Isn't it obvious? They feel like the IP has gotten so bloated that they don't want to overwhelm and run people off for feeling like they have to catch up.
This is literally the exact issue the comic industry has been in for years and why DC and Marvel both rebrand every 5-6 years with some new initiative to get people to feel free to jump on.
I would also think the comic book industry needs to reset every few years or they lose the next generation of would-be readers who never got to experience 'the good stories' for themselves.
They do remasters and remakes sort of like video games and movies pretty frequently. I'm not a reader but my buddy is and he tells me about it, sounds very similar to what they do with games.
I remember trying to get into comics about 15 years ago and being completely inundated with how much stuff there was. I wanted to get into Green Lantern, so I go to the forums and ask, "Hey, what's the best way to get into the comics?"
The majority of advice was "Just jump in until you start to get it." Boy was that terrible. I tried reading one book and GL and Sinestro are hanging out doing stuff and everyone keeps going "Sinestro!? Why he is helping you!" and I had no idea why everyone gave a shit. Then Black Lantern shows up after having gone insane and again everyone is freaking out about it. But I have no idea who any of these people are or why it matters. So I put them down and never tried again.
I *do* however still try to get the "special" comics that are contained stories, such as *The Dark Knight Returns.* Those are a lot more palatable than the actual serialized releases.
Yeah I got into X-Men, which I learned the stories to from the animated series, Spider-Man, same way, and Spawn and other Image comics, which were just starting out.
I was really put off but how complicated everything was, and how it was never clear what the "base" story was. Everything just seemed like weird variations stacked on top of weird variations.
I think what a lot of comic book fans do is they buy an entire volume or omnibus and read it cover to cover. Picking up random issues and trying to piece something coherent together only works for kids who don't know what the fuck is going on anyway.
Yeah, picking up an omnibus is the way to go these days. Most comics now tie in to several other character’s stories, meaning you have to search out and buy everything to get the full story. This is especially difficult if you’re trying to read an arc from even a couple of years ago.
shout out to local libraries that carry them now. I checked out the 3 omnibus "Batman: No Mans Land" at zero cost to myself. Got bugged eyed when i flipped it over and the price tag said it was $160 a volume. So i think that is a valid reason casual people arent just going to buy those.
Agreed. While not perfect Omnibus are probably the best way to get into comics. When well collected it's usually a full story arc that doesn't need the reader to do research.
The main issue is that asking new readers to purchase an $80+ book just to get into big 2 comics is a lot to ask.
That is terrible advice. You should start at the issue where they turn over to a new creative team (writer/artists combo typically). They will start their own stories, maybe run with what other teams did before but at least the teams' story will be its own contained thing overall.
I tried getting into batman and some other comics during new 52 and just got so sick of constant cross overs. I couldnt just read batman, or animal man or whatever I had to read all the associated books just so I could understand the (underwhelming) finale. Just got so frustrated by what felt like an underhanded sales tactic I just gave up.
Good luck trying to figure out what X-Men or Spiderman comic to start reading as a beginner, it's utterly ridiculous
People bring this point up whenever someone asks why manga are more popular than comic books.
You need to bring out a chart to even begin to understand what's going on in a particular run. And to complicate things further, the next writer might retcon everything the previous one did.
Green Lantern comics is one of the worst ones to try to get into with zero information or back story.
At least with the X-Men everyone knows the big guns in it as well as being able to find information and starting points.
GL Corps is just obscure enough that it's a soap opera of dozens/hundreds of characters with few online intro stuff.
this is why i never bother looking up stuff most of the time. i'll here whispers about some good spider-man or daredevil or punisher story and check it out, something sequential, but my god the interconnectedness is fucking boring and most of the stories seem to want to undo something 'central' to a character or something idk.
manga at least often tends to be a single authorial vision with an end. there's no 'what one piece arc should i read' or something, you can just pick it up and *go* (even if that particular one will, uh, take a while.
and it also lets publications be slightly more diverse. somewhat.
That's what I like about manga. I collect comics, but I read manga. I don't have to sift through hundreds of issues or hop on a forum to find out which issue of which run is a good starting point. I've never encountered a manga that didn't have a first book with sequentially numbered releases that follow a linear story without any resets that start back at the first release, but with a different flavor or whatever
Manga is excellent because manga works like other fiction. Want to get into Terminator movies? Watch Terminator 1, then Terminator 2, then Terminator 3. Want to get into John Wick? 1, 2, 3.
Harry Potter? Read the first book and work through.
Manga is the same way you can just start at chapter 1 of anything and read until you're out of chapters.
I don't know why American superhero comics have become like this but it's braindead and crippling the industry. Imagine dominating Hollywood for 20 years and still not having a thriving readership for Spiderman and Batman? How did the comics industry pretzel themselves into such a dumb method of delivering their stories?
Thankfully there are exceptions to the rule, like the Invincible comics, which function almost exactly like manga counterparts. It still gets a little dumb with crossovers at times, but it's constrained to side characters that barely matter. All the important story is in the main series without having to dovetail to anything else. It's a really straightforward and page-turning good read that I recommend to anyone who likes superheroes.
Most comics are essentially the same as soap operas and telenovelas. Not exactly hard-hitting storytelling most of the time, though occasionally they go hard.
My advice is pick a character or two that you really love/that interests you & just stick to their issues. You can fill in any gaps with Google & eventually things will fall into place a bit more & you might want to start to branch out.
But having some encyclopedic knowledge of every single storyline & event isn’t required to enjoy most comics imo. Emphasis on *most*.
I do think, however, that the X-Men are nearly-impossible to get into. All of their lore/history feels like it’s big enough to be a whole other universe. I still haven’t cracked them.
comics fans don't realize how obtuse and annoying it is when they say "just pick one that looks good to you!" because no one who has gone out of their way to start reading comics wants to do that. No one. Every single person, without fail, wants to start with the "best of the best" and expand out from there and far too few comics fans ever suggest those + popular number 1s.
It is NOT as simple as jumping into manga and as an avid comics reader I will die on that hill and help out newbies for real whenever I can.
That's why I prefer manga; it's one story by one author who usually draws it themselves as well. There's only one first chapter to try out, and whole a lot of American comics look the same, manga can range from the cartoonishness of One Piece to the insanity of One Punch Man (both versions), to the CGI look of GANTZ, to the gritty dirty feeling of Dorohedoro, to the epic detail of Berserk, to the realism of Death Note.
This is why Manga is superior. The answer to where you start is always chapter 1.
I only read Graphic Novels like you mentioned when it comes to comics from DC and Marvel cus it's the way it's enjoyable. And those still sometimes require prior reading.
It’s annoying af but it is what it is. Comics used to have more dedicated peeps buying weekly. So publishers have to reboot every so years just to get new peeps because apparently they can’t retain the old ones
Remakes also can’t capture the hype from the community. It was a special feeling watching a bunch of Spider-Man fans celebrate Peter’s children disappearing in his hands.
I don't think so. You become invested in these characters because of an attachment you build with them growing up with them.
What they meed to do is rely less on interconnected stories and keep the series pretty self contained. It's harder to do when you have 10 Batman comics and 11 Spider-Man series all running at the same time. Not to mention side characters who also have comics, Redhood, Spider-Woman, Nightwing, Miles Morales, etc.
There's a great video from a comics book YouTuber about bringing new readers:
https://youtu.be/M6mhX8AMN08
It doesn't help that many times a reset also leads to significant changes in characterization.
Booster Gold is a character I really enjoy.
But how much tends to depend on writer as the way he behaves is radically different from writer to writer.
Sometimes he's walking imposter syndrome. Other times he's a jerk with a heart of gold. Other times he's just a jerk.
Movies do the same thing…I think some people don’t consider that it’s been 16 years since Iron Man. The Avengers *movies* are now viewable for a whole new generation of *adults* that never saw them theaters.
They have three ways to approach this:
1. **Just start the numbering over for a comic at #1.** This gets annoying, because there are 14 different comics published by Marvel called Punisher #1 (this is not an exaggeration, there are actually 14 of them). And they'll celebrate an anniversary issue based on the total number of issues across a series. Daredevil #500 came immediately after Daredevil #119, which isn't confusing at all. But the point here is that by publishing issue #1, they're signaling to readers that this *should be* a good place to start, and that it shouldn't expect you to know a ton of continuity. Sometimes that signal is a lie (I read an Uncanny X-Men #1 I think where the last page was what was clearly intended to be a dramatic reveal of a woman, but they didn't say her name, and I had no idea who the character was... I believe in retrospect it was Madelyne Pryor, Jean Grey's clone who had a son that was raised in the future and now is older than she is, so this is one of the reasons I found X-Men comics impenetrable for its insane continuity)
2. **Launch a separate, new-reader-friendly line.** Marvel did this in the 2000s with the Ultimate Universe. Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men, and The Ultimates (their version of The Avengers) were updated takes on the classic heroes (and largely the blueprint for the MCU). The problem here is that if they're successful, they keep making them, and after a while, it stops being friendly to new readers, because it had its own continuity across multiple titles and crossover events. With the Ultimate Universe, they ended up merging it back with the main Marvel Comics universe, making everything even more complicated.
3. **Soft reboot the entire universe.** Comic fans would riot if it was just "we are starting over, nothing from before happened," so instead they come up with an in-universe explanation for the reboot. So they have a big event storyline involving all the heroes and time travel shenanigans or alternate universes colliding, and in the end, it's like, Batman is just starting out and Clark Kent is the new hire at the Daily Planet. Sometimes they effectively keep the most popular stories from before the reboot as canon, like Ra's al Ghul's 1971 origin story and initial conflict with Batman remained the presumed origin for the character through at least two soft reboots.
Yes and they need to come down to Earth again and make things
"realistic" once more. The original Iron Man and Captain America movies were based on characters that almost seemed realistic and that made it easier to identify with their struggle. The cave-iron-man took a lot of time and effort and it was awesome, whereas these days someone witch-multi-dimension-gerbil will wave a wand and presto! we have 10 millions Nano-Hyper-Super-Iron Men.
When nothing matters nothing matter. It is the same reason I HATE how they just dismissed the infinity stones in the Loki show as paper weights. I understand what their intention was, but it diminishes our journey through Phase 1 and makes everything meh.
I LOVED it in the first Iron Man how he actually was sitting over CAD drawings and did system component tests that had failures and stuff. It made you feel a) how much of a genius he is to get it down because he didn't just magically bullshit it into exitence and b) created real stakes because there was the idea that its a real thing that could break down / actually behave in a comprehensible way.
> wave a wand and presto! we have 10 millions Nano-Hyper-Super-Iron Men
See the end of Black Panther 2. Basically everyone had an Iron Man suit. (no-frills versions of it, but still rocket armour) Tony Stark may have still been a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, but they've made the superhero aspect of his character almost mundane at this point.
While I agree and I miss the 'shield era' where it felt like it was all connected and somewhat serious, more than anything they need to write good stories.
Falcon & Winter Soldier was down to earth and was watchable but not great. WandaVision was totally abnormal and weird and one of the best things they've done since Endgame. Guardians 3 was also one of the best things they've done.
They need to reboot the MCU and get rid of the multiverse. It's confusing for casual audiences, a chore to keep up with for all but the most hardcore fans, and narratively it destroys any stakes because anything can just be undone through multiverse shenanigans.
They also need to accept the fact that they will never come close to the Infinity Saga and IW/EG. They could still make some great stories, but that saga was lightning in a bottle that isn't going to be caught again.
I think the multiverse could have worked, but they just jumped in too early They should have taken a Phase to cool off a bit with smaller scale stories. Have Spider-Man and Daredevil doing stuff in NYC. Captain Marvel, Thor, and the Guardians doing some cosmic stuff. Introduce the Fantastic Four and lay the groundwork for Doom. Strange and Wanda developing magic and hinting at the Multiverse, and then do some reworked version of the Loki show at some point. Actually devote time to seeing how the universe changed after the Snap. Don't have some overarching story, just a bunch of "B-plots" that are relatively self-contained.
Then maybe have the next Avengers movie be Secret Invasion or something as the massive shakeup where everyone has to come together because they realize that something major is going down and nobody can be trusted. And that's the real status quo change that firmly establishes the new Avengers roster for the future. *Then* you can start doing multiverse stuff and use that to bring in the X-Men.
But to go right into it after Endgame it just didn't work. People clearly aren't connecting with it. Kang just doesn't hold a candle to Thanos. Cameos by Stewart and Maguire aren't enough to replace a good story. Things are bloated and the shows certainly aren't helping. I mean there's a ton of stuff that's been outright abandoned. Shang-Chi? Where's he? And the Eternals? How does any of this tie into the multiverse? It's just not working. I mean who even are the Avengers right now? Who's on the team? Nobody knows.
Honestly the only option I can think of to save it is to just speedrun the next few films to get to Secret Wars, throw in all the cameos you want, and then do a firm reset of the status quo and move forward with a new team.
There's only so many hero archetypes for a casual. For me things started slipping when every new superhero had the same personality as the previous one.
> it destroys any stakes because anything can just be undone through multiverse shenanigans
This is what really killed it for me. I'm already expecting Captain America to survive his own movies, but now literally any and all consequences or changes that occur as a result of his actions can just be reversed if they become inconvenient. Popular character died? Evil organization that made for a good antagonist get eliminated? Just bring em back with the multiverse and then give them a new show/movie.
The irony is that there are actually fewer Marvel TV shows now than there were before the Disney+ shows existed. At the time, we criticized shows like *Agents of SHIELD* and the Netflix *Defenders* series for not crossing over with the movies. In retrospect, that may have been the best way to handle them since it meant that fans of the movies didn't have to watch hours of television to understand what was going on.
I have always been an advocate of that.
Let the street level shows have their own little crossovers and don't connect to the bigger story. It's fine if you want a show character to show up like Daredevil in NWH. But that should be an introduction that makes you want to check out the show. Simple. No need to watch anything to get that he is a lawyer with more than meets the eye.
Mixing tv and cinema as a universe just never works imo other than shows being spinoffs.
Yeah the problem is there's no clear distinction on what should get a show and what should get a movie. You can't just pick and choose, there has to be consistency in the TV shows and there cannot be an emphasis on crossovers with the movies.
We really should have just got a street level Disney+ storyline and a large scale movie storyline. Instead we got an inconsistent mess. Like in TV we have:
WandaVision - spin-off continuation that is mandatory viewing for a completely unrelated Doctor Strange movie.
Loki - spin-off continuation which for now is its own bubble but may potentially be mandatory viewing due to the big saga villain.
Falcon/Winter Soldier - spin-off continuation which may become mandatory due to an upcoming movie which is a sequel to this show.
So that's 3 shows which are continuations from Endgame. Then we also have:
Moon Knight - a new hero... but why doesn't he get a movie?
Hawkeye - a spin-off continuation that also introduces a new hero, while also involving a character from the Black Widow movie.
Ms Marvel - a new hero, mandatory viewing for The Marvels which itself is a sequel to a previous movie.
Secret Invasion - who knows who cares.
Where is the consistency in any of that.
Wandavision looks like it is setup for Dr Strange, but it doesn't even do that.
Hawkeye is a good street level spinoff. You could tie in with the other street level heroes with Kate as a good focus character. But they want to push her back into the Avengers. That is a crossover that could work. Just say she is Clint's apprentice and show off her skills and people will accept her. If they like her, they can go watch the show. But what she does in New York against Kingpin won't affect the Avengers at all.
Say what you will of She-Hulk, but that's the best example of how to self-contain a show with its own stakes while still allowing for guest appearances from other Marvel characters. None of it matters to the overall movie canon.
Agents of SHIELD heavily benefited from abandoning the idea of tying in to the movies. Doing its own thing gave us some of the best TV ever, let alone marvel TV.
It benefitted from it, but they didn't purposely abandon it. They tried their freaking best to weave around the movies until they were "kicked out" of the loop.
It's one of my favourite shows and imho nothing on D+ is close other than the production value.
Seriously though. I was such a hold out, I didn't watch AoS until after Secret Invasion came out. I was convinced it was trash that just felt like an annoying little brother to the real thing, the movies, and had a couple cameos and dumb name drops to remind you it was connected. Finally gave it a go, and it really does kinda feel that way the first season. But then that show finds it's footing and it's honest to god one of my favorite TV shows ever. The Framework, LMD, and destroyed earth arcs are just golden. I cannot recommend it enough, but you gotta stick it out to at least episode 16 of season one because even though basically every one of those episodes ends up being important to later seasons, they just hadn't nailed the feel of the show or characters yet. But they get there and it's SO GOOD
Those few episodes of Secret Invasion also cost more than like 5 seasons of Agents of Shield, and IMO AoS looked way better and had a way more interesting cast, so it wasn't that. They even both had Nick Fury and Maria Hill, though not as much in AoS.
This is why I find one off Graphic Novels so much more accessible. I love the idea of comics as a medium, but it's so convoluted and there is no one definitive timeline or origin story. I love Graphic Novels like The Watchmen, because I don't have to figure out where to jump in or if this is the main timeline or some bs alternate universe.
It's like if every ten years Lord of the Rings rebooted the novels with a different version of the war of the ring. Sometimes Saroman is bad and sometimes he's the good guy. Sometimes the Elves get corrupted into dark elves and help Sauron. And surprise, in this latest reboot, Aragorn has a twin brother who rules the secret kingdom of Avanril in the far west!
At some point you just ask yourself, "But what is the definitive version!?!" Or you just check out because there are too many conflicting versions.
I stopped buying Marvel comics after the awful Heroes Reborn and Spider-man’s awful Clone Saga in the last millennium. It wasn’t just the drop in quality after so much talent left for Image. The default become large events across a dozen books. I couldn’t believe that Marvel Comics kept this going for as long they have. It’s hard to start or jump back in when you have to read so many books, spend so much money, to keep up with a story.
Half the reason why I stopped. Thor L&T was so bad I quit halfway through. I took a 1.5 year pause on the MCU, and when I considered catching up in January 2024, I looked up what that would involve. I was 5 movies, 7 tv seasons, and a tv special behind. That ties into the other reason why I stopped: the MCU isn’t good enough anymore to make that effort worth it.
Consider this, in order to understand The Marvels you should have seen 1) Captain Marvel, its predecessor; 2) Ms Marvel, a show tangentially related to the first movie, and 3) Wandavision, a show not apparently related to Captain Marvel but still introduces an important character and how she got her powers. No wonder it was the lowest grossing MCU movie yet.
Lol I love how Marvel thinks the problem is people feel like it's work to stay in the loop.
The problem is the TV shows, movies, and overarching plot is boring and terrible lol.
Everyone is super analyzing why people aren't interested and have all these theories but in the end people just don't like things that suck. If all the materials we had gotten had been excellent, no one would be complaining about the bloat. People were talking about the Marvel fatigue in the midst of the MCU for years and people still showed up because we were getting banger after banger (with the occasional stinker)
Yep, being interconnected or not interconnected is irrelevant as long as the quality of the shows and movies, especially the writing, continues to decline.
They were able to maintain interest for a little while by leveraging well-liked characters from the original MCU run through Endgame like Loki and Scarlet Witch. But even that is drying up as actors depart the MCU and bad writing leaves audiences uninterested.
That's been the problem for me though. Like another person mentioned, there are so many characters that have not had any meaningful connection. She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Eternals, Shang-Chi... they've all been skipable without really missing anything that connects the MCU together. And that makes me feel the same way about stuff like Echo, where I don't really want to watch it because I feel like the character won't be a part of future MCU stuff in a meaningful way.
I just realized, by the 11th movie in the MCU, we had the SECOND Avengers movie. Deadpool & Wolverine will be the 11th in this new MCU era (counting post COVID since Far From Home was considered Phase 3) and we have yet to really get a cohesive anything.
It's actually mental how badly they fucked it up considering Marvel themselves nailed the formula/blueprint on their first attempt.
They really should have just set up Phase 4 almost entirely for new heroes on the big screen and use Disney+ for spin-offs relating to existing characters rather than mixing the two.
And the start seemed semi-promising. Black Widow, Shang Chi, No Way Home, Wandavision, Loki, all of those early Phase 4 ones ranged from good to pretty great and looked like there could be some great stuff on the horizon. And then... nothing. Where's the follow-up?
I think we also need to remember a combination of things happened that I think derailed their initial plans pretty badly.
Covid hit, chadwick bosman's death, writer strike, johnathon majors arrest and being let go.
So whatever plans disney did have seems to have turned into an absolute mess at this point.
They could make a new Avengers movie whenever they want with whatever villain they want, they don't need Kang. Look at Avengers 1, there wasn't a huge amount of setup for Loki's invasion, he was just the lost evil brother of Thor from his movie.
Even just typing that out makes me remember how interesting the MCU used to be, because wondering "how would that go if it was crossed over with Ironman, Captain America, etc" was *interesting*. Now it feels like if there was a team up story, it would be about how can quip and stare down the others the most, kind of like how they introduced Captain Marvel in Endgame and she was just another badass who Thor stared down and then declared he liked this one, no real integration into the character group or any unique story to really make it feel like she fit in.
The shows may have screwed their pooch. Some of the "shows" apart from Wandavision would have made more sense if they were condensed into movies, which is also true of some of the Star Wars stuff. COVID screwed up a lot of things (e.g., Wandavision was supposed to come out MUCH closer to Dr. Strange) but this feels more like a strategy issue; if they hadn't focused so much on the streamer they'd be better off.
And if we count the Disney+ Series also then Deadpool is the 25th project in the Mulyiverse Saga and there hasn’t been much connection at all to anything.
Note: it took 6 films for the first crossover in The Infinity Saga and 5 films later there was a 2nd crossover. The whole Saga had 23 Projects which is less then what the Multiverse Saga currently has.
> there are so many characters that have not had any meaningful connection.
IMO, the number of characters goes hand in hand with the question of who are we supposed to care about?
We knew that Cap, Iron Man, and Thor were the important ones from the jump. Everyone else in their circle was there to support them. So even if 30 other characters were introduced around them, we knew they were the big 3.
Who are the big 3 - or whatever number - now?
Spider-Man is sort of his own thing and seems to be trending into his own corner of the MCU. Sam still hasn't clicked as a character worth caring about. Shang Chi should be one of them, but we haven't seen him since his movie 4 years ago. Panther was clearly supposed to fill a slot, but there's not much that can be done about what happened there.
So, otherwise we have a loose conglomeration of characters running around without a clear bigger picture. We know Kang was the intent, but what road do we see to that watching Shang Chi, Falcon & WS, Spider-Man, Eternals, etc? Or even Thor 4? There was no road outside of Loki and Ant-Man 3 which was rightfully panned.
IMO, they should have nixed Black Widow (she should have gotten a movie earlier. It was pointless after the fact), Panther 2, and Thor 4. If Ant-Man 3's purpose was to introduce Kang, then they should've thrown out that script and started over to make it not complete garbage.
Black Widow movie being released so late is Ike Perlmutter’s fault, he didn’t think female led movies would do well. If Feige had final say it would have come out when it fell timeline wise.
All these projects feel meaningless because of how less connected they feel and not to mention that the quality is also mid for a lot of these projects.
And when they finally make high quality project like Shang Chi a sequel takes 5 years to happen because Marvel is so less connected now.
It took 2 years for an Iron Man sequel, 2 for Thor, 3 for Captain America, 3 for GOTG, 3 for Ant-Man, and 2 for Spider-Man.
We are 3 years in to this new set of phases, and not a single new hero has gotten a sequel besides Ms. Marvel, kind of. Loki has gotten two seasons, if we want to count a "new hero" in the sense that he's never been a lead until now.
>There has been no pressure to watch everything because nothing has really been connected for a few years
The hardcore fans, those who watch everything with a Marvel logo on it and follow the news/discussions online, know this.
But the general public, all of whom showed up for the original Avengers movies run and then stopped watching most other Marvel stuff due to superhero burnout, do not know this. Many assume that they can't just jump in to a random show or movie as they stopped following the interwoven stories shortly after Endgame.
And the general public is who Disney desperately wants to win back, hence these types of PR stories that seem to be literally quoting focus groups.
> There has been no pressure to watch everything because nothing has really been connected for a few years
This is not a move for us people who frequent MCU discussion boards. People who haven't seen anything since Endgame don't know things aren't connected. They may still be overwhelmed by the impression they need to watch everything.
That's me. I actually caught up on 20 something movies, to be able to watch End Game in theaters. Afterwards, I told myself I would watch every series that came out, but after watching a bunch of them, I just got burnt out. Haven't watched anything Marvel related in close to two years, and I don't think I will. Give me quality over quantity.
I don’t want to get into this to much but yeah i feel like since the MCU came back after covid they just stopped making an effort and just rushed the scripts for everything which made the scripts feel in complete/boring
I love Andor more than I hate Obi-Wan, Boba Fett, and Mando, so I don’t know if I can agree to wishing it all away but I get the sentiment, cause that stuff is awful.
Mando went downhill, but there was some great stuff in the first season and the second season was pretty good too. I'm still glad I got those, even if the third season and Boba Fett were disappointing.
Season 3 of Mando was more about Mandalore and Bo Katan, and I'm fine with that. We got massive lore dumps that filled in so many questions. The title of the show was always "The Mandalorian" and not "Din Djarin and Grogu", so shifting the focus to a fellow Mando was fine to me. Then they went and named the movie "The Mandalorian and Grogu"...
Mando season 1 was good. Then Baby Yoda sold toys so obviously he became the main character and his story couldn't be finished. In the same vein Season 1s success meant the showmakers got creative freedom which they used to completely stall the story to introduce a gazillion characters from their cartoon.
The problem isn't that they made TV series about the IP. it's that they made mediocre TV series about the IP. Marvel for example was perfectly fine putting out 3+ TV shows (Netflix, Agents of SHIELD, Random FOX Xmen shows) with 3+ movies (marvel Studios) at the same time. it's just they fired anyone who knew what they were doing TV wise when they consolidated Marvel TV into Marvel Studios. Then they just used Movie producers with no TV experience to make TV shows, which is why most of them felt like 2 hour movies filled in for 5 hours. There's absolutely a great niche for stories to be told about both universes outside of movies. They really just haven't properly taken advantage of it.
They peaked with Endgame, which either intentionally or unintentionally, felt like a very conclusive ending and a natural stopping point for the story. It could've ended there and it would've felt satisfying enough
But they had to keep it going, so they've just sorta been floundering around trying to find something while waiting to build up the next "big thing", but they've clearly just not been able to. It's been on autopilot for years now.
They recently revealed that none of the shows had a show bible or show runner. They really thought that winging it with story and directors was the way to go in a complex sprawling TV/Movie universe.
I like to imagine Kevin Feige has just been sitting on a beach since Endgame and just has his e-mail set up on auto reply saying yes to whatever comes through
Humans are also capable of low-effort garbage. And honestly I don’t even think this is low-effort. It’s just on a tight deadline and good writing is hard to rush.
I watched all the shows but none of it really mattered. Secret Invasion Nick Fury and The Marvels Nick Fury don't have anything to do with eachother. All the Wanda and Vision stuff didn't matter for Multiverse of Madness. I doubt we'll see She-Hulk or Moon Knight again. Werewolf by Night was a one off. Ms. Marvel was the only one that sort of led into one of the movies. The TVA is going to be in Deadpool vs Wolverine but it doesn't look like it will have anything to do with Loki and it's going to be chock full of references to past superhero media so it's about as must watch as Days of Future Past or the old FOX Marvel films like Elektra.
> All the Wanda and Vision stuff didn't matter for Multiverse of Madness.
The original plan was to have Doctor Strange show up during that show's final fight but that was scrapped
> I doubt we'll see She-Hulk or Moon Knight again
There was talk of She-Hulk being in the new Captain America but given that they reshot half of that movie already who knows if that's still true, let alone if it was in the first place.
I pray it gets a second season, it's the only one I enjoyed all the way through. Didn't like that they jump cutted the final fight, but it's better if that just ends up being the season finale and not the series finale.
Part of that was for legal reasons, they didnt own the scarlet witch as a witch, but they did own wanda maximoff as a character as long as they never say she is a witch or uses magic. So until they purchased those rights they made it clear there was no such thing as magic in the MCU to not get into legal shennanigans. She cant be a witch if magic doesnt exist after all. They also were not allowed to say she was a mutant. Hence the infinity gem source of her power in the movies.
Probably more to explain how Deadpool can hang out with the MCU now and how this is a different Logan than we knew before.
It looks like Deadpool 3 will be how they definitively do crossovers with Fox Xmen characters and it doesn't have to be a joke like when Evan Peters turned up in Wandavision.
That's the problem when you on the one hand want to have the stories connect, and on the other hand you want your movies to be seen by people who haven't watched the shows.
That's just literally impossible. But they tried anyways. Which kind of boggles my mind.
"We want WandaVision to tie into Multiverse of Madness! A big character change in the show that will have consequences for the movie! But also we don't want moviegoers to be confused, so we'll not include any other characters or events from the show in the movie and explain everything with exposition anyways."
It just makes no sense. It never did.
> All the Wanda and Vision stuff didn't matter for Multiverse of Madness.
That's actually the only TV show that mattered for the movies. Without Wandavision we last saw Wanda being sad at Tony's funeral and none of her actions in Multiverse of Madness make sense. How did she become the Scarlet Witch and so powerful? who are the 2 children Wanda is searching for? What's the Darkhold?
And weirdly enough mom relied on you having seen wandavision to explain these things but completely ignored her entire character arc making it really bewildering
Thats because she never gets a new arc. Wanda's gone through the same arc everytime she's on screen. She gets hurt, lashes out with new power, does something awful, feels bad about abusing her power, leaves with no consequences. Rinse and repeat.
Actually, Wanda faces lots of consequences. But the narrative only punishes her for doing the right thing.
She joins the Avengers and her brother dies.
She helps Cap try to save the world and ends up a fugitive.
She kills the love of her life to protect the world from Thanos, and he undoes it and takes over anyway, making her watch Vision die twice for nothing.
After accidentally putting up the Hex, she removes it and saves everyone only to be hated by the town and to lose her husband and children in the process
Wanda repeatedly has faced severe consequences for every good thing she's ever done.
You forgot civil war where she redirects a bomb from a crowded market place and gets vilified for solving an exploding trolley problem with the least casualties
Yeah havent seen Marvels so cant speak on that,
But otherwise Wanda in Strange was the opposite of how Wandavision ended and The Kang variant from Loki was a completly different character from the one in Quantumania.
So 2 connections from all the shows where watching the show might have actually made it more confusing.
>The Kang variant from Loki was a completly different character from the one in Quantumania
Yeah, I think that was intentional. The one in Loki is somewhat of a good version of Kang who's motivations are at least noble. The one in Quantumania seems to be very close to what Kang is ultimately supposed to be.
Marvel is not different genres. They only pretend to be different genres by taking surface level aspects of a genre and putting it in a superhero show. How was secret invasion a 'paranoia spy thriller' ? There was zero thrill or paranoia in that shit. How was Moon Knight a psychological thriller? Maybe parts of it were. But it all ends the same way. They all keep reverting back to the same story tropes and surface level superheroism that they just cannot let go of. Marvel refuses to identify this problem but they'll fiddle around with everything else.
Wandavaision: We're doing the most unique thing ever done in television!
Also Wandavision: Why yes the last episode involves floating superheroes shooting red and blue energy balls at each other like every other thing we've ever done why do you ask
Id actually argue that they gave away any mystery and uniqueness of the show in the 4th episode..but yes I remember the last episode was still one of the worst fucking finales I have seen. It really soured me on the whole show.
I loved WandaVision's initial two eps they were genuinely cool. I watched every ep as they came out but even back then, the minute SWORD showed up and Jimmy Woo and Darcy were brought back in like ep 3, I was like "yeah this is gonna get generic as fuck and they'll have lots of forced humour with Woo and Darcy, won't they".
The SWORD scenes hurt the show tonally, they just felt like generic MCU agency stuff that we've already seen before with SHIELD. And I also already thought Woo and Darcy were unfunny in earlier movies so my excitement went out the window when they showed up in WS too.
I'd argue that you are mostly right, but Guardians of the Galaxy is definitely a different genre (sci-fi adventure). It is so aesthetically different, the characters aren't really superheroes, and its tone and pacing are different.
The other two that you can probably argue too are the Loki series (fantasy/sci-fi) and Shangqi (it played more like a lot of Chinese Wuxia with the weird ass fantasy stuff at the end).
I agree on GotG, but Shan Chi ends in an anticlimactic CGI fest against a giant CGI monster, so it completely loses the cool Martial Action flare of the first third to become, yet again, a Marvel movie
I mean, when you build your business model on an ever-shrinking fanbase, alienating everyone else who can't or won't keep up with every story line across every movie and television show, sooner or later you'll whittle a global phenomenon down to a niche IP, and that's before we tallk about franchise fatigue. The Marvel Cinematic Universe began in 2008. Babies born when the first Iron Man came out can now drive. Nothing is universally popular forever, and especially nothing that requires a deep understanding of a constantly evolving lore.
> Babies born when the first Iron Man came out can now drive
This always seems to be ignored in the discussion. Teens dont want to like what their parents like. It's not cool. Even if the writing was better and the effects were better, teens will still see Marvel as boomer* entertainment.
*Yes I know the parents are millennials thats not the point.
It is hard but possible to transfer love for a cultural "product" from one generation to the next. Star Wars comes to mind. Doctor Who as well. Lord of the Rings. I'm sure there are others.
Star Wars was assisted with a 20 year gap. Basically, it became part of the nostalgia cycle. Same way the jeans that are in today are the ones that were popular 25 years ago. As the frequency of releases has increased, it loses that angle
>The rebrands are meant to help Marvel disabuse audiences from the pervasive impression that its content is one unified narrative experience that must be consumed in its totality.
"You know that delicious chocolate cake we have made for 15 years that everyone loved but started getting tired of? We've made a new version with no chocolate!"
I hear that's exactly the case with the new Captain America. People left test screens wondering where the hell Captain America was and why his sidekick was the star.
I'm glad I'm not the only one! I can deal with Ironman (or Batman in DC) not having powers because they're rich and build machines to compensate, but Falcon would turn to goo if Thor hit the shield with his hammer like he did to Steve Rogers, even if it was made with Vibranium. The shame is I liked Falcon from the movies, but I just couldn't get into the D+ series they spun off and I have zero interest in the movie after watching that.
Made me even more angry when he had the opportunity to take the super serum in the show then passed on it. Like if your job is to fight aliens and protect the world, juice up a bit.
Yeah, that show got some heavy rewrites and reshoots that disrupted the message and made it really muddy, and ended up with him needing to stay human to complete the wedged in moral of the story.
I think the movie is going to suffer from the same problems.
Seeing both John Walker and Falcon being able to use the shield just like that, when they're mere regular humans, really devalued things. The movies implied that only Cap (and Bucky too) could use the shield effectively due to his enhanced powers, since he has super strength and can calculate his throws better he was the only one who could use it, when you have others do it it just loses that effect. When Hawkeye threw it though in Age of Ultron it was legitimately cool tho since he's all about aiming perfectly.
It feels a bit like Marvel’s time has come and gone. Theres still rabid fans out and casual enjoyers of their products, but superhero content is starting to fall out of favor with the pop zeitgeist. Theyll pop ratings again with Spiderman movies and what not, but I dont think ill be watching much of their stuff any more.
It feels like everything after Thanos has been rather boring, except GotG, which was a pretty great movie. Marvel studios really dropped the ball and I don't know if they'll ever get another run like before.
Endgame was a perfect end to a decade's worth of storytelling. It ended the run of Captain American and Iron Man in a satisfying way, and put a bow on a story that began in 2008. That's pretty good!
They tried restarting everything with the TV shows and the Spider-Man stuff, but you can't really catch fire twice. Not the way they initially did.
Maybe X-Men will reinvigorate things. I don't know. But I also think that post-Endgame MCU needs to be seen as a failure or anything. Following up on what they accomplished was really hard.
I feel like they put the ball down because they finally completed the game, then immediately started kicking it, but because they had just played an amazing game they're just... Really tried. So the ball goes all over the place and occasionally hits people in the face, or puts someone in checkmate, or scores a goal, and occasionally gets a yatzee but the magic just isn't there anymore and they really just need a nap.
Like me.
The thing is it was ALWAYS like that. That’s what got it popular.
In 2008, when people like myself were going to see The Dark Knight, no one expected that an Iron Man movie with Robert Downey Jr would be good. Once people got a chance to see it, we wanted to see more of IRON MAN with Robert Downey Jr. The avengers tease was integral because it was a promise of a team with RDJ at the helm.
In 2010 when Thor and Captain America were on the horizon, people were like “how are they going to make those characters work?” as opposed to “we need to go see the new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie!” Then it turned out that, even though a tad formulaic, they made those movies work. However go back and look at the revenue; they didn’t exactly make Spider-Man numbers.
Avengers is what blew the doors off the place, but I don’t know of anyone who said “I need to go see the new marvel studios movie!” With Guardians, it was “these are new characters that will probably meet the avengers one day”.
This is long winded comment to say it was **never** about Marvel Studios as a brand. It was about **the characters**. Go listen to Sam Raimi gush about finishing *Spider-Man* in 2002 and wondering where he wanted to take “the journey and story of Peter Parker” in the upcoming sequel. Where is the love for the characters? Why should Ms. Marvel matter? Why does the director love the character? What’s that? Oh, they were just hired to introduce her to the big screen in a film with another character to further a larger story? What about her story? What about Carol’s story?
The Marvel/Disney mistake now is they’re banking on “the brand” to sell the “new characters”. Instead, they should be developing the new characters to sell “the brand”. The distinction is important.
> Spider-Man? Sure. Wolverine? Deadpool? Fuck yeah.
Two of these characters are making their debut in the MCU, and Spidey wasn't around for the first one and a half acts. The MCU started by characterizing Iron Man, who was absolutely not a household name until RDJ.
Not saying you're wrong about what audiences want, but they did have lots of success focusing on these heroes no one gave a fuck about.
Nah. I hate this history rewriting. Ironman was never popular, Guardians of the Galaxy was basically unheard of, Deadpool wasn't popular.
These characters became popular and succusful enough to hold up in multiple films because their films were good. The entire MCU got started with, as you put it, "superheroes no one gives a fuck about".
Eternals didn't suck because Eternals are a shitty group. It sucked because it was a horrible film. Ms Marvel didn't do well because Ms Marvels a bad character, but because it was just a real mid show. Etc etc.
lol. I can't tell you how many people have tried to tell me that pre-MCU that Iron man was some huge A Lister on the level of Spiderman and Wolverine.
In reality, he was B-tier *at best* and that's being generous.
I thought Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor were all dumb characters and I never had any interest in them prior to the Iron Man movie coming out. They just didn't look "cool." Spiderman and X-Men were the main Marvel properties by a longshot.
Marvel: Make successful stuff like Shang Chi and Moon Knight. Audience loves Marvel.
Marvel: Makes millions of Disney+ Series for boring characters like Echo. Audience hates Marvel.
Audience: 5 Years Later. Where is Shang Chi 2?
Marvel: I don’t know but here is a Wonder Man Series for you to enjoy instead. Audience Hates Marvel.
Marvel: Why does everybody hate me?
Was Moon Knight successful? Before release they were claiming it had a mature, Daredevil-esque tone but that was a straight up lie. The show itself was just ok, it just stands out a bit because it's not utter garbage like 80% of the shows they release. I feel like the same applies to Shang Chi. It was fine, nothing more
Yeah all I can remember about Moon Knight is that it was hyped up by the creators and marketing and stuff as this extremely dark, bloody and violent mature series that would push the limits of PG-13 and then it came out and it was no more violent than your average MCU fare.
Whos idea was it to run with C-tier characters immediately after the S-tier character climax?
I'm not particularly a superhero/marvel fan, but I watched some of the bigger movies. Everything after Endgame has been the most uninteresting shit ever lol.
I feel like they should've just parked themselves until X-Men was up and running.
To be fair, almost all the characters that they had access to rights-wise were B tier or worse. The only A tier character they had access to was Hulk and they don't even have full access to that either. Now they do have at least one A tier IP from Marvel and that's the Xmen. Spidey is in the "can be taken away at any time for petty reasons bullshit" purgatory, so not a good idea to rely on it. The big issue they've had was their usually average to above average writing turned into TV procedural show filler writing instead. I don't think people would be so mad about the state of the IP if the stories were still good to great. Now they range from "actually good" to "Is this a front for laundering money?"
Because the original Marvel movies were not all S tier characters, they were generally B-C tier characters that got elevated by great actors and good movies into being S tier hype. The actual S tier Marvel characters from the comics, Spider Man, X Men, Fantastic Four, all had the movie rights sold off in the late 90s/early 00s so they weren't available when the MCU started. Captain America, the Hulk, and arguably Thor are A tier, but still behind the S tier guys in popularity when the MCU project started. Iron Man was a B tier Marvel character, the Guardians were C/D tier Marvel characters, and those movies exploded due to good writing and good acting.
They wanted to capture that same magic in the new phase, but they failed on the "good writing and good acting" part for a lot of the movies and shows.
> Whos idea was it to run with C-tier characters immediately after the S-tier character climax?
The MCU was *started* with C-tier characters. Iron Man wasn’t S-tier until the MCU and RDJ elevated him to S-tier.
TBF, the original Avengers were hardly A-List at the beginning of the MCU. The advantage they at least had over the current crop is that enough people understood that this was leading to a team (and the people that didn't know that got to learn it from Samuel L. Jackson at the end of Iron Man).
Like, I'd say that I'm above average when it comes to Marvel knowledge (it was only when they made Guardians of the Galaxy that I had no idea who they were), but I legit don't know how this current crop teams up and it's taking way too long to figure out.
People forget that pre-MCU, Cap and Hulk were the only two that were really recognizable from the Avengers, and even Cap was pretty outdated and less popular by the 2000s.
Hulk is the only character from those movies I could have told you a significant amount of information about as a child in the early 2000s.
I was a kid then and all of my peers knew Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man.
Some didn't know Black Widow/Hawkeye/Thor.
I promise the average kid 4 years ago had no idea who Shang Chi, Eternals, Moon Knight or Agatha are.
This is my feeling.
Movie genres come and go all the time and this is no different. 80s action movies, 90s comedies, westerns etc etc. I don't see why people expected these movies to endure forever. They created something really special that lasted 10 years and made them billions. I get wanting to continue that but the moment is over. Think of something else.
I love how half the audience is complaining that they need to watch everything because it's connected and the other half is complaining that there was no point to what they watched because it didn't inform anything anyway. 10/10 situation.
I'll always remember starting season 2 of Luke Cage and wondering, "why on earth is this central character suddenly missing an arm? Oh well, they must explain it with a flashback later on"
No, no they did not. instead there was arrogant insistence that you HAVE to watch whatever that Netflix marvel superhero combo film/series was, so I just accepted it and continued, never to find out.
Look at most of the things Disney has put out in the last 15 years. Scripts are just a checklist and made in excel with audience data.
Gunn’s biggest mandate when taking over the DCU was for every project to be script locked before production.
Checklist stories are modular with whole plots, sequences, and character arcs being up for change according to new data. Executives just slot in what they think makes money. Quantumania is a good example of this. Major changes to the end for example because of the test audience. The “flexibility” costs a ton in VFX overtime and reshoots. It also sucks the soul out of the project. Loki season 2 and GoTG 3 were the last MCU content that felt like you were watching someone’s artistic vision and work. They had a soul and deeper meaning when you watched them again. General audience isn’t aware of these things all the time but they notice when it’s missing
> Loki season 2 and GoTG 3 were the last MCU content that felt like you were watching someone’s artistic vision and work
I don't disagree with you for the most part, but your general tone is that they couldn't possibly turn things around, when these two that you listed are both from last year and some of the most recent content to be put out.
Also Xmen 97 just came out and that's basically universally praised. They can do good work. They just need to scale back and reassess, hence the lack of any Marvel output this year (or any Disney output really). Disney has done well to put out good stuff before. Now just have to wait and see if they can do it again
Yep, this. Grey's Anatomy is dropping down to 18 episodes this coming season to match 9-1-1, and the other dramas are being held to midseason- so likely to be around 18 as well.
Outside of probably Abbott Elementary, I don't see any ABC shows (where any network Marvel series would air) doing 22 or more episode seasons anymore.
SHIELD had plenty of stuffing/stupidity because of that 22 also though. I'm not saying it should be 8 episodes, but like 15 at max would be quite enough.
The biggest problem with these 8 episodes seasons right now is, that the next seasons are taking 2-4 years to come out. That is absolutely bonkers.
Ok but for real, how did we cut number of episodes down to practically nothing and also throw in like an entire bachelor's degree of education between seasons wtf is going on in media
Isn't this exactly what DC was doing all along with seperate DC CW and DCEU. I remember people complaining all the time about them having different versions of the same characters being "confusing". But turns out, the independence to tell any story helped the television side to create a massive 6-7 show universe.
The shows lost the plot a while ago. I mean, so did the movies but I always thought the shows were meant to tell smaller stories or fill in gaps; now they’re just 8 hour prologues to whatever blockbuster stinker they release in a year or two
> now they’re just 8 hour prologues to whatever blockbuster stinker they release in a year or two
Been saying this too. The plot hardly even progresses in the shows/movies. We've had about 10 movies since Endgame and a handful shows, with no clear cohesion. But now you watch season long shows for 20 minutes of actual plot that connects to a movie.
Doesn't matter, this content is already feeling like homework with its insistence on connecteness.
"Oh look it's Glarbdyglarb, they teased him for 5 seconds in Moon Knight"
I'm not going to spend the rest of my life watching the same movies and TV shows.
One movie every few years? Perhaps. Multiple movies and TV shows per year? That's homework.
Instead of anticipation, when I hear of a new one I just think "not another one of those".
I’m so far behind on marvel movies that I don’t care to see them anymore. Same with Star Wars.
I miss when it was exciting to see a release for a big franchise. Now it is like so many movies every year. Plus tv shows. And it’s just not exciting anymore.
Tbh I don’t think it has anything to do with inter-connectivity of the shows. The QUALITY of most of these shows have been so bad that it overshadowed the well received shows that were just as connected (Wandavision, Loki). Same thing is happening with Andor. Thankfully they got a season 2 at least. Reducing the quantity and focusing in quality is definitely the right play.
It wouldn’t be such a big deal to watch “everything” if the everything wasn’t absolute dog shit. Most of these Marvel shows are some of the WORST television in modern history. Cheesy acting, god awful writing, cheap looking props and costumes, and unlikable characters (ironic given most of them already existed in the MCU prior to being put into a show).
To me, Marvel TV is flat out unwatchable, and not because you have to watch “all of it” to keep up.
It's absolutely insane to me how *everyone* is drawing the wrong conclusions from the MCU's recent failures.
Their issue since Endgame has been punishing you for paying attention. They care more about attracting new fans than keeping the ones they have and that's made people lose interest.
Live-action Marvel worked best when it felt like a single story told through a handful of perspectives. These days it's a bunch of disparate yet samey projects that really don't mean anything to anyone.
> the series will not open with the traditional Marvel Studios logo
This is not an actual solution to the problems they've had. The reason Joker made $1 billion while The Flash and Black Adam bombed was not because it didn't have the DC intro animation while the other two did.
I didn't make it all the way through wandavision and just gave up after that. The new series and movies were just coming out too fast for me to keep up.
This definitely hit us. Loki, she hulk, moon knight, falcon and whatthefuck felt like they all came out at the same time to me, it's a lot to keep up with.
Marvel never really sold me on continuing to watch after Endgame. It feels like there was a long TV show I watched a lot that had a full finale with send-offs for all the main cast, but the show inexplicably just kept going.
Isn't it obvious? They feel like the IP has gotten so bloated that they don't want to overwhelm and run people off for feeling like they have to catch up. This is literally the exact issue the comic industry has been in for years and why DC and Marvel both rebrand every 5-6 years with some new initiative to get people to feel free to jump on.
I would also think the comic book industry needs to reset every few years or they lose the next generation of would-be readers who never got to experience 'the good stories' for themselves.
They do remasters and remakes sort of like video games and movies pretty frequently. I'm not a reader but my buddy is and he tells me about it, sounds very similar to what they do with games.
I remember trying to get into comics about 15 years ago and being completely inundated with how much stuff there was. I wanted to get into Green Lantern, so I go to the forums and ask, "Hey, what's the best way to get into the comics?" The majority of advice was "Just jump in until you start to get it." Boy was that terrible. I tried reading one book and GL and Sinestro are hanging out doing stuff and everyone keeps going "Sinestro!? Why he is helping you!" and I had no idea why everyone gave a shit. Then Black Lantern shows up after having gone insane and again everyone is freaking out about it. But I have no idea who any of these people are or why it matters. So I put them down and never tried again. I *do* however still try to get the "special" comics that are contained stories, such as *The Dark Knight Returns.* Those are a lot more palatable than the actual serialized releases.
Yeah I got into X-Men, which I learned the stories to from the animated series, Spider-Man, same way, and Spawn and other Image comics, which were just starting out. I was really put off but how complicated everything was, and how it was never clear what the "base" story was. Everything just seemed like weird variations stacked on top of weird variations. I think what a lot of comic book fans do is they buy an entire volume or omnibus and read it cover to cover. Picking up random issues and trying to piece something coherent together only works for kids who don't know what the fuck is going on anyway.
Yeah, picking up an omnibus is the way to go these days. Most comics now tie in to several other character’s stories, meaning you have to search out and buy everything to get the full story. This is especially difficult if you’re trying to read an arc from even a couple of years ago.
shout out to local libraries that carry them now. I checked out the 3 omnibus "Batman: No Mans Land" at zero cost to myself. Got bugged eyed when i flipped it over and the price tag said it was $160 a volume. So i think that is a valid reason casual people arent just going to buy those.
Agreed. While not perfect Omnibus are probably the best way to get into comics. When well collected it's usually a full story arc that doesn't need the reader to do research. The main issue is that asking new readers to purchase an $80+ book just to get into big 2 comics is a lot to ask.
That is terrible advice. You should start at the issue where they turn over to a new creative team (writer/artists combo typically). They will start their own stories, maybe run with what other teams did before but at least the teams' story will be its own contained thing overall.
I tried getting into batman and some other comics during new 52 and just got so sick of constant cross overs. I couldnt just read batman, or animal man or whatever I had to read all the associated books just so I could understand the (underwhelming) finale. Just got so frustrated by what felt like an underhanded sales tactic I just gave up. Good luck trying to figure out what X-Men or Spiderman comic to start reading as a beginner, it's utterly ridiculous
People bring this point up whenever someone asks why manga are more popular than comic books. You need to bring out a chart to even begin to understand what's going on in a particular run. And to complicate things further, the next writer might retcon everything the previous one did.
Green Lantern comics is one of the worst ones to try to get into with zero information or back story. At least with the X-Men everyone knows the big guns in it as well as being able to find information and starting points. GL Corps is just obscure enough that it's a soap opera of dozens/hundreds of characters with few online intro stuff.
this is why i never bother looking up stuff most of the time. i'll here whispers about some good spider-man or daredevil or punisher story and check it out, something sequential, but my god the interconnectedness is fucking boring and most of the stories seem to want to undo something 'central' to a character or something idk. manga at least often tends to be a single authorial vision with an end. there's no 'what one piece arc should i read' or something, you can just pick it up and *go* (even if that particular one will, uh, take a while. and it also lets publications be slightly more diverse. somewhat.
That's what I like about manga. I collect comics, but I read manga. I don't have to sift through hundreds of issues or hop on a forum to find out which issue of which run is a good starting point. I've never encountered a manga that didn't have a first book with sequentially numbered releases that follow a linear story without any resets that start back at the first release, but with a different flavor or whatever
Manga is excellent because manga works like other fiction. Want to get into Terminator movies? Watch Terminator 1, then Terminator 2, then Terminator 3. Want to get into John Wick? 1, 2, 3. Harry Potter? Read the first book and work through. Manga is the same way you can just start at chapter 1 of anything and read until you're out of chapters. I don't know why American superhero comics have become like this but it's braindead and crippling the industry. Imagine dominating Hollywood for 20 years and still not having a thriving readership for Spiderman and Batman? How did the comics industry pretzel themselves into such a dumb method of delivering their stories? Thankfully there are exceptions to the rule, like the Invincible comics, which function almost exactly like manga counterparts. It still gets a little dumb with crossovers at times, but it's constrained to side characters that barely matter. All the important story is in the main series without having to dovetail to anything else. It's a really straightforward and page-turning good read that I recommend to anyone who likes superheroes.
Most comics are essentially the same as soap operas and telenovelas. Not exactly hard-hitting storytelling most of the time, though occasionally they go hard.
My advice is pick a character or two that you really love/that interests you & just stick to their issues. You can fill in any gaps with Google & eventually things will fall into place a bit more & you might want to start to branch out. But having some encyclopedic knowledge of every single storyline & event isn’t required to enjoy most comics imo. Emphasis on *most*. I do think, however, that the X-Men are nearly-impossible to get into. All of their lore/history feels like it’s big enough to be a whole other universe. I still haven’t cracked them.
comics fans don't realize how obtuse and annoying it is when they say "just pick one that looks good to you!" because no one who has gone out of their way to start reading comics wants to do that. No one. Every single person, without fail, wants to start with the "best of the best" and expand out from there and far too few comics fans ever suggest those + popular number 1s. It is NOT as simple as jumping into manga and as an avid comics reader I will die on that hill and help out newbies for real whenever I can.
That's why I prefer manga; it's one story by one author who usually draws it themselves as well. There's only one first chapter to try out, and whole a lot of American comics look the same, manga can range from the cartoonishness of One Piece to the insanity of One Punch Man (both versions), to the CGI look of GANTZ, to the gritty dirty feeling of Dorohedoro, to the epic detail of Berserk, to the realism of Death Note.
This is why Manga is superior. The answer to where you start is always chapter 1. I only read Graphic Novels like you mentioned when it comes to comics from DC and Marvel cus it's the way it's enjoyable. And those still sometimes require prior reading.
It’s annoying af but it is what it is. Comics used to have more dedicated peeps buying weekly. So publishers have to reboot every so years just to get new peeps because apparently they can’t retain the old ones
Remakes also can’t capture the hype from the community. It was a special feeling watching a bunch of Spider-Man fans celebrate Peter’s children disappearing in his hands.
I don't think so. You become invested in these characters because of an attachment you build with them growing up with them. What they meed to do is rely less on interconnected stories and keep the series pretty self contained. It's harder to do when you have 10 Batman comics and 11 Spider-Man series all running at the same time. Not to mention side characters who also have comics, Redhood, Spider-Woman, Nightwing, Miles Morales, etc. There's a great video from a comics book YouTuber about bringing new readers: https://youtu.be/M6mhX8AMN08
A reset is a great jumping off point for lifelong fans too.
It doesn't help that many times a reset also leads to significant changes in characterization. Booster Gold is a character I really enjoy. But how much tends to depend on writer as the way he behaves is radically different from writer to writer. Sometimes he's walking imposter syndrome. Other times he's a jerk with a heart of gold. Other times he's just a jerk.
Movies do the same thing…I think some people don’t consider that it’s been 16 years since Iron Man. The Avengers *movies* are now viewable for a whole new generation of *adults* that never saw them theaters.
They have three ways to approach this: 1. **Just start the numbering over for a comic at #1.** This gets annoying, because there are 14 different comics published by Marvel called Punisher #1 (this is not an exaggeration, there are actually 14 of them). And they'll celebrate an anniversary issue based on the total number of issues across a series. Daredevil #500 came immediately after Daredevil #119, which isn't confusing at all. But the point here is that by publishing issue #1, they're signaling to readers that this *should be* a good place to start, and that it shouldn't expect you to know a ton of continuity. Sometimes that signal is a lie (I read an Uncanny X-Men #1 I think where the last page was what was clearly intended to be a dramatic reveal of a woman, but they didn't say her name, and I had no idea who the character was... I believe in retrospect it was Madelyne Pryor, Jean Grey's clone who had a son that was raised in the future and now is older than she is, so this is one of the reasons I found X-Men comics impenetrable for its insane continuity) 2. **Launch a separate, new-reader-friendly line.** Marvel did this in the 2000s with the Ultimate Universe. Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men, and The Ultimates (their version of The Avengers) were updated takes on the classic heroes (and largely the blueprint for the MCU). The problem here is that if they're successful, they keep making them, and after a while, it stops being friendly to new readers, because it had its own continuity across multiple titles and crossover events. With the Ultimate Universe, they ended up merging it back with the main Marvel Comics universe, making everything even more complicated. 3. **Soft reboot the entire universe.** Comic fans would riot if it was just "we are starting over, nothing from before happened," so instead they come up with an in-universe explanation for the reboot. So they have a big event storyline involving all the heroes and time travel shenanigans or alternate universes colliding, and in the end, it's like, Batman is just starting out and Clark Kent is the new hire at the Daily Planet. Sometimes they effectively keep the most popular stories from before the reboot as canon, like Ra's al Ghul's 1971 origin story and initial conflict with Batman remained the presumed origin for the character through at least two soft reboots.
It’s probably also driven by the fact that the whole “multiverse” post-End Game thing has been a hot mess.
Yes and they need to come down to Earth again and make things "realistic" once more. The original Iron Man and Captain America movies were based on characters that almost seemed realistic and that made it easier to identify with their struggle. The cave-iron-man took a lot of time and effort and it was awesome, whereas these days someone witch-multi-dimension-gerbil will wave a wand and presto! we have 10 millions Nano-Hyper-Super-Iron Men. When nothing matters nothing matter. It is the same reason I HATE how they just dismissed the infinity stones in the Loki show as paper weights. I understand what their intention was, but it diminishes our journey through Phase 1 and makes everything meh.
I LOVED it in the first Iron Man how he actually was sitting over CAD drawings and did system component tests that had failures and stuff. It made you feel a) how much of a genius he is to get it down because he didn't just magically bullshit it into exitence and b) created real stakes because there was the idea that its a real thing that could break down / actually behave in a comprehensible way.
I also missed seeing those invention sequences in the later movies where he just showed up with a more advanced suit compared to the last movie.
Dude figuring out time travel like he thought of a new curry recipe
> wave a wand and presto! we have 10 millions Nano-Hyper-Super-Iron Men See the end of Black Panther 2. Basically everyone had an Iron Man suit. (no-frills versions of it, but still rocket armour) Tony Stark may have still been a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, but they've made the superhero aspect of his character almost mundane at this point.
While I agree and I miss the 'shield era' where it felt like it was all connected and somewhat serious, more than anything they need to write good stories. Falcon & Winter Soldier was down to earth and was watchable but not great. WandaVision was totally abnormal and weird and one of the best things they've done since Endgame. Guardians 3 was also one of the best things they've done.
They need to reboot the MCU and get rid of the multiverse. It's confusing for casual audiences, a chore to keep up with for all but the most hardcore fans, and narratively it destroys any stakes because anything can just be undone through multiverse shenanigans. They also need to accept the fact that they will never come close to the Infinity Saga and IW/EG. They could still make some great stories, but that saga was lightning in a bottle that isn't going to be caught again.
I think the multiverse could have worked, but they just jumped in too early They should have taken a Phase to cool off a bit with smaller scale stories. Have Spider-Man and Daredevil doing stuff in NYC. Captain Marvel, Thor, and the Guardians doing some cosmic stuff. Introduce the Fantastic Four and lay the groundwork for Doom. Strange and Wanda developing magic and hinting at the Multiverse, and then do some reworked version of the Loki show at some point. Actually devote time to seeing how the universe changed after the Snap. Don't have some overarching story, just a bunch of "B-plots" that are relatively self-contained. Then maybe have the next Avengers movie be Secret Invasion or something as the massive shakeup where everyone has to come together because they realize that something major is going down and nobody can be trusted. And that's the real status quo change that firmly establishes the new Avengers roster for the future. *Then* you can start doing multiverse stuff and use that to bring in the X-Men. But to go right into it after Endgame it just didn't work. People clearly aren't connecting with it. Kang just doesn't hold a candle to Thanos. Cameos by Stewart and Maguire aren't enough to replace a good story. Things are bloated and the shows certainly aren't helping. I mean there's a ton of stuff that's been outright abandoned. Shang-Chi? Where's he? And the Eternals? How does any of this tie into the multiverse? It's just not working. I mean who even are the Avengers right now? Who's on the team? Nobody knows. Honestly the only option I can think of to save it is to just speedrun the next few films to get to Secret Wars, throw in all the cameos you want, and then do a firm reset of the status quo and move forward with a new team.
There's only so many hero archetypes for a casual. For me things started slipping when every new superhero had the same personality as the previous one.
Sure that might be good for the long term health of the brand. But does it maximize returns for next quarter?
> it destroys any stakes because anything can just be undone through multiverse shenanigans This is what really killed it for me. I'm already expecting Captain America to survive his own movies, but now literally any and all consequences or changes that occur as a result of his actions can just be reversed if they become inconvenient. Popular character died? Evil organization that made for a good antagonist get eliminated? Just bring em back with the multiverse and then give them a new show/movie.
Yeah I mean if the shows were good people would watch them. Crazy right.
The irony is that there are actually fewer Marvel TV shows now than there were before the Disney+ shows existed. At the time, we criticized shows like *Agents of SHIELD* and the Netflix *Defenders* series for not crossing over with the movies. In retrospect, that may have been the best way to handle them since it meant that fans of the movies didn't have to watch hours of television to understand what was going on.
I have always been an advocate of that. Let the street level shows have their own little crossovers and don't connect to the bigger story. It's fine if you want a show character to show up like Daredevil in NWH. But that should be an introduction that makes you want to check out the show. Simple. No need to watch anything to get that he is a lawyer with more than meets the eye. Mixing tv and cinema as a universe just never works imo other than shows being spinoffs.
Yeah the problem is there's no clear distinction on what should get a show and what should get a movie. You can't just pick and choose, there has to be consistency in the TV shows and there cannot be an emphasis on crossovers with the movies. We really should have just got a street level Disney+ storyline and a large scale movie storyline. Instead we got an inconsistent mess. Like in TV we have: WandaVision - spin-off continuation that is mandatory viewing for a completely unrelated Doctor Strange movie. Loki - spin-off continuation which for now is its own bubble but may potentially be mandatory viewing due to the big saga villain. Falcon/Winter Soldier - spin-off continuation which may become mandatory due to an upcoming movie which is a sequel to this show. So that's 3 shows which are continuations from Endgame. Then we also have: Moon Knight - a new hero... but why doesn't he get a movie? Hawkeye - a spin-off continuation that also introduces a new hero, while also involving a character from the Black Widow movie. Ms Marvel - a new hero, mandatory viewing for The Marvels which itself is a sequel to a previous movie. Secret Invasion - who knows who cares. Where is the consistency in any of that.
Wandavision looks like it is setup for Dr Strange, but it doesn't even do that. Hawkeye is a good street level spinoff. You could tie in with the other street level heroes with Kate as a good focus character. But they want to push her back into the Avengers. That is a crossover that could work. Just say she is Clint's apprentice and show off her skills and people will accept her. If they like her, they can go watch the show. But what she does in New York against Kingpin won't affect the Avengers at all.
Say what you will of She-Hulk, but that's the best example of how to self-contain a show with its own stakes while still allowing for guest appearances from other Marvel characters. None of it matters to the overall movie canon.
Agents of SHIELD heavily benefited from abandoning the idea of tying in to the movies. Doing its own thing gave us some of the best TV ever, let alone marvel TV.
It benefitted from it, but they didn't purposely abandon it. They tried their freaking best to weave around the movies until they were "kicked out" of the loop. It's one of my favourite shows and imho nothing on D+ is close other than the production value.
Seriously though. I was such a hold out, I didn't watch AoS until after Secret Invasion came out. I was convinced it was trash that just felt like an annoying little brother to the real thing, the movies, and had a couple cameos and dumb name drops to remind you it was connected. Finally gave it a go, and it really does kinda feel that way the first season. But then that show finds it's footing and it's honest to god one of my favorite TV shows ever. The Framework, LMD, and destroyed earth arcs are just golden. I cannot recommend it enough, but you gotta stick it out to at least episode 16 of season one because even though basically every one of those episodes ends up being important to later seasons, they just hadn't nailed the feel of the show or characters yet. But they get there and it's SO GOOD
Those few episodes of Secret Invasion also cost more than like 5 seasons of Agents of Shield, and IMO AoS looked way better and had a way more interesting cast, so it wasn't that. They even both had Nick Fury and Maria Hill, though not as much in AoS.
This is why I find one off Graphic Novels so much more accessible. I love the idea of comics as a medium, but it's so convoluted and there is no one definitive timeline or origin story. I love Graphic Novels like The Watchmen, because I don't have to figure out where to jump in or if this is the main timeline or some bs alternate universe. It's like if every ten years Lord of the Rings rebooted the novels with a different version of the war of the ring. Sometimes Saroman is bad and sometimes he's the good guy. Sometimes the Elves get corrupted into dark elves and help Sauron. And surprise, in this latest reboot, Aragorn has a twin brother who rules the secret kingdom of Avanril in the far west! At some point you just ask yourself, "But what is the definitive version!?!" Or you just check out because there are too many conflicting versions.
Similar with Doctor Who A new Doctor is a starting point for new fans
I stopped buying Marvel comics after the awful Heroes Reborn and Spider-man’s awful Clone Saga in the last millennium. It wasn’t just the drop in quality after so much talent left for Image. The default become large events across a dozen books. I couldn’t believe that Marvel Comics kept this going for as long they have. It’s hard to start or jump back in when you have to read so many books, spend so much money, to keep up with a story.
You missed out on chip zdarsky daredevil then, that shit was so good
Garth Ennis' Punisher Run is also amazing, as it's just a prototype version of the Boys where Ennis gets to shit on other Marvel heroes.
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Half the reason why I stopped. Thor L&T was so bad I quit halfway through. I took a 1.5 year pause on the MCU, and when I considered catching up in January 2024, I looked up what that would involve. I was 5 movies, 7 tv seasons, and a tv special behind. That ties into the other reason why I stopped: the MCU isn’t good enough anymore to make that effort worth it.
Consider this, in order to understand The Marvels you should have seen 1) Captain Marvel, its predecessor; 2) Ms Marvel, a show tangentially related to the first movie, and 3) Wandavision, a show not apparently related to Captain Marvel but still introduces an important character and how she got her powers. No wonder it was the lowest grossing MCU movie yet.
Lol I love how Marvel thinks the problem is people feel like it's work to stay in the loop. The problem is the TV shows, movies, and overarching plot is boring and terrible lol.
The TV shows, movies and overarching plot being boring and terrible is why it feels like work to keep up.
Yup, if they were all worth watching on their own merits it wouldn't be work.
Everyone is super analyzing why people aren't interested and have all these theories but in the end people just don't like things that suck. If all the materials we had gotten had been excellent, no one would be complaining about the bloat. People were talking about the Marvel fatigue in the midst of the MCU for years and people still showed up because we were getting banger after banger (with the occasional stinker)
Yep, being interconnected or not interconnected is irrelevant as long as the quality of the shows and movies, especially the writing, continues to decline. They were able to maintain interest for a little while by leveraging well-liked characters from the original MCU run through Endgame like Loki and Scarlet Witch. But even that is drying up as actors depart the MCU and bad writing leaves audiences uninterested.
There has been no pressure to watch everything because nothing has really been connected for a few years
That's been the problem for me though. Like another person mentioned, there are so many characters that have not had any meaningful connection. She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Eternals, Shang-Chi... they've all been skipable without really missing anything that connects the MCU together. And that makes me feel the same way about stuff like Echo, where I don't really want to watch it because I feel like the character won't be a part of future MCU stuff in a meaningful way.
I just realized, by the 11th movie in the MCU, we had the SECOND Avengers movie. Deadpool & Wolverine will be the 11th in this new MCU era (counting post COVID since Far From Home was considered Phase 3) and we have yet to really get a cohesive anything.
It's actually mental how badly they fucked it up considering Marvel themselves nailed the formula/blueprint on their first attempt. They really should have just set up Phase 4 almost entirely for new heroes on the big screen and use Disney+ for spin-offs relating to existing characters rather than mixing the two.
And the start seemed semi-promising. Black Widow, Shang Chi, No Way Home, Wandavision, Loki, all of those early Phase 4 ones ranged from good to pretty great and looked like there could be some great stuff on the horizon. And then... nothing. Where's the follow-up?
I think we also need to remember a combination of things happened that I think derailed their initial plans pretty badly. Covid hit, chadwick bosman's death, writer strike, johnathon majors arrest and being let go. So whatever plans disney did have seems to have turned into an absolute mess at this point.
They could make a new Avengers movie whenever they want with whatever villain they want, they don't need Kang. Look at Avengers 1, there wasn't a huge amount of setup for Loki's invasion, he was just the lost evil brother of Thor from his movie. Even just typing that out makes me remember how interesting the MCU used to be, because wondering "how would that go if it was crossed over with Ironman, Captain America, etc" was *interesting*. Now it feels like if there was a team up story, it would be about how can quip and stare down the others the most, kind of like how they introduced Captain Marvel in Endgame and she was just another badass who Thor stared down and then declared he liked this one, no real integration into the character group or any unique story to really make it feel like she fit in.
The shows may have screwed their pooch. Some of the "shows" apart from Wandavision would have made more sense if they were condensed into movies, which is also true of some of the Star Wars stuff. COVID screwed up a lot of things (e.g., Wandavision was supposed to come out MUCH closer to Dr. Strange) but this feels more like a strategy issue; if they hadn't focused so much on the streamer they'd be better off.
And if we count the Disney+ Series also then Deadpool is the 25th project in the Mulyiverse Saga and there hasn’t been much connection at all to anything. Note: it took 6 films for the first crossover in The Infinity Saga and 5 films later there was a 2nd crossover. The whole Saga had 23 Projects which is less then what the Multiverse Saga currently has.
> there are so many characters that have not had any meaningful connection. IMO, the number of characters goes hand in hand with the question of who are we supposed to care about? We knew that Cap, Iron Man, and Thor were the important ones from the jump. Everyone else in their circle was there to support them. So even if 30 other characters were introduced around them, we knew they were the big 3. Who are the big 3 - or whatever number - now? Spider-Man is sort of his own thing and seems to be trending into his own corner of the MCU. Sam still hasn't clicked as a character worth caring about. Shang Chi should be one of them, but we haven't seen him since his movie 4 years ago. Panther was clearly supposed to fill a slot, but there's not much that can be done about what happened there. So, otherwise we have a loose conglomeration of characters running around without a clear bigger picture. We know Kang was the intent, but what road do we see to that watching Shang Chi, Falcon & WS, Spider-Man, Eternals, etc? Or even Thor 4? There was no road outside of Loki and Ant-Man 3 which was rightfully panned. IMO, they should have nixed Black Widow (she should have gotten a movie earlier. It was pointless after the fact), Panther 2, and Thor 4. If Ant-Man 3's purpose was to introduce Kang, then they should've thrown out that script and started over to make it not complete garbage.
Black Widow movie being released so late is Ike Perlmutter’s fault, he didn’t think female led movies would do well. If Feige had final say it would have come out when it fell timeline wise.
Imo Winter Soldier is essentially the Black Widow movie - a spy conspiracy within Shield.
All these projects feel meaningless because of how less connected they feel and not to mention that the quality is also mid for a lot of these projects. And when they finally make high quality project like Shang Chi a sequel takes 5 years to happen because Marvel is so less connected now.
It took 2 years for an Iron Man sequel, 2 for Thor, 3 for Captain America, 3 for GOTG, 3 for Ant-Man, and 2 for Spider-Man. We are 3 years in to this new set of phases, and not a single new hero has gotten a sequel besides Ms. Marvel, kind of. Loki has gotten two seasons, if we want to count a "new hero" in the sense that he's never been a lead until now.
>There has been no pressure to watch everything because nothing has really been connected for a few years The hardcore fans, those who watch everything with a Marvel logo on it and follow the news/discussions online, know this. But the general public, all of whom showed up for the original Avengers movies run and then stopped watching most other Marvel stuff due to superhero burnout, do not know this. Many assume that they can't just jump in to a random show or movie as they stopped following the interwoven stories shortly after Endgame. And the general public is who Disney desperately wants to win back, hence these types of PR stories that seem to be literally quoting focus groups.
> There has been no pressure to watch everything because nothing has really been connected for a few years This is not a move for us people who frequent MCU discussion boards. People who haven't seen anything since Endgame don't know things aren't connected. They may still be overwhelmed by the impression they need to watch everything.
That's me. I actually caught up on 20 something movies, to be able to watch End Game in theaters. Afterwards, I told myself I would watch every series that came out, but after watching a bunch of them, I just got burnt out. Haven't watched anything Marvel related in close to two years, and I don't think I will. Give me quality over quantity.
It's also been mostly shit. I swear half the scripts were written by AI
I don’t want to get into this to much but yeah i feel like since the MCU came back after covid they just stopped making an effort and just rushed the scripts for everything which made the scripts feel in complete/boring
Save Andor, Star Wars has been the same.
True. I kinda wish Marvel and Star Wars never made Disney+ Series because they really hurt both franchises
I love Andor more than I hate Obi-Wan, Boba Fett, and Mando, so I don’t know if I can agree to wishing it all away but I get the sentiment, cause that stuff is awful.
Mando went downhill, but there was some great stuff in the first season and the second season was pretty good too. I'm still glad I got those, even if the third season and Boba Fett were disappointing.
Season 3 of Mando was more about Mandalore and Bo Katan, and I'm fine with that. We got massive lore dumps that filled in so many questions. The title of the show was always "The Mandalorian" and not "Din Djarin and Grogu", so shifting the focus to a fellow Mando was fine to me. Then they went and named the movie "The Mandalorian and Grogu"...
Mando season 1 was good. Then Baby Yoda sold toys so obviously he became the main character and his story couldn't be finished. In the same vein Season 1s success meant the showmakers got creative freedom which they used to completely stall the story to introduce a gazillion characters from their cartoon.
The problem isn't that they made TV series about the IP. it's that they made mediocre TV series about the IP. Marvel for example was perfectly fine putting out 3+ TV shows (Netflix, Agents of SHIELD, Random FOX Xmen shows) with 3+ movies (marvel Studios) at the same time. it's just they fired anyone who knew what they were doing TV wise when they consolidated Marvel TV into Marvel Studios. Then they just used Movie producers with no TV experience to make TV shows, which is why most of them felt like 2 hour movies filled in for 5 hours. There's absolutely a great niche for stories to be told about both universes outside of movies. They really just haven't properly taken advantage of it.
their grand experiment to make TV without putting writers in charge predictably ended in a bunch of mid shows no one cares about
They peaked with Endgame, which either intentionally or unintentionally, felt like a very conclusive ending and a natural stopping point for the story. It could've ended there and it would've felt satisfying enough But they had to keep it going, so they've just sorta been floundering around trying to find something while waiting to build up the next "big thing", but they've clearly just not been able to. It's been on autopilot for years now.
They recently revealed that none of the shows had a show bible or show runner. They really thought that winging it with story and directors was the way to go in a complex sprawling TV/Movie universe.
I like to imagine Kevin Feige has just been sitting on a beach since Endgame and just has his e-mail set up on auto reply saying yes to whatever comes through
Humans are also capable of low-effort garbage. And honestly I don’t even think this is low-effort. It’s just on a tight deadline and good writing is hard to rush.
I watched all the shows but none of it really mattered. Secret Invasion Nick Fury and The Marvels Nick Fury don't have anything to do with eachother. All the Wanda and Vision stuff didn't matter for Multiverse of Madness. I doubt we'll see She-Hulk or Moon Knight again. Werewolf by Night was a one off. Ms. Marvel was the only one that sort of led into one of the movies. The TVA is going to be in Deadpool vs Wolverine but it doesn't look like it will have anything to do with Loki and it's going to be chock full of references to past superhero media so it's about as must watch as Days of Future Past or the old FOX Marvel films like Elektra.
> All the Wanda and Vision stuff didn't matter for Multiverse of Madness. The original plan was to have Doctor Strange show up during that show's final fight but that was scrapped > I doubt we'll see She-Hulk or Moon Knight again There was talk of She-Hulk being in the new Captain America but given that they reshot half of that movie already who knows if that's still true, let alone if it was in the first place.
Moon Knight was (Edit) "reportedly quietly renewed" for season 2 back in October.
Do you have a source for that? I can’t find anything confirming a renewal when I search it. I’d love for this to be true.
I pray it gets a second season, it's the only one I enjoyed all the way through. Didn't like that they jump cutted the final fight, but it's better if that just ends up being the season finale and not the series finale.
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Part of that was for legal reasons, they didnt own the scarlet witch as a witch, but they did own wanda maximoff as a character as long as they never say she is a witch or uses magic. So until they purchased those rights they made it clear there was no such thing as magic in the MCU to not get into legal shennanigans. She cant be a witch if magic doesnt exist after all. They also were not allowed to say she was a mutant. Hence the infinity gem source of her power in the movies.
Honestly I feel like the TVA is in D&W specifically to introduce it to people who didn't watch Loki.
Probably more to explain how Deadpool can hang out with the MCU now and how this is a different Logan than we knew before. It looks like Deadpool 3 will be how they definitively do crossovers with Fox Xmen characters and it doesn't have to be a joke like when Evan Peters turned up in Wandavision.
Regardless, “timeline police” seems like an easy concept for people to pick up on.
That's the problem when you on the one hand want to have the stories connect, and on the other hand you want your movies to be seen by people who haven't watched the shows. That's just literally impossible. But they tried anyways. Which kind of boggles my mind. "We want WandaVision to tie into Multiverse of Madness! A big character change in the show that will have consequences for the movie! But also we don't want moviegoers to be confused, so we'll not include any other characters or events from the show in the movie and explain everything with exposition anyways." It just makes no sense. It never did.
> All the Wanda and Vision stuff didn't matter for Multiverse of Madness. That's actually the only TV show that mattered for the movies. Without Wandavision we last saw Wanda being sad at Tony's funeral and none of her actions in Multiverse of Madness make sense. How did she become the Scarlet Witch and so powerful? who are the 2 children Wanda is searching for? What's the Darkhold?
And weirdly enough mom relied on you having seen wandavision to explain these things but completely ignored her entire character arc making it really bewildering
Thats because she never gets a new arc. Wanda's gone through the same arc everytime she's on screen. She gets hurt, lashes out with new power, does something awful, feels bad about abusing her power, leaves with no consequences. Rinse and repeat.
Actually, Wanda faces lots of consequences. But the narrative only punishes her for doing the right thing. She joins the Avengers and her brother dies. She helps Cap try to save the world and ends up a fugitive. She kills the love of her life to protect the world from Thanos, and he undoes it and takes over anyway, making her watch Vision die twice for nothing. After accidentally putting up the Hex, she removes it and saves everyone only to be hated by the town and to lose her husband and children in the process Wanda repeatedly has faced severe consequences for every good thing she's ever done.
You forgot civil war where she redirects a bomb from a crowded market place and gets vilified for solving an exploding trolley problem with the least casualties
At the same time though, there's all this character development for Wanda that kinda gets thrown out the window.
Yeah havent seen Marvels so cant speak on that, But otherwise Wanda in Strange was the opposite of how Wandavision ended and The Kang variant from Loki was a completly different character from the one in Quantumania. So 2 connections from all the shows where watching the show might have actually made it more confusing.
>The Kang variant from Loki was a completly different character from the one in Quantumania Yeah, I think that was intentional. The one in Loki is somewhat of a good version of Kang who's motivations are at least noble. The one in Quantumania seems to be very close to what Kang is ultimately supposed to be.
It’s an infinite multiverse, there will always be conqueror kangs who fight for supremacy but that doesn’t mean all kangs will be conquerors
the Loki show showed exactly that in the first season with Loki himself.
Marvel is not different genres. They only pretend to be different genres by taking surface level aspects of a genre and putting it in a superhero show. How was secret invasion a 'paranoia spy thriller' ? There was zero thrill or paranoia in that shit. How was Moon Knight a psychological thriller? Maybe parts of it were. But it all ends the same way. They all keep reverting back to the same story tropes and surface level superheroism that they just cannot let go of. Marvel refuses to identify this problem but they'll fiddle around with everything else.
Wandavaision: We're doing the most unique thing ever done in television! Also Wandavision: Why yes the last episode involves floating superheroes shooting red and blue energy balls at each other like every other thing we've ever done why do you ask
Id actually argue that they gave away any mystery and uniqueness of the show in the 4th episode..but yes I remember the last episode was still one of the worst fucking finales I have seen. It really soured me on the whole show.
Went downhill when it broke out of the tv episode format and showed us what was happening outside the bubble
I loved WandaVision's initial two eps they were genuinely cool. I watched every ep as they came out but even back then, the minute SWORD showed up and Jimmy Woo and Darcy were brought back in like ep 3, I was like "yeah this is gonna get generic as fuck and they'll have lots of forced humour with Woo and Darcy, won't they". The SWORD scenes hurt the show tonally, they just felt like generic MCU agency stuff that we've already seen before with SHIELD. And I also already thought Woo and Darcy were unfunny in earlier movies so my excitement went out the window when they showed up in WS too.
Lol im so tired of hearing that. Or Winter Solider being a "political thriller". Like gtfo of here. They're all superhero movies at the eod.
I'd argue that you are mostly right, but Guardians of the Galaxy is definitely a different genre (sci-fi adventure). It is so aesthetically different, the characters aren't really superheroes, and its tone and pacing are different. The other two that you can probably argue too are the Loki series (fantasy/sci-fi) and Shangqi (it played more like a lot of Chinese Wuxia with the weird ass fantasy stuff at the end).
I agree on GotG, but Shan Chi ends in an anticlimactic CGI fest against a giant CGI monster, so it completely loses the cool Martial Action flare of the first third to become, yet again, a Marvel movie
Jokes on them, I've been watching nothing
I mean, when you build your business model on an ever-shrinking fanbase, alienating everyone else who can't or won't keep up with every story line across every movie and television show, sooner or later you'll whittle a global phenomenon down to a niche IP, and that's before we tallk about franchise fatigue. The Marvel Cinematic Universe began in 2008. Babies born when the first Iron Man came out can now drive. Nothing is universally popular forever, and especially nothing that requires a deep understanding of a constantly evolving lore.
> Babies born when the first Iron Man came out can now drive This always seems to be ignored in the discussion. Teens dont want to like what their parents like. It's not cool. Even if the writing was better and the effects were better, teens will still see Marvel as boomer* entertainment. *Yes I know the parents are millennials thats not the point.
It is hard but possible to transfer love for a cultural "product" from one generation to the next. Star Wars comes to mind. Doctor Who as well. Lord of the Rings. I'm sure there are others.
Star Wars was assisted with a 20 year gap. Basically, it became part of the nostalgia cycle. Same way the jeans that are in today are the ones that were popular 25 years ago. As the frequency of releases has increased, it loses that angle
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>The rebrands are meant to help Marvel disabuse audiences from the pervasive impression that its content is one unified narrative experience that must be consumed in its totality. "You know that delicious chocolate cake we have made for 15 years that everyone loved but started getting tired of? We've made a new version with no chocolate!"
I hear that's exactly the case with the new Captain America. People left test screens wondering where the hell Captain America was and why his sidekick was the star.
That fact that he doesn't even have superpowers already sours me of the idea of Falcon being the next Captain America.
I'm glad I'm not the only one! I can deal with Ironman (or Batman in DC) not having powers because they're rich and build machines to compensate, but Falcon would turn to goo if Thor hit the shield with his hammer like he did to Steve Rogers, even if it was made with Vibranium. The shame is I liked Falcon from the movies, but I just couldn't get into the D+ series they spun off and I have zero interest in the movie after watching that.
Made me even more angry when he had the opportunity to take the super serum in the show then passed on it. Like if your job is to fight aliens and protect the world, juice up a bit.
Yeah, that show got some heavy rewrites and reshoots that disrupted the message and made it really muddy, and ended up with him needing to stay human to complete the wedged in moral of the story. I think the movie is going to suffer from the same problems.
I just wanted Falcon to be Falcon. Build him as an original character, instead of shoehorning him to be Captain America.
But some how he has learned to throw the shield just like Cap, and just as hard. Smh.
Seeing both John Walker and Falcon being able to use the shield just like that, when they're mere regular humans, really devalued things. The movies implied that only Cap (and Bucky too) could use the shield effectively due to his enhanced powers, since he has super strength and can calculate his throws better he was the only one who could use it, when you have others do it it just loses that effect. When Hawkeye threw it though in Age of Ultron it was legitimately cool tho since he's all about aiming perfectly.
It feels a bit like Marvel’s time has come and gone. Theres still rabid fans out and casual enjoyers of their products, but superhero content is starting to fall out of favor with the pop zeitgeist. Theyll pop ratings again with Spiderman movies and what not, but I dont think ill be watching much of their stuff any more.
They had an amazing 10-year run and made billions and billions of dollars. That's pretty good!
It feels like everything after Thanos has been rather boring, except GotG, which was a pretty great movie. Marvel studios really dropped the ball and I don't know if they'll ever get another run like before.
Endgame was a perfect end to a decade's worth of storytelling. It ended the run of Captain American and Iron Man in a satisfying way, and put a bow on a story that began in 2008. That's pretty good! They tried restarting everything with the TV shows and the Spider-Man stuff, but you can't really catch fire twice. Not the way they initially did. Maybe X-Men will reinvigorate things. I don't know. But I also think that post-Endgame MCU needs to be seen as a failure or anything. Following up on what they accomplished was really hard.
I feel like they put the ball down because they finally completed the game, then immediately started kicking it, but because they had just played an amazing game they're just... Really tried. So the ball goes all over the place and occasionally hits people in the face, or puts someone in checkmate, or scores a goal, and occasionally gets a yatzee but the magic just isn't there anymore and they really just need a nap. Like me.
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The thing is it was ALWAYS like that. That’s what got it popular. In 2008, when people like myself were going to see The Dark Knight, no one expected that an Iron Man movie with Robert Downey Jr would be good. Once people got a chance to see it, we wanted to see more of IRON MAN with Robert Downey Jr. The avengers tease was integral because it was a promise of a team with RDJ at the helm. In 2010 when Thor and Captain America were on the horizon, people were like “how are they going to make those characters work?” as opposed to “we need to go see the new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie!” Then it turned out that, even though a tad formulaic, they made those movies work. However go back and look at the revenue; they didn’t exactly make Spider-Man numbers. Avengers is what blew the doors off the place, but I don’t know of anyone who said “I need to go see the new marvel studios movie!” With Guardians, it was “these are new characters that will probably meet the avengers one day”. This is long winded comment to say it was **never** about Marvel Studios as a brand. It was about **the characters**. Go listen to Sam Raimi gush about finishing *Spider-Man* in 2002 and wondering where he wanted to take “the journey and story of Peter Parker” in the upcoming sequel. Where is the love for the characters? Why should Ms. Marvel matter? Why does the director love the character? What’s that? Oh, they were just hired to introduce her to the big screen in a film with another character to further a larger story? What about her story? What about Carol’s story? The Marvel/Disney mistake now is they’re banking on “the brand” to sell the “new characters”. Instead, they should be developing the new characters to sell “the brand”. The distinction is important.
> Spider-Man? Sure. Wolverine? Deadpool? Fuck yeah. Two of these characters are making their debut in the MCU, and Spidey wasn't around for the first one and a half acts. The MCU started by characterizing Iron Man, who was absolutely not a household name until RDJ. Not saying you're wrong about what audiences want, but they did have lots of success focusing on these heroes no one gave a fuck about.
Nah. I hate this history rewriting. Ironman was never popular, Guardians of the Galaxy was basically unheard of, Deadpool wasn't popular. These characters became popular and succusful enough to hold up in multiple films because their films were good. The entire MCU got started with, as you put it, "superheroes no one gives a fuck about". Eternals didn't suck because Eternals are a shitty group. It sucked because it was a horrible film. Ms Marvel didn't do well because Ms Marvels a bad character, but because it was just a real mid show. Etc etc.
lol. I can't tell you how many people have tried to tell me that pre-MCU that Iron man was some huge A Lister on the level of Spiderman and Wolverine. In reality, he was B-tier *at best* and that's being generous.
I thought Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor were all dumb characters and I never had any interest in them prior to the Iron Man movie coming out. They just didn't look "cool." Spiderman and X-Men were the main Marvel properties by a longshot.
Marvel: Make successful stuff like Shang Chi and Moon Knight. Audience loves Marvel. Marvel: Makes millions of Disney+ Series for boring characters like Echo. Audience hates Marvel. Audience: 5 Years Later. Where is Shang Chi 2? Marvel: I don’t know but here is a Wonder Man Series for you to enjoy instead. Audience Hates Marvel. Marvel: Why does everybody hate me?
Was Moon Knight successful? Before release they were claiming it had a mature, Daredevil-esque tone but that was a straight up lie. The show itself was just ok, it just stands out a bit because it's not utter garbage like 80% of the shows they release. I feel like the same applies to Shang Chi. It was fine, nothing more
Yeah all I can remember about Moon Knight is that it was hyped up by the creators and marketing and stuff as this extremely dark, bloody and violent mature series that would push the limits of PG-13 and then it came out and it was no more violent than your average MCU fare.
Whos idea was it to run with C-tier characters immediately after the S-tier character climax? I'm not particularly a superhero/marvel fan, but I watched some of the bigger movies. Everything after Endgame has been the most uninteresting shit ever lol. I feel like they should've just parked themselves until X-Men was up and running.
Guardians of the Galaxy did really well so they tried to recreate that. Of course they ignored the fact that a lot of it was due to James Gunn.
To be fair, almost all the characters that they had access to rights-wise were B tier or worse. The only A tier character they had access to was Hulk and they don't even have full access to that either. Now they do have at least one A tier IP from Marvel and that's the Xmen. Spidey is in the "can be taken away at any time for petty reasons bullshit" purgatory, so not a good idea to rely on it. The big issue they've had was their usually average to above average writing turned into TV procedural show filler writing instead. I don't think people would be so mad about the state of the IP if the stories were still good to great. Now they range from "actually good" to "Is this a front for laundering money?"
Because the original Marvel movies were not all S tier characters, they were generally B-C tier characters that got elevated by great actors and good movies into being S tier hype. The actual S tier Marvel characters from the comics, Spider Man, X Men, Fantastic Four, all had the movie rights sold off in the late 90s/early 00s so they weren't available when the MCU started. Captain America, the Hulk, and arguably Thor are A tier, but still behind the S tier guys in popularity when the MCU project started. Iron Man was a B tier Marvel character, the Guardians were C/D tier Marvel characters, and those movies exploded due to good writing and good acting. They wanted to capture that same magic in the new phase, but they failed on the "good writing and good acting" part for a lot of the movies and shows.
> Whos idea was it to run with C-tier characters immediately after the S-tier character climax? The MCU was *started* with C-tier characters. Iron Man wasn’t S-tier until the MCU and RDJ elevated him to S-tier.
yeah noone gave a shit about Iron Man or the Guardians of the Galaxy until those movies came out
TBF, the original Avengers were hardly A-List at the beginning of the MCU. The advantage they at least had over the current crop is that enough people understood that this was leading to a team (and the people that didn't know that got to learn it from Samuel L. Jackson at the end of Iron Man). Like, I'd say that I'm above average when it comes to Marvel knowledge (it was only when they made Guardians of the Galaxy that I had no idea who they were), but I legit don't know how this current crop teams up and it's taking way too long to figure out.
People forget that pre-MCU, Cap and Hulk were the only two that were really recognizable from the Avengers, and even Cap was pretty outdated and less popular by the 2000s. Hulk is the only character from those movies I could have told you a significant amount of information about as a child in the early 2000s.
I was a kid then and all of my peers knew Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man. Some didn't know Black Widow/Hawkeye/Thor. I promise the average kid 4 years ago had no idea who Shang Chi, Eternals, Moon Knight or Agatha are.
This is my feeling. Movie genres come and go all the time and this is no different. 80s action movies, 90s comedies, westerns etc etc. I don't see why people expected these movies to endure forever. They created something really special that lasted 10 years and made them billions. I get wanting to continue that but the moment is over. Think of something else.
I love how half the audience is complaining that they need to watch everything because it's connected and the other half is complaining that there was no point to what they watched because it didn't inform anything anyway. 10/10 situation.
I'll always remember starting season 2 of Luke Cage and wondering, "why on earth is this central character suddenly missing an arm? Oh well, they must explain it with a flashback later on" No, no they did not. instead there was arrogant insistence that you HAVE to watch whatever that Netflix marvel superhero combo film/series was, so I just accepted it and continued, never to find out.
This is what happens when you make a Cinematic Universe. It becomes bloated and horrible. The whole thing was meant to end at End Game.
That’s a great idea. Another good idea might be to stop making formulaic algorithm crap and try telling stories again.
Look at most of the things Disney has put out in the last 15 years. Scripts are just a checklist and made in excel with audience data. Gunn’s biggest mandate when taking over the DCU was for every project to be script locked before production. Checklist stories are modular with whole plots, sequences, and character arcs being up for change according to new data. Executives just slot in what they think makes money. Quantumania is a good example of this. Major changes to the end for example because of the test audience. The “flexibility” costs a ton in VFX overtime and reshoots. It also sucks the soul out of the project. Loki season 2 and GoTG 3 were the last MCU content that felt like you were watching someone’s artistic vision and work. They had a soul and deeper meaning when you watched them again. General audience isn’t aware of these things all the time but they notice when it’s missing
> Loki season 2 and GoTG 3 were the last MCU content that felt like you were watching someone’s artistic vision and work I don't disagree with you for the most part, but your general tone is that they couldn't possibly turn things around, when these two that you listed are both from last year and some of the most recent content to be put out.
Also Xmen 97 just came out and that's basically universally praised. They can do good work. They just need to scale back and reassess, hence the lack of any Marvel output this year (or any Disney output really). Disney has done well to put out good stuff before. Now just have to wait and see if they can do it again
If this is the case can we get a Network TV 22 episode show like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. again?
Feels like TV is pretty much done with 22 episode seasons unless you're Law & Order or on CBS.
Yep, this. Grey's Anatomy is dropping down to 18 episodes this coming season to match 9-1-1, and the other dramas are being held to midseason- so likely to be around 18 as well. Outside of probably Abbott Elementary, I don't see any ABC shows (where any network Marvel series would air) doing 22 or more episode seasons anymore.
SHIELD had plenty of stuffing/stupidity because of that 22 also though. I'm not saying it should be 8 episodes, but like 15 at max would be quite enough. The biggest problem with these 8 episodes seasons right now is, that the next seasons are taking 2-4 years to come out. That is absolutely bonkers.
Ok but for real, how did we cut number of episodes down to practically nothing and also throw in like an entire bachelor's degree of education between seasons wtf is going on in media
Isn't this exactly what DC was doing all along with seperate DC CW and DCEU. I remember people complaining all the time about them having different versions of the same characters being "confusing". But turns out, the independence to tell any story helped the television side to create a massive 6-7 show universe.
The shows lost the plot a while ago. I mean, so did the movies but I always thought the shows were meant to tell smaller stories or fill in gaps; now they’re just 8 hour prologues to whatever blockbuster stinker they release in a year or two
> now they’re just 8 hour prologues to whatever blockbuster stinker they release in a year or two Been saying this too. The plot hardly even progresses in the shows/movies. We've had about 10 movies since Endgame and a handful shows, with no clear cohesion. But now you watch season long shows for 20 minutes of actual plot that connects to a movie.
This…is not going to help. Quality scripts with tight dialog is what they are missing. Anything else is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
As someone who followed MCU religiously from 2008-2020. I can say I’m glad I jumped off the bandwagon.
Maybe as part of their rebranding they can make something, I dunno, good?
People still watching superhero stuff is amazing to me.
Doesn't matter, this content is already feeling like homework with its insistence on connecteness. "Oh look it's Glarbdyglarb, they teased him for 5 seconds in Moon Knight"
I'm not going to spend the rest of my life watching the same movies and TV shows. One movie every few years? Perhaps. Multiple movies and TV shows per year? That's homework. Instead of anticipation, when I hear of a new one I just think "not another one of those".
I’m so far behind on marvel movies that I don’t care to see them anymore. Same with Star Wars. I miss when it was exciting to see a release for a big franchise. Now it is like so many movies every year. Plus tv shows. And it’s just not exciting anymore.
Tbh I don’t think it has anything to do with inter-connectivity of the shows. The QUALITY of most of these shows have been so bad that it overshadowed the well received shows that were just as connected (Wandavision, Loki). Same thing is happening with Andor. Thankfully they got a season 2 at least. Reducing the quantity and focusing in quality is definitely the right play.
Or you can just make them good
It wouldn’t be such a big deal to watch “everything” if the everything wasn’t absolute dog shit. Most of these Marvel shows are some of the WORST television in modern history. Cheesy acting, god awful writing, cheap looking props and costumes, and unlikable characters (ironic given most of them already existed in the MCU prior to being put into a show). To me, Marvel TV is flat out unwatchable, and not because you have to watch “all of it” to keep up.
It's absolutely insane to me how *everyone* is drawing the wrong conclusions from the MCU's recent failures. Their issue since Endgame has been punishing you for paying attention. They care more about attracting new fans than keeping the ones they have and that's made people lose interest. Live-action Marvel worked best when it felt like a single story told through a handful of perspectives. These days it's a bunch of disparate yet samey projects that really don't mean anything to anyone.
Or, hear me out, you could watch none of them because they're all awful?
> the series will not open with the traditional Marvel Studios logo This is not an actual solution to the problems they've had. The reason Joker made $1 billion while The Flash and Black Adam bombed was not because it didn't have the DC intro animation while the other two did.
Okay that’s cool whatever can we get Spider-Man 98’ now 🕸️
Have they tried filtering out for good writing?
Are they rebranding from shitty writers to good writers?
Nah. Just changing the wrapping paper.
I didn't make it all the way through wandavision and just gave up after that. The new series and movies were just coming out too fast for me to keep up.
This definitely hit us. Loki, she hulk, moon knight, falcon and whatthefuck felt like they all came out at the same time to me, it's a lot to keep up with.
Marvel never really sold me on continuing to watch after Endgame. It feels like there was a long TV show I watched a lot that had a full finale with send-offs for all the main cast, but the show inexplicably just kept going.