So, last time I talked about good aspects of the much maligned DCEU. Now, I'm going to point out some shortcomings of the mostly beloved MCU. Hopefully Thor 3 can correct some of these, as Phase 3 has been pretty solid thus far, but I'm kind of doubtful.
1. Average/Bad Sequels
Except for Captain Americas 2 and 3 and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the sequels are mostly meh, if not completely horrible. Iron Man 2 was forgettable. Iron Man 3 was a joke. Thor the Dark World is a boring mess. Avengers: Age of Ultron isn't bad necessarily. I personally still enjoy it at least. But in no way delivered on all the trailer hype or met the bar set by the first Avengers, Guardians, and the Winter Soldier.
2. Repetition
2. Repetition
This happens a lot within this franchise. The same plot gets recycled in another movie and people still say it's SO good, if not better than the first. Say what you want about the DCEU, even if the stories aren't that good, at least they've had different stories from each other. Whereas Dr. Strange could easily be boiled down to Iron Man with magical visuals (don't throw a fit, I like Dr. Strange, but tell me you don't see this), you could never confuse Man of Steel and Wonder Woman. While both those movies are about an extraterrestrial coming to aid humanity (or destroy it, whichever comes first), they're told in different ways and with drastically different tones. On the other hand...
(Click to enlarge, I think.)
3. Lack of Compelling Villains
You could make the same argument for the DCEU, since they haven't had a good villain except maybe General Zod, but they only have four movies so far. Since 2008, sixteen movies have been made in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Out of all of those stories how many stand-out villains have we gotten? Everyone has a different opinion, but I say four: Loki (The Avengers and the Thor movies), Ultron (Avengers: Age of Ultron), Ego (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2), and Adrian Toomes/Vulture (Spiderman: Homecoming, although I chalk this one up more to Michael Keaton's performance than the actual writing for the character. He's so damn cool, no matter how old he gets!). So, do some simple math and you'll see the MCU actually has an equal movie:good villain ratio with the DCEU! Funny how that works.
4. Lack of stand-alone power
If you're a newcomer to the MCU, you're not going to want to watch Spiderman: Homecoming if you discover it's connected to fifteen other movies, and it's actually a follow-up to Captain America: Civil War, which in turn is a follow-up to literally all of the other movies. I understand and appreciate the ambition and scope of this massive universe they've created, but when you start to put too much focus into setting up future movies, your stand-alones will lose their power, and you'll just be left with a series of feature-length trailers. This has always been a problem. Even back in Phase 1, I don't think any of the movies besides Iron Man and Captain America have much value besides setting up The Avengers! I do applaud movies like Ant-Man and Spiderman, which do have references to the other movies, but could just as easily be their own movies, but they are the exception, not the rule.
5. Rush, rush, rush!
Let's look at the MCU's release history:
2008: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk (it's okay this time, nobody cares about that movie.)
2009: Nothing.
2010: Iron Man 2
2011: Thor, Captain America: the First Avenger
2012: The Avengers
2013: Iron Man 3, Thor: the Dark World (woah, that's sad)
2014: Captain America: the Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy (woah, that's awesome)
2015: Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man
2016: Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange
2017: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spiderman: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok
The projects keep getting steadily bigger and more rushed. While I do think this year and last year have produced relatively solid MCU films, your chances of putting out consistent quality lessen as you pay more attention to release dates than quality.
6. No Stakes
Yeah, Cap is on the run now, but him and Tony Stark are still pretty much friends as of right now. Civil War, the biggest superhero war ever, was too afraid to have the heroes hating each other at the end. Really? Not to mention all the people who keep dying and coming back later. (SPOILER ALERT) Really, the only lasting stake is when Yondu legitimately died in Guardians 2. But even that's not too big of a deal as I don't see the Guardians' space shenanigans in that movie really impacting the Earth as a whole later on. (END SPOILERS) It's like they're so afraid of any major changes that could impact later movies that they won't take any risks, which goes back to the importance of stand-alones I mentioned earlier.
7. Generic action
Winter Soldier haters: First of all, you're wrong. Second of all: Do you know why everyone likes this movie so much? Besides the clever contrast of an amoral world and a moral Captain America in a rare thought-provoking story from the MCU, it's kind of the only one that really lets you enjoy the action and remember it afterwords. Yeah, Civil War has that airport scene, but even the controversial final battle between Stark and Rogers isn't all that memorable, as they just do their typical thing until the point where Bucky loses his arm. Winter Soldier is the only one with consistently well-directed, entertaining fight scenes that actually look like something out of a Bourne film. But with the other movies, you can only see so many CGI smackdowns before they all start to blend together.
(Well, okay, that was awesome, but you know what I mean.)
This is one key area I actually think the DCEU is better at. And it's a pretty significant area, since these movies are focused on freaking superheroes, for crying out loud! If you can't give more than okay action scenes in a superhero movie, what are you doing?!
8. Timeline is too long
(See image for number 4).
I like superhero movies as much as the next guy, but when they're always at the top of the summer movie line-up, the concept wears thin. I know Hollywood doing something original in the summer is pretty much a lost cause, but you're not helping, Marvel!
9. You broke Joss Whedon!
This is the guy who directed the TV show that received one of the most outrageously early cancellations of all time. And YOU guys are what broke him. That should tell you something.
10. This Stupid Twist
Seriously, who the hell thought this was a good idea?! You had such a good villain on your hands. Maybe the best one in the entire MCU. But then you throw him away just to have a pointless punchline and give the villain role to another generic evil businessman? Why? What are you on? You were doing so well and killed your whole movie with one stupid joke! Bad Marvel!
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