The MCU Is A Joke

the mcu's gone from cultural darling to a cautionary tale an example of what happens when you think you're too big to fail at one point it stood as an example of what Chernobyl conveyor belt entertainment could look like when perfected a multi-billion dollar media Monster Under the Umbrella of the Disney Empire even though popular culture has always gone in Cycles the MCU seemed like it might just be one of those things that sticks around in the cultural Zeitgeist forever like James Bond or Godzilla and that could still be the case but if they're still making MCU movies 30 years from now it won't be at the rate of phase four or five I feel like I do this check in on the MCU thing a couple times a year where we update the situation with the latest mess-ups well it's the MCU so shocker it hasn't gone well since the last video time to check in the MCU might not be the highlight of Cinema but I don't think it's as bad as Martin Score says he thinks it is the MCU isn't detrimental to cinema it's not whatever this is to Muse sick [Music] but diminishing interest in the brand means the MCU is more likely to follow in the footsteps of the western or the 80s action era something that was of its time and still makes appearances here and there The Expendables for example but its time as king is coming to an end if anything were to endure like James Bond or Godzilla it might end up being individual superheroes and not the shared Universe concept Batman or Spider-Man are characters that are so popular they'll probably always have an audience and yes I'm sorry to say that means Ant-Man probably won't be joining them but the MCU and superhero movies reigned at the top might be ending sooner rather than later secret Invasion a television series for Disney plus was the latest debacle in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but the problems certainly didn't just start there trouble's been brewing since One Division some say even before that but the MCU has been on a steady decline from storytelling taking a sharp turn into lazy predictable writing tropes and stale joke formats to decline winning box office returns in the mcu's first box office Financial loss to floundering critical reception in a cinema Juggernaut quickly losing the patience of a once loyal audience who's fed up with being fed garbage the MCU is barreling down the hill oh thank you little Roots please stay strong the DCU is seeing the same kind of response as the MCU but their situations are different so there's a DCU specific video that's following up this one in the next couple days the MCU has been and continues to be the more powerful brand but 2023 saw Ant-Man and the WASP quantumania become the first MCU movie to lose money at the box office it'll probably eventually make a profit through streaming and Merchandising although I've never met an Ant-Man fan in my life so I don't know who's buying his toys but whatever prior to that black panther wakanda forever underperformed and right before that Thor love and thunder and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness failed to hit a billion after opening to a massive worldwide number strictly because of mixed Word of Mouth over the film's quality Spider-Man no way home was a success along with this year's Guardians of the Galaxy 3 but those movies had actual stories that engage the odd audience and pulled them in and our properties that stand on their own Outside The Wider MCU like I said earlier Spider-Man will always make money and Guardians 3 had a disappointing opening weekend but legged it out to an okay final box office total because a positive word of mouth from fans if it had been the same quality as the majority of MCU projects in the past couple years it would have been in a similar boat to Ant-Man 3. today's sponsor keeps is a subscription service that helps men well keep their hair they offer clinically proven treatments to help combat hair loss it's a convenient and affordable way for men to treat their male pattern 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my opinion nothing but a detriment to the Marvel Brand I understand the idea Disney wanted to get a jump start in the streaming world and the theory is good Marvel and Star Wars are beloved Brands and people can't get enough of them so if you just give a Marvel or Star Wars related TV show a massive budget people will just show up people pay to see Marvel in the theater so people will definitely watch it at home for a monthly subscription fee right it turns out even if it's practically free people won't consume an awful product by virtue of the fact it's just there so what's been happening while Disney plus has been releasing MCU TV show after MCU TV show thinking they would be anchoring down their brand spanking new streaming service and raking in customers well nothing has been happening and that's the problem no one's watching these shows Miss Marvel pulled in less than a million viewers it's debut week secret Invasion the latest MC release debuted to barely over a million to put that in perspective some YouTube videos hit those numbers in less than 20 24 hours secret Invasion had a million people watching it and Ant-Man 3 took a loss at the box office when 10 million people saw it opening weekend and there are over 145 million people with Disney plus and only a million watched it zero people watching a six episode television show that cost over 200 million dollars to make in less than three hours to watch is cause for concern but these shows also aren't any good and that's caused massive damage to the brand the Disney Plus shows have watered down the product making the MCU something less like an event and more like it's at best the thing you throw on in the background but you can't even do that because then you'll have no idea what's going on in this sprawling ever expanding Multiverse speaking of the Multiverse that's one of the many problems the MCO has gotten itself into if the superhero genre is trendy and ends up going the way of the western it'll be because of self-sabotage in an attempt to keep itself relevant both the MCU and DCU have shifted their shared cinematic universes toward the Multiverse meaning they can replace recast or alter characters that were previously played by other actors or move completely out of established timelines and in theory this sounds like a great idea it should mean the MCU can move forward forever because they can just shift the timeline and oh new Captain America but the Multiverse has very quickly become nothing but a breeding ground for terrible lazy writing a place and world or worlds where there are no Stakes because anything can happen and where a character death is meaningless because there's an infinite number of them out there the Multiverse kills any value or weight to the sacrifices of previous Heroes and you just kind of sit there feeling like you're waiting for the in-story soft reboot so you can see Captain America fight Wolverine or something and while that admittedly sounds cool we won't be getting it anytime soon because Disney apparently isn't allowed to recast the X-Men until the actors from the fox films contracts are up in 2026. I think right after end game immediately bringing in the X-Men could have been a possible way way to avoid following the fate of the western and postponed the mcu's decline but they couldn't and decided to go the Multiverse route there are a million forms of entertainment all competing for people's attention all the time the X-Men are a tier level enough to maintain interest but because Disney had to go a different way they went with the c and d-list to Your Heroes to follow up end game in a Multiverse storyline with no Stakes So when you say it like that it sounds like a recipe for a disaster kind of keeping fans around is difficult but bringing them back after they've left is a mountain of a task with budgets astronomically high and fans disinterested at some point those two things will come to a head and without enough people watching it won't be financially viable to keep investing in these projects are you yawning in the middle of this while I'm breaking it down huh because I don't know who but someone told Kevin feige that Marvel and the MCU was a big enough brand that people would show up just for the name by judging by those Miss Marvel viewership numbers that's not true I had made a video last year detailing the importance of Iron Man in the first three phases of the MCU and it's relevant to this conversation of course it's YouTube so that video was demonetized so you most likely haven't seen it so here's a clip to illustrate my point Iron Man was the mcu's anchor and after giving it some thought I realized that's what's been missing from phase four not necessarily Iron Man himself but phase 4 doesn't have a central figure that anchor to hold down the fort Tony Stark's presence almost guaranteed a baseline of quality something comfortable something to look forward to without that Cornerstone the MCU has felt more than a little derailed more than a little directionless without Tony to put it gently Captain America might have been the leader of the Avengers but Iron Man was their Foundation as well as the foundation for the entire MCU can anyone name a current character like that right now absolutely [ __ ] not an even bigger question might be is it possible to replace that kind of presence consider this through three phases of the MCU spanning 11 years Iron Man was in 10 out of 23 movies and he was on screen for 8 out of 11 of those years that included appearing on screen in 7 out of eight years from 2012 to 2019 and five straight years from 2015 to 2019. that's not just [ __ ] crazy that is what you call the backbone of the MCU even though Captain America is my favorite MCU character I'll be the first to admit that he only came into his own because of his cool calm and respectful personality being a contrast to Iron Man's unpredictable and often disrespectful one [Applause] then rule Asgard yes of course I will be reinstituting Prima nocta Iron Man Works without cap and while cap had one of the best movies in the MCU with Winter Soldier the character of Steve Rogers really found his footing as co-lead in the MCU after the events of Civil War when the tension between Steve and Tony reached his Apex and that the why we fight so we can end the fight so we get to go home I just did you know I'd argue it was Steve's relationship with Tony that brought out the best in this iteration of the character so if Iron Man brought out the best in his co-lead what do you think he did with the other characters in the MCU well he certainly helped us get through some of the Duds in the ever expanding Universe if it wasn't for him we probably wouldn't have been so forgiving with some of the shittier mid as [ __ ] to absolutely abysmal movies that came out with my Nostalgia glasses removed I think it's safe to say Ant-Man was an inconsequential film at best not the character but certainly both of his movies I wouldn't call them MCU highlights by any stretch Thor the Dark World enough said there Captain Marvel would Brie Larson work out like hypothetically would I at some point is that like a personal attack or something and speaking of Duds since the start of phase four what else do we have besides those MCU properties have ranged from mid to complete dog dookie besides Spider-Man even though it's apparently trendy to hate on that movie now but you won't see me following that one that movie [ __ ] owns and if you want to make something of it come to Indigo Plateau for a Pokemon battle we'll sort it out Charizard to Blastoise like real men we've had failures of new properties and wheel spinning sequels to popular leftovers from previous phases that have denigrated some of our favorite Heroes leading to a universe that's completely disjointed mix all that with complete over saturation and you have one hell of a mid product compared to what it used to be have they announced their plan for phase five and six yeah kind of certainly seemed a little more like pressing a panic button since even the most Ardent MCU stand can squeeze out in admittance that Marvel has been middle of the road for the past couple years at the very least a typical argument I've seen is that this is what happened in phase one Heroes going through their own stories and then coming together first of all uh no the plans were set for the first Avengers movie from the onset Marvel had planned for five movies with Iron Man being the first and after its success in May 2008 they announced the release date for The Avengers as summer 2011. although it did end up being released in 2012. at the time there wasn't a giant overarching story no but the Avengers was the first Direction phase 4 doesn't even have that there is no team there is no pattern it's following it's nothing like Phase One The Narrative was and still is correct it's directionless and without a backbone character like Iron Man to lead us through the bog of [ __ ] we find ourselves in and Deliver us to the promised land we're kind of hanging out on the Titanic right now even with Secret Wars as the destination who's bringing us there after end game there was a lot of excited speculation from who would be the new lead of the MCU and I include myself in this but I think I was a bit blind to the fact that there really wasn't anyone who could possibly take Tony's Place let's see who do we have Captain Marvel black panther no he would have been a great co-lead to the MCU much closer to a Captain America replacement in spirit more of the quiet reserved badass who'd still need that charismatic counterpart what about Spider-Man please while I love the character and really enjoy what Tom Holland's doing Marvel would never make a character the figurehead of the MCU whose movie rights are owned by another studio so we're [ __ ] out of luck there how about Doctor Strange cumberbatch's Doctor Strange is just as much of a wise ass as Downey Jr's Tony Stark it's why they were paired up in Infinity War because they played well off each other what is your job exactly besides making balloon animals protecting your reality douchebag but we all know what they've been doing to him he's used as a connecting piece in a plot mover but making him a side character in his own movie and look how they mess with my boy and as far as everyone else who the [ __ ] cares about him there's a reason b list versions of Legacy characters came in after if they were as interesting as The Originals they wouldn't be second in line there's no other way to put it black Widow 2.0 isn't as cool as black Oda one these characters are [ __ ] second no third string quarterbacks so anyway I'm not here to Fan cast future characters I don't particularly enjoy that sort of thing but we can definitely take a look at what characters are potential Replacements how about Reed Richards even if you got John Krasinski as the main MCU read I think I summed up my thoughts concerning his take on the character with he plays Reed as John Krasinski super nice person that's about it next what about Wolverine we know the character himself is Iconic and already has a legendary film portrayal excuse me I'm Eric lyncher tells Xavier go [ __ ] yourself thank you Hugh Jackman Lord I know everyone's complained that there was too much Wolverine in Fox's X-Men movies but there's a reason he got his own Trilogy he's that [ __ ] popular Jackman played the character that [ __ ] good and you're full of [ __ ] if you don't have a small Ember of Hope and excitement still burning about the potential for Wolverine in the MCU but with their current agenda Marvel seems like they'd rather eat [ __ ] straight from a butthole than make him a focal point you know maybe it ends up being a villain maybe Dr Doom is what does it maybe Doom is who the MCU gets centered around the character certainly offers plenty for an actor to do even with a mask there are plenty of people in Hollywood who could kill this role it would even allow the MCU to keep [ __ ] around with what the Drinker calls the message maybe then they could actually worry about writing a good story instead of just checking boxes regardless of whether or not they find the next Robert Downey Jr Tony Stark actor character combo to lead the MCU phase four is a straight up [ __ ] dud we got some mid we got some great but we got mostly cringe the MCU went from trailblazing Cinema architect crafting the next generation of easily digestible Blockbuster entertainment but like most things it's not immune to the decay of time decay of interest from fans decay of writing quality and integrity it all plays a role but however you get there the destination is the same an intellectual property that will live on in some capacity forever whether that be the occasional Spider-Man movie here and there but it's a Once proud franchise that's Glory Days are behind it see in the DC Video ggs [Music]

Channel: The Movie Cynic

Views: 854,215

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Id: fE2NXo7zZg4

Length: 17min 1sec (1021 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 14 2023