12 mo. ago • 53%

The Marvels, goofy and bold, shows there’s still some magic left in the MCU

www.vox.com The Marvels, goofy and bold, shows there’s still some magic left in the MCU

Beneath a layer of slapstick, The Marvels is a warning about hero worship.

Vox.com

37 comments

I though the movie was fun.

My biggest issue with the MCU as a whole is scale creep. The stakes don't always have to be larger than last time. When the scope becomes so vast that our place in it becomes lost, the catastrophe you're trying to avert stops being a tragedy and starts being a statistic, and then an abstraction. Big enough stakes are no stakes.

And ffs, can we do something other than sky beams opening portals? These stories ride on the personalities of the characters and how they react to different situations. Not the same situation in a different shade of purple this time.

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- That was one of the things that made Guardians of the Galaxy 3 interesting.
  
  The stakes were so low! Would it have changed anything on a galactic scale if Rocket had been claimed by the High Evolutionary? No, not really. It would have sucked for everyone personally involved, but Knowhere would have kept rolling on...
  
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  Same with Captain America: Civil War. Dude just wanted to break up the Avengers, not destroy the world/solar system/galaxy/universe.
  
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is this really news?

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- Well damn, had to read your comment to notice what community this was in, certainly doesn't belong here
  
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  And I had to read your comment to realize the one you replied to wasn’t just being sarcastic about an expected result
  
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Saw it last night, mostly agree with this take on it, though in a bit less glowing terms. I didn't think the emotional payoff alluded to in this review really worked, because I didn't think they'd laid enough groundwork for it. Too much of this movie was more storyboard than story, with not enough time spent on actually delving into these characters' feelings and relationships. That said, it was definitely a fun popcorn flick, with some great action, a good sense of humor, fun characters, and, as the article points out, minimal required external knowledge. And everything said about the publicity was spot on.

10
- Exactly. Early Marvel was deeply about character and their depth and character flaws that made them interesting. Thor, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov, and especially Tony Stark were interesting and complex personalities. (Bruce Banner and Clint Barton...eh).
  
  The stories in recent Marvel products are fine. Mildly interesting serials. Ok popcorn fare.
  
  But the character development has been getting more and more lacking. Even Thor has been reduced to 'dumb blonde'/'dumb entitled rich kid' gags.
  
  I think that's part of what makes Loki one of the only really interesting outings for Marvel recently. He stayed reasonably conflicted and complex.
  
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  The comics struggled with making Clint Barton interesting on his own for quite a while - the Matt Fraction Hawkeye series actually succeeded in making him interesting though, and I was rather disappointed when the MCU went a different route.
  
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  I think Thor is actually more interesting of a character in his later movies, but other than that I pretty much agree with you
  
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- Yea, my biggest gripe is how little they let the movie breathe. It was constant cuts immediately away from an important moment. I know what they were going for in each moment, but the immediate scene change ended up making it really flat and the climax was really anti-climactic. I was sure there was another 30 minutes left when the movie was about to end.
  
  That said I still really enjoyed it. It was fun, goofy, some really good sequences, and it did a good job setting up the next phase.
  
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Honestly I'm just tired of the hero fad

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- I'm tired of "you need to watch this TV show to know what's going on in the next movie because everything is interconnected and everything is critically-essential to the world building." Marvel...Star Wars...is it just Disney? Maybe I'm tired of Disney.
  
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  But how else can they continue to extract subscription fees, movie ticket prices, and merch purchases from you, the customer, at every turn?
  
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Fun movie. While I liked Kahns' interaction with her parents, I would have liked to have seen more interaction between Monica, Carol, and Kamala. Also that credits trailer!! I can't wait!

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Yay more Disney poop

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That's funny, someone in another thread who had almost certainly not seen it told me it was terrible. And "it has nothing to do with gender."

Honestly, my issue with it is that you have to see Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel and Wandavision for this movie to work, which means this movie is for Disney+ subscribers and they're not being up front about that at all. But if people like it, fine. I'm glad they do.

1
- Marvel's main trick is that they make movies where you don't need to watch the others, but you get little extra credit points if you have. So I actually don't think you need to see the Disney+ show.
  
  The real problem is either that people THINK you need to have seen the other shows/ movies, or people who haven't seen them just don't care.
  
  Like Spiderman isn't just a superhero story, he's a multimedia IP that gets people out to see whatever he's in. The broader fan base of the main characters here just aren't as big.
  
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  Maybe in some of the movies, but with some of them, like the Dr. Strange sequel... if you didn't watch Wandavision, you would have no idea what is going on. A huge amount of it involves the aftermath of Wandavision.
  
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- I haven’t seen it either. But my daughter wants to.
  
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- Considering that the actors couldn't do the usual marketing tours due to the strike so there's a lot of average Marvel fans who didn't know it was out, I'm not surprised Opening Weekend wasn't amazing. It's had a better opening than most movies this year except heavily marketed block busters so I don't think this is really an overall bad sign for this film. Unlike Eternals, I think this is going to build audience over it's first couple of weeks. Saw a lot more people talking about it on social media than anything since Barbie/Oppenheimer.
  
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- It's a shame. We saw it and enjoyed it.
  
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The Marvels is the worst superhero movie I've ever seen. I'm not seen Wonder woman 1984 and have been told that that is slightly worse, but I thought this movie was trash from beginning to end.

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🤢🤮

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Mind blowing how they suckered two generations into lapping this shit up without second thought.

Don't ya'll get tired of seeing the same characters over and over again?

Nah. That would require better taste than a child.

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- Let people enjoy things
  
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  I'm not stopping anyone from enjoying anything.
  
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- Doesn't this movie literally introduce several new characters?
  
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  Only if you didn’t watch the D+ shows.
  
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- Looks like people may be tired. This movie is not doing as good as past ones.
  
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