophizing, but man if there's one thing marvel "event" comics can do well, it's creating a new weird wonky status quo (like idk "norman osborne's in charge and all the official teams are full of villains!") that people have to actually deal with and write around and treat as important for at least a couple years of comics. half the universe dying and then coming back having missed five years is one of the craziest, wildest, far-outest concepts ('nuff said, true believers!) to ever land in a blockbuster film --- but beyond 20 minutes of people being sad in "endgame" it never feels like a thing that really happened, there's no imagination put into exploring that, or willingness to take the audience into a world they don't basically recognize (see also: how all the bizarre supertechnology never really changes anything about society, about which i think i've kvetched before).

even halfway through endgame, the hulk is taking selfies with fans in a diner. there are still *diners* with half the world dead? gee, guess thanos was right, we really didn't miss anything - and tony stark was able to get his dream cabin for a steal!

It's not dissimilar to the question of why denizens of the comics universe wouldn't have an entirely different relationship with mortality from those of us for whom death is an actual permanent thing with no takebacks. Why even open that crazy crazy door if you aren't going to explore the consequences of doing so.

I'm still unsure whether making the Hulk into the most pathetic, not good at being Hulk or Banner, version was incredibly lame or the best character sabotage

I do at least appreciate that the MCU has (thus far) treated death by anything other than Infinity Gems as a done deal.

There's an irony that for 40(?) years, the one exception to the revolving door was Bucky, the only one to come 'back from the dead' in the MCU (pre-Endgame)

I just personally value when the critic is able to signal that they've experienced the object of inquiry with their actual sense apparatus.

this is a privilege reserved for cinematic works, what's the need to get the ol sense apparatus in front of a screen and scribble in the notebook with the light pen when the world is thronging with people who have had their sense apparatuses in front of the screens and the thing the apparatus sensed was a chaos of cgi floating in space

which is the whole point of the criticism of the plotting and the franchising and the endless remythologization behind these movies! that stuff takes the pressure off the aesthetic emptiness of the movies by no longer needing it to be a route to make sense of actual writing, since the story material that is conveyed by the experience of the screen is already so pre-interpreted and packaged for the audience that they ~already know~ what they're seeing when they see it and when they leave the theater everybody already knows what everybody saw

Yes, that's a masterful summary of the approach that I'm reacting to. It's like a restaurant critic whose every review is all 'we've all eaten FOOD before, we've all been to RESTAURANTS, I will talk now about the ESSENCE of this particular cuisine as I meditate upon the GESTALT I've formed of other people's opinions'.

well i'm saying that the movies invite it because that's what they are

if you don't like people treating them that way then you are asking not for criticism and debate that denies that is true about them but one that acknowledges that it is the basis of all our possible apparatusey relations to them and builds on that

And I'm saying that that's no more valid a critical approach than mindlessly slapping 'CRIME FLICK' under a poster of every Coppola and Scorsese film.

tbf the MCU movies do feel like one of the "premium" fast casual burger chains. the food's prepped on site and you're going to get a baseline level of quality

if you want anything other than a burger, you're probably going to want to go somewhere else. you can probably get a comparable or better burger at a real sit-down restaurant that has them on the menu. probably better at a local place that actually has character and isn't a chain

hell, the Avengers are literally Five Guys (plus one woman) at the start

That's a fair extension of the metaphor except that I would ask: what are the better burgers in this case?

it's a metaphor, fill it out your damn self

it's completely irrelevant because the comment is "why are you people only into hamburgers?"

Scorsese shaking his head at people ranking the best hamburger chains when you can walk to any corner and buy a hamburger. Probably hasn't had a hamburger in years.

"I don't eat them. I tried, you know? That's not cuisine. Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with cooks doing the best they can under the circumstances, is junk food. It isn’t the cuisine of human chefs trying to provide emotional, physiological experiences to another human being."

:)

shouldn't be eating that much beef anyway, it's bad for the environment and your health

http://i.pinimg.com/236x/dc/8a/33/dc8a3307858ad6052da3d6f496c262b4--anniversary-quotes-paper-anniversary.jpg

newman would've been a better iron man than rdj btw
ooh, we should do a retro dream casting

"the better burgers" probably depends what you're looking for in these movies. better action movies? better popcorn sci-fi? better techno-thrillers? etc... for each of those, ILX could probably collectively come up with tons of great lists of options from the last eleven years.