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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Multiversal shenanigans are like time travel. It can be fun, but it's also a whirlpool that always threatens to swallow the entire narrative into a terrible vortex until everything becomes mush.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."![]()
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Reminds me of how the recent Marvel verse stories are basically all character fusions.
Jason Aaron's Avengers saga is particularly infuriating since his idea of creativity is essentially Tony Stark but he's Ant-Man or Black Panther if he was Iron Man/Spider-Man/Superman/Adam Warlock.
Its mind-numbing.
Edited by slimcoder on Jul 5th 2022 at 5:38:51 AM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."Sorry this is Rant.
What is happening to this thread lately. It has become just Marvel hate.
New movie, sucks. Disney + shows, sucks. crossover, sucks. Experimental sucks. Sticks to formula, sucks. CGI, sucks. Anything post-endgame, sucks. Long-term, plan, sucks. solo film, sucks. Wrap up a hero's story, sucks. Continue Hero story, sucks. Meta Fanservice, sucks.
This has become all so negative, that discussions on Reddit are more positive.
We can be critical of movies and franchises, but this is just hitting the roof. I mean it doesn't have to be excellent or horrible, there is plenty of inbetween.
Looking throw the last few pages I just see no discussions or excitment just peaple saying it sucks.
On a personal level, seen all this negativity is draining and makeing me unsure if I should share new information becuse i fear that rather then being talked about and peaple excited or at least curious it will just be turned into a negative comment starter.
Is it possable to return to a thread of discussion and information shareing?
Sincerely S Awatching.People haven't been mindlessly bashing the MCU for the past few pages, but acknowledging that the latest phase of this (incredibly, mind-boggingly successful) cinematic universe is aimless and formulaic. The former might be debatable, as some folks have been making the case in this very thread, but the latter is undeniable. It's actually not just okay but advisable to be critical of these movies that have completely dominated the box office for the past decade, often at the expense of smaller and more niche films—or even non-Marvel blockbusters! And believe me, being a part of various film discussion circles, I can tell you the criticism of the MCU in this thread has been MILD if anything.
Yeah. As for me, I just don't feel the hype anymore. Spider-Man has been the exception.
Still haven't seen Black Widow and Eternals, particularly the latter, I feel absolutely no urge to see.
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% ScandinavianThis place is definitely more chill just by virtue of the fact that most of us here aren't openly going all It's Popular, Now It Sucks! the way that it trends elsewhere.
I also think a lot of the overall concerns can be addressed with Feige showing off a more full roadmap this upcoming SDCC and D23 and I'm really hoping they've got stuff for both. I do agree with the idea that conceptually they're doing a lot of the right things including trying to build up the MCU as more of its own sandbox a la Star Wars but it's also very apparent that especially the more casual audiences are looking for some kind of goalpost for this to be marching towards and I hope they make that clearer. And it's not that those goalposts aren't there, it's very apparent having read the comics what the multiple threads are (and there's at least one that's only really been made apparent via the rumor mill) but even then it'd be nice to at least confirm what is set to come.
(I say conceptually because I do recognize that execution has been fairly rough, and like I still overall like everything that's been put out but it has been frustrating noticing similar issues pop up over and over again.)
I'm honestly surprised to see people turning against the multiverse because the creators are literally just doing what multiverses do. This is their function: Little one-off hypotheticals that are like the main 'verse except arbitrarily different.
- What if Spider-Man was Captain America?
- Marvel but Cowboys.
- Thor: Ragnarok except that Loki won in the first movie.
- Etc. etc.
That's all multiverses are. They're just doing the thing. And it's exactly what everyone was clamoring for when Loki first confirmed that we were getting one. What's changed?
Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 6th 2022 at 6:20:20 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.So I haven't watched What If? and can't comment on those individual stories, but what you're describing is the bare minimum of what alternate universe stories are capable of. Around the same time as the MCU's multiversal-centric phase four, we have Into the Spider-Verse, which on the surface asks "What if Spider-Man was a different race/gender/species?" or from another era/different stage of his life, but what it's really exploring is how the themes and motivations of Spider-Man remain universal despite these differences. And more recently, you have Everything Everywhere All at Once, which superficially is a super wacky over-the-top movie but thematically it's about a woman in middle age contemplating the directions her life could have taken, while also being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information and alternatives in today's world.
I do think Loki does something interesting with the concept in that you can read the TVA as an indictment of a very continuity-dependent way of creative thinking that disregards neat stories that technically aren't "canon," but Multiverse of Madness felt like it left some of its cooler ideas unexplored. And since I do want to avoid being overly negative I'm going to avoid my more blunt thoughts about No Way Home, but being honest it feels less like a cohesive, meaningful story and more like memes and fanservice congealed into a two hour movie.
Edited by DavidMerrick on Jul 6th 2022 at 9:55:43 AM
I don't really mind the seemly aimlessness of Phase 4, as speaking for myself I want to see new heroes and stories. I think it's worth noting that when Thanos first appeared in Avengers no one had any idea how they would use him going forward as he was pretty much put in on instant of the director. Seems humorous in hindsight. This phase is a post avenger world, just as phase 2 was a post-normal world. In fact, I would compare the two closely with each other. For the Multiverses What if?, Loki and multiverse of madness and No Way Home have given us a good feel of what's out there in the multiverse from unknown villains, stories taking different paths, and the council of Kang. Honestly, it opens a lot of storytelling potential, and as Kevin Feige said, a lot of what is to come has already been teased.
Edited by SAwatching on Jul 6th 2022 at 4:20:47 PM
Sincerely S Awatching.Into the Spider-Verse and Everything Everywhere don't have the same baggage that the MCU does. They were made from the ground up to be multiversal stories. Spider-Verse is rotating 'verses with each film, while Everything Everywhere takes place in multiple realities that are all granted an equal amount of importance.
The MCU doesn't have that luxury. In the MCU, there is a clear and distinct main universe. It's the one that the writers have spent over a decade writing and fans have invested over a decade into watching. No other universe will ever matter as much as the 616 does, because the 616 is where all non-multiverse stories take place.
It's the same issue the comics have. You can't make a meaningful multiverse when one universe must necessarily be the center of canon. The 616 matters far more than any other universe does or ever will, which inherently reduces the rest of the multiverse to being indulgent side content that merely reflects what happens in the 616.
For instance: Character deaths. When Tony Stark snapped his fingers and deleted Thanos, he not only sacrificed himself but he died all across the multiverse. Animated realities excluded, Tony Stark will never, ever appear in any other 'verse. His machines can show up for a quick cameo in Multiverse of Madness, but all versions of Tony Stark died in Endgame. They died the moment Robert Downey Jr. decided he was done with the franchise and left.
Steve Rogers, too. Despite literally fleeing alive into the multiverse, he's dead in all possible non-animated realities as well. Captain Carter's getting a push because she has an actor who still wants to be here, and can therefore exist in the multiverse while Steve can't. He quit the 616, so he's gone from all realities.
Which gets into the main point that the films and comics differ on: Time. Time comes at a much higher premium in film than it does in comics. The comics release about ~50 different titles per month, but only about 2-3 movies come out in a year. That number's rising thanks to the Disney Plus shows, allowing for a larger variety of characters to tell stories at once, but the limitations remain. For any individual character, it still takes ~3 years to tell a new story.
King T'Challa only got one. Was that movie the best story that could possibly be told with his character? The most important? The most character-defining? The one story most deserving to be brought to the big screen? I hope it was. Because it's all he gets. He's done. He's never coming back. His character is permanently retired with just this one story under his belt. Even as his comic book counterpart continues to release comic after comic for untold decades yet to come.
That's a question that has to be asked of every movie. Was this a good use of this character's finite time? Was it better that we got No Way Home instead of any other Spider-Man story that could have been told? If the franchise loses Benedict Cumberbatch tomorrow, will we be glad that Multiverse of Madness was the final word on his character?
There's a lot of factors, I think, that are working against the films' multiverse. At the end of the day, I'm not sure the MCU multiverse can ever truly be anything more than a pale reflection of its central universe, and one that comes at a high premium of time.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I have still been enjoying Phase 4 but yes, it is absolutely a problem that solo characters barely have any time to build up their own mythos and settle themselves into a comfortable status quo before getting pulled into wild Crisis Crossovers with blown-up stakes and multiversal shenanigans.
Spider-Man: Far From Home seemed like the perfect setup for characters like Kraven the Hunter and Scorpion to show up in the next movie. In fact, that was the original plan before No Way Home turned into Spider-Verse, but Live Action.
And what Multiverse of Madness did to Doctor Strange's own mytho is the nadir of this. In the first Doctor Strange, Mordo was set up to be a main villain. In the very next movie starring Doctor Strange, he got reduced to "lol, he's my offscreen archenemy", while Strange fights Wanda as his villain in Mo M.
I'm afraid the same thing is going to happen to Kamala Khan. The fact that the show doesn't seem interested in showing her just be the superhero protector of Jersey City is worrying to me.
At this point, the MCU is starting to resemble modern event comics, and not in a good way.
Edited by Nightwire on Jul 6th 2022 at 10:12:47 AM
The big reason I feel Into The Spider-Verse was a significantly better movie than No Way Home despite the similar premise is that ITSV kept focus on the central character arcs. It never forgets to be an origin and exploration of Miles' life in favor of multiverse hijinks, and it thus keeps a firm hold on its emotional core for the entirety of the film.
My primary gripe with NWH, in contrast, is that it puts Peter's own story and universe on the backburner the moment the multiverse plot happens, and then ultimately just kind of discards it entirely once that plot is over, and during that plot it doesn't do a great job of having those multiverse characters connect - neither thematically nor even literally, really - to Peter himself or his narrative.
QFT.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 6th 2022 at 10:22:04 AM
There's some parts of Phase 4 I've been legitimately enjoying (WandaVision, Loki, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Moon Knight), but overall it's been pretty hit or miss.
I'm liking some of the overall ideas that are being introduced, but I feel like there could be more that's happening.
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."And what Multiverse of Madness did to Doctor Strange's own mytho is the nadir of this. In the first Doctor Strange, Mordo was set up to be a main villain. In the very next movie starring Doctor Strange, he got reduced to "lol, he's my offscreen archenemy", while Strange fights Wanda as his villain in Mo M.
Glad to see I'm not the only one bothered by this. It's so weird seeing Strange talk about Mordo as if he was a long time rival and sworn enemy in the comic... when in this continuity as far as we know, Mordo was mostly his ally, then left and turned evil in a post-credit scene without Strange so much as hearing about it. I was left wondering if Raimi had only received the clipnote of the first movie or if something had happened offscreen.
I think you're mistakenly assuming that "everyone" wanted multiverse stories. I don't think there's nearly as much overlap between "people who wanted the multiverse" and "people who are complaining about multiverse stuff" as you think, and even the overlap is likely people who are dissatisfied with how it's being done.
I'm always wary of introducing the multiverse to a franchise that isn't already built around it, because it's really hard to pull off successfully and tends to either become extraordinarily messy or make events feel meaningless (who cares if Tony Stark #616 died? There's literally an infinite number of other Tony Starks).
I think No Way Home actually used its multiverse concept the best; a self-contained, lighthearted romp that only used the multiverse for cool references to the Maguire and Garfield Spider-Man films and sent them back home by virtue of its resolution. Multiverse of Madness doing almost the exact same thing ("Look! It's Black Bolt from Inhumans, Captain Carter from What If?, and Professor X from the X-Men!") in the immediate next film didn't carry nearly as much impact the second time, and it came at the expense of actually fleshing out Doctor Strange's mythos.
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!
Plus it suffers because the only character with similar nostalgia cred to Maguire and Holland is Stewart's Professor X.
Everyone else 'oh that's neat but I don't care that much' which I guess is intentional because of what happens to them. They've got to be well known/nice enough we realise the villian's wrong but not so well known/nice that we're not entertained when they are massacred.
To be fair, multiverse mania really did take over the fanbase for a long time there. There were people who were outspoken against it (I was one of them) but it was pretty quiet against the tide of "everything needs to be part of the multiverse!" / "Canonize X non-MCU film with the multiverse!" / "Dr. Strange 2 is going to be sequel/prequel to Spider-Man as part of one big multiverse story arc!" etc, etc, etc.
It's definitely not unbelievable that the MCU execs might've looked that that overwhelming tide of multiverse hype, and decided that every project needed to do it going forward.

We have shows within shows and spin-offs of spin-offs in the MCU now. This is outrageously meta.