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

for every "being a teen is really hard.. when you're a super hero!" moment in the Spider-Man movies, you could just watch Lady Bird

or on a related-by-actor note, Hanna

i possibly should give gravity another chance someday. i saw it with my then-partner on a big-ish screen (it was near the end of its run) and we were underwhelmed, but she REALLY didn't go for it and maybe that pulled my rating down a bit. liked it as zany thrill-ride and felt it was basically worth the price versus going on a ride and a half at coney island, but i remember the script being just insultingly dumb.

one million xposts-

X2 is still the best comic book movie

Blade > X2

... Blade Runner 2049

How are we defining "high-energy" here? Amour had as much.

(both terrible films)

DJP otm

i watched Winter Soldier w/my wife at home and she said she just didn't feel like she had any reason to care about anyone in the movie, which is a fair point though i think it's one of the more accomplished movies out of the 21 thus far.

if i was re-doing the action films poll i would probably give Ragnarok a down-ballot vote. i think the films w/the most humor have wound up being the best (that one, plus the Ant-Man flicks and GOTG also benefit from it). they're also the ones that are the most memorable along w/Black Panther (which is a tier below them just due to much more pedestrian direction and action despite the actually interesting storyline).

I tried watching Ant-Man with my son last weekend — he was begging to see it, and I had watched it already / thought it would be ok — but we ultimately had to bail even on that "lighthearted" entry in the series, due to more extensive gun violence than I recalled from my viewing.

I had *zero* exposure to ANY Marvel characters except Spider-Man as a kid... so it's easy for me to bypass all these.

Alita: Battle Angel, Detective Pikachu, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Aquaman, the Wreck-it Ralph movies, Incredibles 2, Ocean's 8, Blade Runner 2049, The Shape of Water, Logan, Kubo and the Two Strings, Star Trek Beyond, Crimson Peak, Mad Max:Fury Road, Furious 5-7, Big Hero 6, The Pirates (the Korean epic adventure, not the Aardman claymation thing), Pacific Rim, Furious 5-7, Brave, Tintin, Hugo, Real Steel, Attack the Block, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the Harry Potter films, Coraline, Ip Man, Speed Racer....

Dear lord! I mean, I agree with your main point, that if Marvel didn't exist it would just be replaced by something similar, but looking at that list it really makes me appreciate Kevin Feige much more. Tintin? Speed Racer? Also, talk about insufferable fan bases...

Kubo and the Two Strings was beautiful

the inescapable cultural omnipresence of Speed Racer fans

Luckily they are few and far between, and let's keep it that way. It's NOT okay.

speed racer is fucking amazing, gtfo

nothing the MCU machine is cranking out is going to be truly divisive or polarize mainstream audiences. if you buy into their superhero premise, the most you're going to get is ambivalence or "ehh, it was ok" from most people if they weren't wholly invested

I think the formula is such that eventually everyone is going to be ambivalent, because all of the rough edges are polished off of these things

and my point was not abt marvel being replaced with something similar...? i'm saying that we can get away from only comparing marvel movies to other superhero movies, while still comparing them meaningfully to other movies that try to do some of the things that the marvel movies are going for.

Kubo and the Two Strings was beautiful

I don't get the comparison with half that list then, I mean, Blade Runner 2049? To me Avengers Infinity War really went for that rollercoaster feel, but it didn't hit that feel half as much as Manakamana or The Iron Ministry. I'm not sure what that kind of comparison would achieve, though. It's true, if there weren't any Marvel movies tomorrow, I wouldn't miss them at all, I also lived quite well without any Star Wars movies for years. I'd be perfectly happy is the cinema was only slow Hungarian arthouse. But it's not! There's going to be popcorn movies ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

..... which is why i tried to offer up a list of popcorn movies that i personally enjoyed more

But a lot of them aren't popcorn movies? They aren't populist or enjoyable to watch.

I guess at the end of the day, I just think you have shitty taste in popcorn movies...

FWIW, speaking as an unabashed fan, I would have been cool with Endgame being the actual endgame of the MCU. It was a tidy wrap-up that I'm not entirely convinced they'll be able to pull of a second time.

surely the populist, not for kids version of Thanos is The Purge series

nothing the MCU machine is cranking out is going to be truly divisive or polarize mainstream audiences. if you buy into their superhero premise, the most you're going to get is ambivalence or "ehh, it was ok" from most people if they weren't wholly invested

I think the formula is such that eventually everyone is going to be ambivalent, because all of the rough edges are polished off of these things

― mh, Friday, October 25, 2019 12:55 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

My gf's septuagenarian parents really enjoy and see all of these movies even though I don't think they GAF about superheroes or even action movies in general. You might be underestimating their appeal.

If all the superhero films fell out of favor, surely they would be replaced by pirate films!

We'll see soon enough, I kinda suspect it's going to crack once all these weird tv shows have to be taken into account as well. The netflix-verse was just ignored, but it seems like they don't want to do that to the disney+-verse.

xp I enjoy stories like the one someone told about an elderly couple walking out of Endgame, and saying to each other, "What was THAT all about?"

xp No, I'm taking the appeal for granted! I'm saying that a broad swath of society is watching a number of these movies, and even when your girlfriend's parents go see one that they weren't particularly into, they're not going to say it was a bad movie -- they're going to be at most indifferent, and probably see the next. There's no risk that any of them is going to be a completely different type of movie. It's a pretty homogenous product!

fwiw I took my mom to Infinity War

about 180 mins iirc xp

the absolute weirdest take by people who would traditionally be into comics, related ephemera, nerdy stuff is that they're the prime audience or even a majority of the audience in theaters

it's more that for most movie chains, the mainline product is now superhero movies -- or at the very least, serial franchises that fit the format

IDK, dude, personally I didn't get onboard with this shiz until a few movies in because I expected it to be bullshit and then was pleasantly surprised when it wasn't. Once these movies start to go properly downhill (as they most assuredly will), I will gracefully bow out. I'm sure there are people who will continue to suffer through mounds of garbage but I don't see most people maintaining the 'I must see every installment!' commitment once these things hit the skids.

'People already suffering through mounds of garbage, lol' - some wiseacre in this thread, assuredly

They'll go see a few shitty films, but eventually, they'll stop. Suicide Squad sold a lot of tickets, as did Superman vs Batman, but by Justice League, they'd used up their goodwill. Solo flopped as well.

X2 is still the best comic book movie

Ghost World, Akira, Men In Black, American Splendour, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, The Death Of Stalin, Zombillennium, Oldboy, Barbarella, Blue Is The Warmest Colour and Batman Returns are each at least 60x better than X2.

any kind of movie can be good is basically how i break it down to an extent; i think i probably enjoyed Wiseman's National Gallery as much as I enjoyed the first Avengers movie... though mostly because of lack of superhero fatigue. Laika's films are universally great, 75% of Pixar's stuff is great, all the Marvel films I've seen (prob about 70% or so of the complete collection?) are at least enjoyably watchable if not very memorable or life changing, 90% of Studio Ghibli is great, two Aliens films are great, two Terminator films are great, one Predator is great, two Mad Max films are great. DC almost always sucks, Sony Marvel almost always sucks. 100% of Kurosawa is great, 70% of Miike is great. I'm a... drumroll please... POPCORNTIMIST

xpost History of Violence, yo

Surely American Splendor, Death of Stalin and Blue is the Warmest Color are only "comic book movies" to the extent that's their original source material; only the first shows a direct thruline with the original product and the other two are auteur pieces imo.

"Hey, howabout we have that old Spiderman theme tune, people will LOVE that! And we could have that Hulk guy say "you wouldnt like me when I'm angry", people will remember that!"

In fairness, I don't know if the Marvel studio films did these groaners again.

Thought that Detective Dee film was really poor, and I really like Tsui Hark. Some say that's one of his better recent-ish films and I really hope that isn't true.

If all the superhero films fell out of favor, surely they would be replaced by pirate films!

nerd

Yeah, forks otm. Superflicks are primed to be somewhat successful just on the basis of their existence but they gotta maintain their a-game in order to maintain that success.

I mean, I have way more affinity for the X-Men than most of the material adapted for the MCU, but I've only seen maaaaaybe like half/one-third of the X-adjacent films because they're mostly pretty 'ehhhh' if not outright bad.

i liked the first raimi spiderman but have not fucked with any of the ones after that.
apparently Homecoming and Far from Home are pretty good?
Spiderverse was, as everyone assured me and I finally discovered on my own, really really good.

xpost History of Violence, yo

this is one of the five most boring films I’ve ever seen in a cinema

Surely American Splendor, Death of Stalin and Blue is the Warmest Color are only "comic book movies" to the extent that's their original source material; only the first shows a direct thruline with the original product and the other two are auteur pieces imo.

Guardians Of The Galaxy or Avengers Endgame have way less of a throughline to the original product than Death Of Stalin

Endgame has no discernible thruline period! That's the knock against it!
GotGalaxy is ALSO imo an auteur piece

forks, Homecoming is one of the best and highly-recommended, but Far From Home is (in my dissenting opinion) kinda lower-tier MCU.

i've got both to watch when i'm ready but my next planned home movie binge is gonna be Starlings/Kestrel's Eye/Pica Pica/Light Year: four mostly-wordless films by Swedish documentarian Mikael Kristersson about BIRDS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk9vv8n-L0s

watched this last night and it was pretty great, though explicitly for kids. Those of you raising anyone between five and twelve, there's an english dub version that would go over well i think!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3QkSzpNGW8

Yeah lest anyone itt fall under the misapprehension that I am a MCU obsessive simply because disaffection with my job leads me to post about it incessantly, 90% of my film viewing tends to be from like pre-1960. Got some sweet Murnau on the way to my home as we speak (alongside a copy of Beware! The Blob for balance).

the absolute weirdest take by people who would traditionally be into comics, related ephemera, nerdy stuff is that they're the prime audience or even a majority of the audience in theaters

It shocks people when I tell them that superhero movies have a negligible impact on comic sales - TV series like The Boys or Preacher create a much larger bump for GNs than any MCU movie has for its respective characters.

Yeah, they are publishing fewer Avengers book today than they were when Iron Man debuted.

Probably due to a (thankful) lack of synergy. There have been multiple occasions wherein a Marvel character featured in a new movie wasn't even featured in their own title at that particular time.

Or like (if my memory of the timeline is correct) when Incredible Hulk was released while comics Hulk was busy being a space gladiator.