The studio’s golden box office aura has been dented, but chief architect Kevin Feige isn’t scrapping his years-long cinematic universe plan, just refining it: “They’re not going to give up,” says an insider.
Shang-Chi, Spider-Man NWH, and Doctor Strange MoM were all great and Phase 4. Unfortunately Black Widow, Eternals, and Thor L&T were also Phase 4 and are some of the lowest rated movies in the MCU.
Shang-Chi was the kind of quality I expect from MCU.
But I’ll be honest, even MoM disappointed me. It felt like they just abandoned all of the character development poured into Wanda because “heh heh cool Sam Raimi movie” and the America plot was kind of tacked on.
Black Widow, Eternals, Thor L&T, The Marvels all had the potential to be great. It’s like they just gave up on scripts and that notorious centralized quality assurance. Which I know is something a lot of people hated on them for, but I think the difference is obvious. Their centralized production over Phase 3 projects worked.
(We don’t talk about Quantumania. That one was unsalvageable.)
I hope they get back to the old way of doing things as Phase 5 progresses.
Shang-Chi is one of my favourite MCU movies, and I actually kind of liked Black Widow. Multiverse of Madness was a good Sam Raimi movie but not a very good MCU movie.
Love and Thunder is probably my least favourite. It made me hope Taiki Waititi never gets his hands on another franchise I love even though he has done some good things in the past. Ragnarok was good but already leaning way too much into comedy. I’d hate to see what he would do to Star Wars.
I would pay to see a fixed version of Thor 4. It just needs a few comedic scenes removed, 15 minutes here and there of God Butchering, and the deleted Zeus scene by the pond and it could be a top tier movie.
I actually liked Doctor Strange MoM A LOT. To me, it was what the first Doctor Strange should have been.
As far as Wanda’s development, I didn’t get the impression that she was all good at the end of WV. It was just that she was literally forced to reconcile with her delusions. But that’s it.
In MoM, she has reconciled with her delusions. It’s just not how people were expecting her to. She convinced herself in WV that she wasn’t hurting people. Faced with reality, she decided that’s not a deal-breaker.
To be honest, I was surprised people had an issue with it. It didn’t even seem like a problem when I watched it the first time.
No, I’m happy with the direction they took her after the events of WV. I would just have liked to see that moment she decided to lean into it depicted onscreen instead of being an off screen development. That’s a huge moment to just…not show. I think it would have added a lot to the movie.
I think that’s pretty much what her cabin scene was at the end of WV. But also, she never had a problem with kidnapping the whole town for herself. Killing people for “her” children isn’t that big of a step. Especially knowing she had the Darkhold.
See, I read that scene as being equivocal because I’m not familiar with the comics, so I (still) don’t know what the darkhold is beyond “evil macguffin.” The scene opens with her so tranquil, appearing to make peace with herself and searching for her lost children. I thought they were leaving the door open that she might have a chance of accomplishing that.
So it would’ve been nice to have like 5 minutes in MoM to just show what happened between that and fully evil demon Wanda. I dunno, just felt shortchanged to me
Interesting. The Darkhold is a major plot device in one of the Agents of Shield seasons. I can’t remember what all they said about it in WV. But I already knew it was a seriously evil influence, as they elaborate on later in MoM.
I was actually a fan of both the marvels and quantumania. But yeah the rest were bad. Thor love and thunder was perhaps the most disappointing of them all, considering how good ragnarok was.
I loved the pieces of The Marvels. But the completed movie felt rushed and really really badly edited to me. Which made it so much more disappointing because the pieces were SO good. (Kittens and dancing, singing princesses?? Omg amazing.)
Guardians is technically Phase 5.
Shang-Chi, Spider-Man NWH, and Doctor Strange MoM were all great and Phase 4. Unfortunately Black Widow, Eternals, and Thor L&T were also Phase 4 and are some of the lowest rated movies in the MCU.
Oh right, I was mixing up Spider-Man FFH & NWH.
Shang-Chi was the kind of quality I expect from MCU.
But I’ll be honest, even MoM disappointed me. It felt like they just abandoned all of the character development poured into Wanda because “heh heh cool Sam Raimi movie” and the America plot was kind of tacked on.
Black Widow, Eternals, Thor L&T, The Marvels all had the potential to be great. It’s like they just gave up on scripts and that notorious centralized quality assurance. Which I know is something a lot of people hated on them for, but I think the difference is obvious. Their centralized production over Phase 3 projects worked.
(We don’t talk about Quantumania. That one was unsalvageable.)
I hope they get back to the old way of doing things as Phase 5 progresses.
Shang-Chi is one of my favourite MCU movies, and I actually kind of liked Black Widow. Multiverse of Madness was a good Sam Raimi movie but not a very good MCU movie.
Love and Thunder is probably my least favourite. It made me hope Taiki Waititi never gets his hands on another franchise I love even though he has done some good things in the past. Ragnarok was good but already leaning way too much into comedy. I’d hate to see what he would do to Star Wars.
I would pay to see a fixed version of Thor 4. It just needs a few comedic scenes removed, 15 minutes here and there of God Butchering, and the deleted Zeus scene by the pond and it could be a top tier movie.
He’s already worked on The Mandalorian
I actually liked Doctor Strange MoM A LOT. To me, it was what the first Doctor Strange should have been.
As far as Wanda’s development, I didn’t get the impression that she was all good at the end of WV. It was just that she was literally forced to reconcile with her delusions. But that’s it.
In MoM, she has reconciled with her delusions. It’s just not how people were expecting her to. She convinced herself in WV that she wasn’t hurting people. Faced with reality, she decided that’s not a deal-breaker.
To be honest, I was surprised people had an issue with it. It didn’t even seem like a problem when I watched it the first time.
No, I’m happy with the direction they took her after the events of WV. I would just have liked to see that moment she decided to lean into it depicted onscreen instead of being an off screen development. That’s a huge moment to just…not show. I think it would have added a lot to the movie.
I think that’s pretty much what her cabin scene was at the end of WV. But also, she never had a problem with kidnapping the whole town for herself. Killing people for “her” children isn’t that big of a step. Especially knowing she had the Darkhold.
See, I read that scene as being equivocal because I’m not familiar with the comics, so I (still) don’t know what the darkhold is beyond “evil macguffin.” The scene opens with her so tranquil, appearing to make peace with herself and searching for her lost children. I thought they were leaving the door open that she might have a chance of accomplishing that.
So it would’ve been nice to have like 5 minutes in MoM to just show what happened between that and fully evil demon Wanda. I dunno, just felt shortchanged to me
Interesting. The Darkhold is a major plot device in one of the Agents of Shield seasons. I can’t remember what all they said about it in WV. But I already knew it was a seriously evil influence, as they elaborate on later in MoM.
I was actually a fan of both the marvels and quantumania. But yeah the rest were bad. Thor love and thunder was perhaps the most disappointing of them all, considering how good ragnarok was.
I loved the pieces of The Marvels. But the completed movie felt rushed and really really badly edited to me. Which made it so much more disappointing because the pieces were SO good. (Kittens and dancing, singing princesses?? Omg amazing.)