The MCU Has Been Taking Us For Granted.

funding for shafferless is provided by Squarespace the sponsor of today's video from websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business and I have a pretty good thing going I'd say the sheer volume of new Disney Animation Pixar Animation Star Wars and MCU products constantly being churned out means that I never run out of things to talk about on my funny little YouTube channel I can't complain too hard about the extreme Devotion to quantity over quality that Disney now subscribes to because it helps me run my little business but but the truth is on the artistic side of things it's been kind of heartbreaking to see the tumble these Studios have taken over the years I don't Revel in disliking Disney animated movies or Pixar movies or Star Wars products because I remember eras when the content that fell from these branches was consistently great since they took their time to lovingly craft incredible experiences that would stand the test of time and believe it or not the same applies to the MCU remember three years ago when I made a love letter to this big ass Cinematic Universe yeah the video was a little corny but honestly I stand by what I said in recent years it's become the hip new thing to [ __ ] on the MCU and claimed that it was always terrible and that it's ruining Cinemas we all know it honestly while I can respect those opinions especially when you consider how much the success of the MCU berries smaller more personal films I'm gonna go ahead and stick with my opinion that phases one through three of the MCU were pretty good I can have that opinion and you can disagree and we don't need to get into a whole Twitter argument over my enjoyment for these movies because I have a life outside of them I watch tons of movies that aren't big superhero or animated Blockbusters and if you genuinely believe that that's all I watch then you're a [ __ ] idiot but I digress honestly despite some hiccups and mad films here and there the infinity Saga was a really cool example of how you can successfully pull off a dramatically compelling story arc over the course of dozens of Blockbusters I really admire the universe as it stood from Iron Man all the way to end game but the thing is stories are meant to have an ending and this one had a really good one but of course it couldn't stop there you really think Disney was about to give up their biggest Cash Cow they're gonna keep making these things until the sun blows up and in greater numbers too in the past one in three quarter years we have had six MCU movies and eight MCU TV shows so more MCU thing things coming out in one and three quarter years then the entirety of phases one and two which stretched from 2008 to 2015. and those first two phases built up to two separate big crossover movies lots of things were progressing in terms of the story and the characters that were being brought together meanwhile barely any of the 14 products we've gotten this short amount of time have felt meaningfully connected so far phase 4 will soon be coming to a close with the release of black panther wakanda forever and even if that ends up being the greatest movie ever it still won't change the fact that nothing in the rest of phase 4 built up to it as well as the fact that an exceptional movie is the outlier quality wise in this phase I really haven't enjoyed anything that much in phase four I thought Spider-Man no way home was pretty great but that's about it everything else I've seen has generally ranged from good but flawed to kinda bad but most of it has been pretty average painfully average one might say and yeah I'll be up front and reiterate everything I've seen because I still haven't watched the turtles and I gave up on She-Hulk after one episode because the jokes were extremely bad I'm sorry but I just don't care about these products and if you'd like to use the fact that I haven't seen all of phase 4 as a means to disregard my video that's totally fair but I think it's Justified because this isn't actually a review of phase four as a whole I mean wakanda forever isn't even out yet so I can't really make it that this is just a video of me explaining why I feel burned out by phase four and the fact that I willingly skipped a handful of products from this phase and didn't feel like I missed anything should speak volumes but for the sake of being totally fair to these products since I haven't watched them let's just assume that eternals She-Hulk and wakanda forever are 10 out of 10 masterpieces yeah I mean you never know it's possible so that's three exceptional products plus Spider-Man no way home which I saw and thought was great okay four true bangers out of 14. that's a whopping 28.6 percent of of Marvel's phase 4 output a little over a quarter and keep in mind this is the best case scenario where I consider these shows and movies to actually be exceptional something tells me that this percentage of great content would go down significantly if I actually watched them now to be fair it's not like I thought phases one and two were all that exceptional I like the Avengers and Iron Man 1 and 3 and I love winter soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy but both these phases have their fair share of stinkers to balance out the gems but this was back when the MCU was still finding his footing and trying out what worked and what didn't I see a lot of people saying oh you got to be patient with phase four and treat it the same way you treated phase one since they have to build up to a new story arc uh okay phase one ended with the Avengers which was one of the biggest pop culture events in recent memory and while the movie is leading up to the Avengers weren't all great or even good there was only five of them so it was absolutely worth getting through them all for the cathartic payoff of this crossover meanwhile phase 4 has more than doubled the amount of products as phase one and they haven't really amounted to anything yet yeah there's the vague overarching theme of the Multiverse that's been featured in three completely disconnected stories and eventually they're gonna fight Kang but how much of this phase was really necessary in building up to that it's impossible to say right now but so much of this phase is just felt like doing homework in order to study for a test that's years away from actually happening were the previous MCU phases like that yeah sure I I doubt anyone willingly would have sat through Ant-Man and the WASP if it didn't have information that would be important to setting up end game but there's one crucial difference between phase 4 and the previous phases the one thing that effectively killed my interest in following every single MCU property going forward it's the TV shows regardless of their very quality following two or three blockbuster movies every year was perfectly manageable even if one of them wasn't great oh well you didn't really waste that much time watching it but then you factor TV shows with six or nine thirty to fifty minute episodes into the mix and it starts to become a true chore to sit through there are shows that fit the episodic format nicely and have some definite High highs like one division or what if but then they're brought down by a mediocre conclusion or a couple Bad episodes but the thing that's far worse to me is when stories that clearly could have been told in a single two-hour movie are unnecessarily stretched into six of episode TV shows the Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Hawkeye are good early examples of this but it became even more evident with Moon Knight and Miss Marvel I thought the former was okay and the latter was pretty good but man they would be so much better if you just cut out the fluff I was honestly really bored during most of the first half of moon night but I'm glad I stuck with it because I finally started to really get into it halfway through the fourth episode it got creative and weird and interesting but to get there you have to trudge through three hours of generic tedium and I would be way more forgiving if it was only one hour inside a single movie then the contrast between the first and second halves of the show would feel a lot sharper but instead they dragged this [ __ ] out for so long meanwhile I loved the first two and a half episodes of Miss Marvel the editing was really sharp there were creative visuals that fit the teenage Vibe of the show super well and the characters were super lovable but this show really drags in the middle robbing the main conflict clicked of any tension it previously had because of how slowly everything is moving in a film the events that play out here would have been so much tighter and kept the tension up but instead they have to stretch things out to fill the six episode quota couple that with lame villains who make dumb choices and a finale that well not bad still isn't as great as the beginning of the show you have something that could have been really exceptional falling incredibly short of its potential I gave it a 7 out of 10 out of my Goodwill for its creative and energetic first half but I feel like I was being a bit generous with that score so here we have two Origin stories that clearly would have functioned better as movies but were instead stretched Beyond capacity in order to fill a quota for what I believe to be the main culprit behind the mcu's sudden and drastic decline Disney plus compared to other streaming services Disney plus is more dependent on brand recognition than anything else they need weekly shows to fill up their entire calendar year in order to keep people subscribed which means it's time to milk their most popular IPS for all their worth we can't make a Moon Knight or Miss Marvel movie because if we do that and put it straight on Disney plus people are just gonna get a free trial watch it and then unsubscribe well you can't do that if it's six episodes released weekly so bada boom that's how we make the money it's one of the easiest non-warner Brothers Discovery related examples of capitalism having a detrimental impact on Art it's also not just an MCU thing considering the exact same [ __ ] happens with the Obi-Wan show with which clearly should have been a single movie but going back to the MCU if they had just opted to make some of these quote unquote shows into TV movies then phase four would have been so much more manageable to watch through hell a movie version of Miss Marvel that didn't drop the cool editing and visual choices halfway through would probably be my favorite thing in all of phase 4 but it wasn't meant to be because stories told in the MCU now are meant to serve Disney's corporate interests first and the larger overarching story of the franchise second okay so I don't love the TV shows but there's still six whole movies to talk about maybe they're good no I had some Goodwill for Black Widow when I first saw it but in hindsight I don't even know why it's incredibly lame and forgettable and pointless to the larger MCU as a whole outside of introducing her sister as a replacement character going forward I know a lot of people love song Chi and I thought it was great at first especially the action but then it kind of devolved into a generic boring CGI snooze Fest by the the third act and I haven't had any desire to revisit it eternals is a 10 out of 10 haven't seen it as we previously established no way home look I'm gonna be candid here for a second as much as I love this movie it is absolutely riding on previous non-mcu Spider-Man stories to booster its main appeal and its emotional core I think it's a great Spider-Man movie but I don't know if this being the crowning achievement of phase 4 is something to be all that proud of and then we have my two biggest disappointments of the phase doctor strange and the Multiverse of Madness and Thor love and thunder I won't say too much since I already reviewed both of these movies and you can hear my thoughts on them in those reviews but tldw when this is the best we can expect from all tours like Sam Raimi and Taiko waititi I think that's a really bad sign speaking of really bad signs I speculated in my Thor review that Tycho was being rushed along and didn't have time to second guess some of the writing and directorial choices he made which is pretty similar to what I speculated was happening to Deborah Chow for the Obi-Wan show well that's merely speculation and we don't really know if the writing and direction is rushed there's one thing that we absolutely do know is being rushed the visual effects remember when the bad VFX in Black Panther were considered an outlier for The Wider MCU well now that's just kind of the status quo with everyone clowning on the effects in Thor Spider-Man Miss Marvel She-Hulk so many things in this universe just look like [ __ ] now which is clearly a result of the Endless content machine having to spew these things out with absolutely no breaks in between it makes for a worse experience for us the viewers but that's nothing compared to the toll this is taken on the people actually making these effects in recent months we've heard all about the insane crunch times and unreasonable demands that Marvel is imposing on its VFX Studios and it's really upsetting to hear about to be fair these issues do predate phase four but I think it's fair to assume that the crunch has gotten a lot worse as more and more Marvel products are being shot out I mean mean you can see that in the sheer amount of subpar visual effects we're getting now which clearly aren't the fault of the actual VFX artists and are rather the fault of Disney's insane unreasonable content schedule we don't need seven movies and eight TV shows in two years you guys can spread them out Marvel doesn't need to be the main thing carrying your streaming platform Disney just make good original content that doesn't rely on being from a pre-existing brand my favorite parts of Miss Marvel were the non-superhero related scenes I would watch a fun quirky Slice of Life show about a Pakistani girl and her family but Disney would never dare to make something like that if it wasn't connected to the Marvel IP alright I've been rambling for long enough so I think it's time to wrap this up bottom line is I think it's pretty safe to say that the MCU has been taking us for granted they assume that we'd stick around after end game and be okay with the bloated volume of mediocre half-hearted ugly overly stretched out content that has hasn't gone anywhere yet after 14 products in sharp contrast to its predecessors which already meaningfully connected to each other the MCU is starting to feel a lot like The Simpsons something that's very clearly past its prime but it's just gonna keep on going anyway riding off the Nostalgia we have for its Glory Days and like I'm still gonna tune into the stuff that interests me I'll watch anything Guardians of the Galaxy related and I'm cautiously optimistic to see what they do with Daredevil but I'm absolutely done following everything in this universe and I wouldn't say that I'm upset about that or anything I mean after all this was kind of inevitable right the infinity Saga had a fantastic conclusion and I'm just kind of ready to move on now and I want to make it absolutely clear that I'm fine with anyone liking phase 4 or the MCU in general contrary to what film Twitter tells you it's not the worst thing in the world nor is it devoid of artistic expression or compelling stories just because there are richer better shot better acted and better told stories out there that doesn't make the MCU bad there are very good MCU movies out there and I still hold a certain amount of fondness for the infinity Saga but I'm also ready to move on and stop following the MCU as religiously as I did in the past it is what it is and that's that anyway go watch Daredevil because season 3 is legitimately the best thing in the entire MCU regardless of how dubiously Canon it is to that Universe good night tri-state area oh yeah I also wanted to mention that I wasn't really counting tv specials throughout this video but after writing and editing all of it I checked out werewolf by night and it was pretty good actually I wish it was longer with better developed characters but overall very creative and well directed and good also you know what else is good Squarespace let's talk about that right now Squarespace is a fantastic intuitive online website builder that allows you to create beautiful websites for your business or personal hobby present your work using squarespace's professional portfolio designs display projects and customizable Galleries and add password protected pages to share private works with clients you can even present your videos from YouTube Vimeo and Animoto on your Squarespace site add an image overlay to your video 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foreign [Applause]

Channel: Schaffrillas Productions

Views: 2,688,912

Keywords: Schaffrillas Productions, MCU, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, She-Hulk, Doctor Strange, Thor, Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, Falcon, Winter Soldier, Loki, Disney, WandaVision, Shang-Chi, Spider-Man

Id: ICULY_gTngs

Length: 17min 5sec (1025 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 11 2022