Though the real reason was they were all in pretty poorly written Disney+ TV shows post Endgame when people where not as hungry for marvel content as they were in the 2010s
Ironheart and Sam Wilson's Captain America were never exactly A-listers either.
She-hulk certainly has her fans and I enjoyed some of her early 2000's comics covering the superhero laws around the time of the first Marvel Civil war.
They'd need to hire good writers that also know the law system that also know comic books. That would want to make a full season or four becauase it's Disney.
You don't need to even know the law to make a good law-based TV show, you just need to actually want to make an entertaining show and not think like a Reddit mod when it comes to the Law.
The She-Hulk writers did not meet either of these.
Didn't the writers of the She Hulk show say they knew nothing about how the law actually works? Like why even make a show about a superhero lawyer if you're not gonna bother to do the proper research on it in the first place...
Also I think you could just get lawyer and some writer that likes comic books and bounce their ideas off each other to make some interesting episodes premises.
Disney don't need writers that know the comics, they've shown they will just put anything on screen as long as there's enough minutes of content released per year.
They really showed their philosophy on the matter when they decided to ignore decades of Star Wars Extended Universe writing from dozens of authors which was much loved by many of the fans. It's a failure to recognise what actually makes these franchises valuable: the fans that care.
The value, of course, can be tapped into for a number of years without caring about it but it's a finite resource and the dwindling viewership of the wider MCU projects (and as for Star Wars, it's telling that A New Hope was the most watched SW film in 2025).
I wouldn't even call myself a huge Star Wars fan, but I have seen all eleven movies before this year in the theater (yeah, I'm that old). I even bought all the Heir to the Empire books when they came out (I have a first edition hardcover of each).
I didn't see the Mandalorian movie because, 1. I never watched the show, 2. I have seen how little Disney cares about the writing, and 3. I just don't care anymore (because of #2).
I'm not even mad and raising my fist in the air at Disney, I just saw that they didn't care about SW so why should I care.
This was basically the pitch for she Hulk, but then they realised they didn't have anyone on the team that had any experience writing courtroom drama so they pivoted.
Jen then breaks fourth wall of the Dick Wolf cold open and cracks a joke about smashing is unironically what she and Matt will end up doing once every episode. “And. It. Gets. Graphic.”
That's where I thought they were going to go with the series. Like have Shang Chi come on for an episode or more Wong... I mean, what's wrong with having more Wong?
That’s good, after watching the season I would have taken it another direction (gonna show my age here) by making this in the vein of Night Court. Seeing her representing C/D-list superheroes in all kinds of ridiculous cases while the season long baddie arc played out as well. I would have much more enjoyed that thinking they would have a little more creative freedom making it a bit more comedic and showcasing some lesser known heroes/villians.
I feel like people's expectations of Sam's Captain America were a bit unfair. I don't think his character and movies should necessarily have to be on par with Steve's. I was just hoping for a decent Sam Captain America movie and sadly that didn't come to fruition.
Ironheart and Sam Wilson's Captain America were never exactly A-listers either.
I watched Ironheart and it was... okay. But for my life, I'll never understand why they went with Ironheart instead of a War Machine story. People have been salivating for a War Machine spin off ever since Iron Man 2, and Don Cheadle has arguably more star power than half the other leads who got their own shows.
It especially confounds me, because it would've been so easy to merge the 2 ideas.
In 2009, Tony Stark said most developed countries were 10-15 years away from making their own Iron Man technology. When Endgame happened, their timeline was smack dab in that projected arms race period.
With Tony dead and gone, that should beg the question: who safeguards that technology from falling into the wrong hands? It's the perfect springboard to explore Rhodey on his own, trying to protect his friend's legacy while new threats emerge.
This would've enabled the MCU to bring in Riri with characters more suited to her story, as she'd be a young engineer trying to copy Iron Man. As for villains? Take your pick. Crimson Dynamo, Titanium man... and well, fuck it. Bring back Justin Hammer and do Detroit Steel, even. There were so many options, and Disney opted for none of them.
It was fun. It went over the top in a few places, got a little stupid a couple of times, but generally it was a good standalone show so long as it wasn't required viewing for the greater MCU.
I think that the show needed about 50% less special effects ti really work as what it is, a lighthearted workplace comedy about lawyers.
Having so much special effect work makes a jarring contrast, a bit like if an épisode of Friends was directed by Michael bay.
I'm pretty sure the Backlash would have been much lesser if the show looked more like a mid budget comedy rather than the next big marvel thing.
the joke in the marvelized parks and recs is that when they finally build a park where the the hulk smashed a big crater into the ground, another superhero fight blasts a crater into the brand new park.
Anyway, parks and recs didn't start out great (not bad either, just, kinda mid?), same for the office, the point is that these shows had a small enough budget that they could keep going and finding their voices until they became all time comedy classics. Having your main character be rendered into a CGI green giant for half the runtime really raises the stakes in a way that prevents that buildup of experience.
the result is that she hulk didn't get a second season, so there's no way to know if and how much they could have improved.
It was great if you were watching it with 0 expectations and going with "I wanna binge watch something, even trashy stuff".
But the bad writing was very.... uhh....
How do I say this without sounding like a bigot :/
Making a mountain out of a molehill by making it seem that the shows identity was "look at all this problems that men impose on us!" Not that the problem topics themselves are insignificant (they should be taken seriously) it was the presentation of it that seemed..... cash grabby.
Like that terrible Star Wars Acolyte: "I wanna write a SW series that is DEI first! And it's entire identity is DEI".
It had NO central focus theme and SEEMED like DEI agenda pushing. Representation of issues for the sake of it. Actually wait, it felt VERY Dustborn adjacent, trying to force discomfort as it's mission.
In a better writing terms: they were PUSHING for "Strong FEMALE lead" instead of "Strong lead, who so happens to be female". Which the latter is what most people want and prefer. It's organic, writers can tell the story how THEY want it and don't need to write AROUND something and think about exclusive WHYS.
Heck, Thunderbolts* had the theme of mental health but it worked because they chose to assemble the cast that had some sort of mental health crisis or problem as a COMPONENT of their characterization, instead of the mental health issue being the whole core personality/identity.
That's what I felt like when I watched She-Hulk. Wanted some sort of semi comedy of super-lawyer and how "hero normed" MCU was going (like My Hero Academia-lite). Got basically bombarded with what seemed to be "look at these list of issues that women face and are looked down upon unfairly, why DEI is important" agenda.
Again, I apologize if I sound discriminatory or trying to minimize the issues that are VERY REAL to women. But it felt like a very "woe is me, because I'm woman with these problems". None of the conflicts even felt organic but forced for the sake of "problem is you're woman who doesn't deserve these powers" strawman punching.
It wasn't even good at attempting to "mock" the recycling agenda at the final episode with the 4th wall break with the very Mary-sue resolution. It actually just felt like terrible self-insert overall.
I liked the show a lot personally, I thought the writing was fun and I like Tatiana Maslany in anything she does. What I think would have been cool stylistically is instead of the 3D uncanny valley of She Hulk, they had done sort of like Roger Rabbit or Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers and had a fully animated She Hulk in an otherwise normal LA.
I think its fairly telling that the scenes most people point to to criticize She Hulk are the scenes that are literally the most accurate to Jennifer Walters as a character.
the show wasnt the best but the peopel who act like its the worst thing in the MCU basically watching a she hulk show then got mad it was a she hulk show
I mean that's arguably the worst scene in the show. The episodes before this one were good. They just flubbed the ending thinking being meta would be funny but it was annoying instead.
Yeah the issue with the hulk is that the rights to his character and related characters are still owned by universal studios (like sony with spiderman) who won't actually allow for a solo hullk film (at least probably not without an insane amount of money) so instead they have to put him and others like red hulk as side characters in other films.
That's so weird to me
Sony has to make a new Spiderman every 5 years to keep the rights, but Universal can just have the rights to Hulk indefinitely without even making solo films?
The fight scene at the end of Norton’s was one of the best super hero fight scenes ever put on theater screen. I wish they could bring that Hulk back full force and not limit it to 2 minutes of screen time
Hulk vs Blonsky is still one of my favorite superhuman moments. I remember telling my friends that's how Captain America will fight, and they didn't care because no one gave a shit about Captain America back then. But I had a Civil War poster in my living room, so my friends knew who he was.
I might be a small minority but I loved the hulk film with Norton. Don't exactly remember the one that came before that isn't much but I think I liked that one as well.
*Might be worth to add that I rarely dislike media(film, shows, books etc) so maybe take my opinion with a pinch of salt.
I liked the one with Bana and the one with Norton. I wasn't thrilled with Bana's performance, but I think the writing and direction could have improved that by giving him a little more room to work than mild-mannered squeaky guy shakes on screen for a bit then goes CGI. The faux-comic styling was what I hoped more Marvel movies adopted, at least for awhile, but alas, we got more of the traditional cinema style after that. (Hulk traversing from the secret desert facility to the city is an iconic sequence, IMO).
The Norton one had great urban fight scenes, excellent casting, and some clever writing. All around, a great film.
Ruffalo's "Banner" kind of fell a little flat for me, but I liked it, nonetheless. For most of the Avenger's universe, it did play very well chemistry-wise with the rest of the cast.
Canonically, having 3 different faces was tough, though. Hulk really got a raw deal, compared to RDJ/Tony Stark, but Iron Man really did have a certain panache that kicked things off. In that respect, don't we owe The Hulk a great deal for starting Banner's arc a little earlier than the rest of them?
Yeah but hope has that star power you know? Hulk has been popular forever whether his movies or shows were good or bad. IDK there's just something about health that people like. Kind of success beforehand so it all came down to the show really which a lot of people didn't like. I found it fun but I expected a comedy going in not a superhero show so maybe that was part of it?
Waiting for a Marvel movie in the 2000s to the 2010s and the progression of the Avengers movies where they all came together was a totally different experience.
But post Endgame, there was suddenly a lot of content. And then the next big baddie they were working towards had to suddenly get cancelled. All the series and content we had to keep up with got a bit much
Seriously, my watch progression was Agatha > Multiverse of Madness > Wandavision, I had absolutely -zero- issues following along because Marvel content is extremely basic.
If either of the characters interested me in the least, I would consider it. The shows I did watch were Falcon & Winter Soldier and Loki. Everyone else was pretty whatever to me
Plus.. it's right there: The Three Most Popular. No matter who followed up it's very hard to beat the popularity of three of Marvels greatest characters.
It's like when I play a Civlization game on the computer.
The first few eras are amazing: I liked the Iron Man, Thor, Captain American build up. Everything is still new. They keep releasing new content of mostly big-named characters.
The middle loses some of its lustre, but it's mostly still good because I'm still discovering new things: the Avengers movies that combined the other characters. They told some jokes that were easy to follow because there were like 5 movies.
Now, though, we're in the modern age when I know I've won but still need to play for another 3 hours because I can't automate 150 turns to get to my science victory. It's just too much boring stuff to get to the final payout. I'd rather spend the 3 hours doing something else.
that's why I turn into a genocidal maniac and start wiping out other civilizations because I'm bored. It's a great plot twist because I'm notorious for not going to war unless you provoke me then suddenly I'm ending most other civilizations. Marvel should try that
Even towards the end of the Infinity films they were on the verge of completely saturating the market, I think Captain Marvel and Endgame came out within like three months of each other? And then everything wrapped up nicely in a satisfying conclusion which felt deserved for the length of time it had been building up, but Disney+ came along and suddenly there was just an absolute firehose of content which nobody gave a shit about.
I'll never forget finishing Endgame, thinking, "That was all really great, now I'm ready for the MCU to slow down and take a break for a couple years before jumping into another big overarching plotline," and then I saw the slides from the Phase 4 announcement that had a new streaming show every couple months in addition to multiple movies each year and I just immediately decided I would no longer be keeping up with the MCU. I just don't have the time or energy to watch hundreds of hours of content per year to keep up with everything, on top of already being ready to take a break after 10 years of the Infinity War saga.
A lot of them shouldn't have even been TV shows. If they had been given a movie instead, there would've been a much higher bar for writing quality and a lot of the issues around pacing and flat humor would've probably been resolved. Likewise, some of the movies just had way too much story to tell and would've been better as a show
MOM? Should've been a TV series
Iron Heart? Should've been a movie
Ms. Marvel? If it was a movie, The Marvels would've probably gotten a way better turnout
It's also probably the Disney+ show that got screwed over the most by Covid, not just with shooting issues and such, but also they re-wrote a huge section of the show last minute. Originally the bad guys were supposed to do something with a biological weapon to trigger some kind of plague, but given the global pandemic at the time, the writers thought that'd be in poor taste, so they had to change it.
Technically, imo, it actually is a racist/sexist reason.
This is why systemic oppression actually exists. Interpersonal prejudice is relatively low compared to the past. People always think the random redneck is going to hate minorities, but most rednecks actually dont. The real evil, are the powers that be.
Hollywood doesnt give a single fuck about minorities, they just want ticket sales. So, they see that the typical, everyday American is more progressive than in the past. So Hollywood panders to us. They give us minority representation, but dont put in the effort to fully flesh out these characters.
Hollywood is using these minority actors to sell slop to the masses. It's just minstrel shows on the backs of minstrel shows, all the way down.
And this is why we need to tackle the system itself, instead of constantly playing into identity politics or performing Oppression Olympic games. The upper class is using us, and we need to wake up and take the power back.
Yes the premise of these movies already is sexist and racist. Let's take a white male character and let's just convert him into she or black man. I mean c'mon, if that's your impression of what it means to being non-racist or non-misogynist is, you shouldn't be anywhere near making these decisions.
It's not even a message of "race and gender doesn't matter", it's a message of being completely ignorant on how race/gender affects how you are treated in society and failing to address any of that. It forcefully rewrites reality what it means to be part of minority and makes the real minority viewpoint even more invisible.
You just…didn’t look up anything about the Falcon captain American movie or show, huh? That’s almost exactly what the premise is but you saw a black guy on the cover and started frothing and crying, right?
I disagree with that. I think ppl still love seeing good marvel content. The problem is... It's just not good.
Take SheHulk for example. Like come the fuck on. A woman gets the powers of Hulk and is automatically better at everything than he is. That's not a Hulk story. A Hulk story is struggling to control your anger and using it in a productive way. She has very little struggles and the ones she does have they wrote it off as she's a woman. women are awesome. It's not entertaining to watch even if you ARE woke.
Saka from the last Airbender was a sexist prick and changed his views of women to become a better leader. It empowered women and was good writing. But She Hulk isn't
Then you got that Iron girl (I forgot her name). She's black and smart as Tony. Cool. That's what gets you to watch it. Then you realize that's all there is to the show.
this bitch had the nerve to say "do you really think Tony would be Ironman if he didn't have the money?" Bitch YES!!! He famously built the suit in a cave with scraps!!! They didn't even think about it when they wrote that line. They just saw the public and went 'hey woke ppl hate the rich. Let's make Tony out to be the bad guy '
There's so many ways to do that but that one.
. Nah
It's not woke that ruins it. it's just bad writing
Edit : I'm getting so many messages that if I want to say something, I ain't gonna be able to reply to it
She-Hulk isn't better than Hulk at everything. She's better at controlling her anger, but Bruce having anger issues has always been part of his character. There's a reason turning into a giant rage monster is specifically his thing.
And even then, she does lose control later in the show when she gets mad enough.
I think ultimately the problem is that people not familiar with the comics assume this is just a "woke" thing where they take an existing character and change their skin color or gender to something besides white male. A large chunk of the audience probably did not know that She-Hulk is a completely separate character and dates back to 1979. They just see the show and go "oh I guess they said 'what if Hulk was a woman' for this one, lame".
I think ultimately the problem is that people not familiar with the comics assume this is just a "woke" thing where they take an existing character and change their skin color or gender to something besides white male.
I think that says way more about those people than it does the quality of the show, especially if they didn't even bother to watch the show.
If you can't enjoy a show because it has a strong female lead and has a less serious tone than iteration you prefer, then that's a personal issue and it's totally fine to just not interact with it. If you go out of your way to bitch and moan and complain that "woke" ruined the content you "love" despite not realizing that it's all but lifted directly from the pages of its source material... Suddenly you're making it everyone else's problem.
Nope, it’s not. It’s a She-Hulk story. She-Hulk is not Hulk. She-Hulk historically has self control and regulation. She is goofy and breaks the 4th wall. If you are interested in She-Hulk, they did the character justice, however you feel about the writing. But if you wanted a Hulk story, it’s the wrong show for you.
The hell are you talking about? Do you think he was going to be running around in the Mark 1 suit for a half dozen films? The point is that he doesn't have the ability to make the suit or its miniaturized power source as-is without his wealth. And right or wrong, it's not unheard of for poor people to be like "f**k rich people". Y'all hafe fetishized the use of the word "woke" as your whole argument to the point of ridiculousness.
Fetishized means to like. I think you are looking for a different word.
But nah. Tony Stark has been in situations where money can't help him and he still was able to make stuff. There's timelines where he's broke he still is able to make shit.
Tony Stark is Tony Stark because of how smart he his. He had zero money to make reactor in the desert. He still made it. Actually read his stories. He is one of the smartest men on the planet
Yes, and Riri was also able to make stuff. She made an entire suit with stolen parts.
Also, don’t be ridiculous, he made the arc reactor with parts of his own weapons given to him. Riri managed the same thing, she just needed an AI to help her manage it. Tony had built that already with his huge amounts of wealth.
Yup. The Ironman suits would be a lot less pretty/capable/dangerous if Stark didn't have money, but money or not Tony would have been Ironman once he got the idea for the suit one way or another.
She-Hulk was one of the most comic accurate characters the MCU has created since the first set. Maybe you needed the comic background, but I loved the show.
I don’t think it’s bad writing for a character who perceives Tony Stark as the giga wealthy nepo baby he was to say he wouldn’t have been Iron Man without being rich.
Even in-universe, sure he made the first suit in a cave, but every other suit was built using his vast resources or via the technology and insight first gained using those resources.
He was also Howard Stark’s son and had access to an incredible amount of resources to develop his natural talents from a young age that many other people might not have.
I hate the whole 'media literacy is dead' thing but good lord, people are incapable of critically thinking about TV shows.
Just because a POV character says a thing doesn't mean that the show is saying that thing. Riri's chip on her shoulder about money and privilege is half of the goddamn show! But most people probably just watched some grifter bitching about it rather than watching the actual show itself
That's probably 60% of the problem right there, the other 40 being fans who think various properties and characters belong to them personally and that creators are obligated to cater to them and whatever fanfic they've had rolling around in their heads.
Why TF would I watch the show if I hate the trailer...
Like everyone does the same thing since there's so many streaming services. They see a show they want to watch. They cancel the 1 subscription service they already have, get that new one, binge watch the whole thing, cancel their subscription and do it again on another site.
No one keeps their subscription ever single month cuz that's a waste of money.
So why TF would I pay for a new subscription to try a show that looks stupid to me and has terrible reviews on reddit (a trusted source reviewed by fans who both like and dislike the show)?
There's zero benefit to me. It's high risk low return. It doesn't make any sense to go out of my way wasting money to confirm I hate a show I already didn't like.
Then this implies I should do it for all shoes too. I would have ever god damn subscription if I did that. I would watch so many stupid shows. Nah. Your logic makes no sense at all
So how can you say the writing isn't good if you literally don't know?
Like if you watched the Ironheart show you'd know that when she says the line about Tony, it's apart of her speech to the Dean about why she shouldn't be kicked out of school for selling her inventions to other students, in which the Dean immediately calls her on her bullshit. She then later explains that she admires Tony and means no shade, she just doesn't have his resources so she can't even being to make Armors as advanced as his later ones
Your opinion isn't about the show, it's about a trailer
The falcon show was such a mess. I think they forgot how humble the mcu started at, and tried to just keep the frantic pace from the climax.
We have how many unresolved threads and characters? Like sharon carter being evil. Doctor strange literally just saw one glance of spandexed charlize theron and effed off into a pound portal with her.
We have america. The entire inhumans race. The eternals.
They needed a slow down, space to reset the board, but nope. Just "go go go go" and hope some of it sticks.
Like wandavision was good, but it should have been a movie, or multiverse of madness fleshed out to season 2.
The big "is that everyone" fight worked cause it was the big everyone there fight lol. But you can't go from that and then try to do an "everyone is still here" run and try to keep the entire board populated after it.
That line alone made me not interested in seeing anything more about the character. Her introduction in Black Panther 2 didn’t sell me on the character either.
Honestly, the awful cgi suit in black panther 2 made me not want to watch the TV show. Idk how there was such a downgrade from iron man's armor in 2008 to what showed up in BP2 but it was atrocious.
Not one person in that room thought "idk maybe general audiences are going to think 'who tf is this bitch?' if she drops a line like that in the trailer"
These people were too busy smelling their own farts
It wasn’t written, acted, or produced nearly as well relative to the Iron Man movies.
People are forgetting that the original Iron Man movies weren’t riding high off some previous fame. Iron Man was virtually unknown outside of comic readers prior to the movies. Aside from niche comic nerds, the character was either unknown or B list at best, and became a household/mainstream name after the movies because the movies were so abnormally good. They’re what kicked off the recent broader interest in the MCU to begin with
It’s not at all unfair to say ironheart was bad compared to the original iron man movies - the latter was lightning in a bottle that seemingly came out of left field. Most comic-to-film adaptations can’t hold a candle to them, not just Ironheart
In DnD terms, Riri is a character with high intelligence but low wisdom and low charisma. She's arrogant and foolish and that's intentional because she's a complex character.
I really enjoyed the show, but it's more tragic than some of the audience could understand. The flaws of the protagonist bring about her downfall in the end.
I mean, she's relatively ok charisma since she's able to get along with some other people and convince people to do things, she's just rocking like 6 wisdom
Riri is a thief, and she is selfish, and she thinks she has to do everything by herself cus she is arrogant. By the end of season 1 she learned to ask for help, I assume throughout the next couple of seasons (that will never happen now) she would've learned to overcome the other negative aspects of herself while making more mistakes along the way. But cus she's black, her wrongs are immediately looked at as "oh, they just wanna justify black people doing crimes."
Like, Stark started out as a war profiteer, and built genocidal robot, and arrested half of the avengers. But we love him anyway, cus he learned from his mistakes and we gave him the chance to progress as a character cus we didn't immediately jump to "oh, they just wanna justify white oppression in the name of law and order." Like no, Marvel Characters make mistakes, they have flaws. Thats what makes them interesting and relatable.
The irony is that I've never heard people claim they failed because of racism/sexism except by people proposing that that's what other people are claiming
As far as the writing goes - yeah, but I also think most people, myself included, will be more excited to see a project starting an A-list, OG characters. Not the B-list knockoffs.
Infinity War-Endgame should have been the end of it. Release Black Widow, Falcon and Winter Soldier, and one other show that isn't WandaVision as a "wrap-up" or "last ride" to give everyone their endings and send it off. Then let it stay quiet for a few years while you wait to see where the mood is going (Superman and Project Hail Mary both going in a notably more hopeful tone) and you finish up the addition of the mutants, then start over with new stories. Keep some of the actors and actresses who maybe didn't get the full span of their characters (Tom Holland's Spiderman comes to mind), but otherwise go again.
There's definitely lots of sexist and racism but they should have just given them a movie. Even if you had to lump the budget off all three shows into one movie. In retrospect how much worse could it have been. The she hulk was watchable at best. The Captain America show was really good but not as memorable as something like Loki or Wandavision. By the time Iron heart came out people were tired of marvel shows.
If all three of those heroes had teamed up in a natural way for a movie I think people would have been more excited. One problem with the TV shows is that we have yet to see the show stuff make an effect on the movie stuff. Besides Wandavision and Loki it's sort of a throwaway situation with the shows.
That or they're going to go on a rant about wokeness or something. But yes, the reason they were poorly received is because of bad writing. A lot of the legacy characters were very rushed. I did end up liking a few like Yelena and Kate Bishop. Sam was fine in Falcon/Winter Soldier but not well handled in Brand New Day.
Say what you will, but She-Hulk was great until the last episode. They fumbled it so hard with that bullshit meta move. That would've been too much for even Deadpool whos main thing is breaking the 4th wall. They should've just kept the trajectory of the mens rights activists being the bad guys.
I do think sex comes into it, in that it makes them completely forget how to write. With a normal character they build them up, having struggles and learning their skills and powers, etc. It's good writing. But with female characters, it's more like oh no, they can't struggle or have development they just need to be perfect and the best just like that.
There was this perfection to the early era Marvel stuff. It had more room to breathe, and while it was clear as day that it was building up to a bigger thing, it was feeling like it was an advertisement for itself.
Everything after endgame has felt so much like a "see how damn important this is?!?!?" Moment that it sucks some of the fun out and feels like homework. My last two truly favorite marvel experiences were the show for Loki and Deadpool and Wolverine. I've watched some others, and weirdly, I feel like people have been pretty harsh on it, but it's also just been fine in my eyes. I don't regret watching anything, I'm entertained, but not excited like I used to be.
And what's especially wild to me is that they could have released just as much content. Just let each character have time to grow on the audience, and not ram the cog in place. The cogs can fall into place once people actually have time to get attached to a new character.
That's not the real reason but rather a part of that reason
The real reason is a combination of racism, sexism, bad writing, and release schedules during the 2010's, Important characters wouldn't go more than 2 or so years without at least an appearance, helping the audience remember who they are and what their deal is
It's been 5 years since the eternals, 3 years since The Marvels, 5 years since Shang-Chi, etc
The involvement of characters established there is going to have to be established to audiences all over again when they're next included because audiences will have had time to forget
I would assume these reasons are slightly connected, although not in the way these people make it seem.They are not bad for featuring a woman or a black dude, but the writing became worse because the purpose of the production was all just that. It's similar to what thappened with that Ghostbusters movie with the girls.
These movies could be written well and be really interesting stories, but they aren't, because nobody really cared for them beyond having something that seems inclusive. Nobody cared because the reason they were produced was just the publisher trying to do an inclusive brand piece, as fast as possible and no passion.
I think they’re both the same reason though. Basically they forced these characters trying to pander to certain demographics and didn’t have anything worth releasing but did anyway.
I remember trying to watch she-hulk with an open mind, and in the first fifteen minutes i receive lecture THREE TIMES, about how hard it is for a woman to exist and how she's so strong and indepenedant despite all the horrible men around her.
I mean, I didn't know they were still making them after Endgame until about a couple years later. And at that point I saw how much I would have to watch, then noped out of there.
Never forget that when most people claimed it was bad writing, Disney gaslit the masses by running news stories on how it was actually sexism & racism.
This idiocy was perpetuated by Reddit as well. I'm looking directly at a certain group full of circle jerkers who ate it up, because they already loved calling anyone who took a baby step away from opinions bigots.
It's a mix of all of the above, but it's also not like most of the Marvel writing was that great anyways. The only of the shows I watched was She-Hulk and the writing was Fine but the show was just as memorable as most of the movies.
It really was just way too much Marvel at the end of a decade long story and enough people were just done with it in general. Between that and the continued rise of culture war bullshit they never stood a chance.
As an MCU fan I was hyped to continue watching, but all the new stuff was aggressively disconnected from the old characters and aggressively disconnected from the other new stuff.
You can't establish a universe where it's finally established that all the major heroes know each other and can potentially work together, and then show a bunch of standalone stories that act like they're set in our universe.
Many of them were also not good, but at the start of the MCU the worse projects were carried by being connected to the better ones
After Endgame my opinion was 'great, that was slightly too many movies but I enjoyed a lot of them, it felt like a journey, and now we're DONE. I certainly don't need any more superhero movies for a while!'
And then they kept on going, on and on and on. With varying quality, because they had discovered steaming and wanted to do as much as possible as quickly as possible
So just when I was happy with a nice sensible end, Marvel tripled the amount of content. And I checked out. And I think a lot of people did too
You mean to tell me fans didn't ask for: girl Hulk, girl Iron Man, non-powered sidekick "Captain America," deaf gangbanger, witch neighbor, and blind lawyer guy?
I agree but I also think it can be all of those things (bad writing, racism, sexism) that caused it to fail and ruin future opportunities. It absolutely failed because it was badly written and, like someone else said, too much content too quickly after endgame. It genuinely felt like the MCU ended with endgame and bringing people back was not done tactfully at all. It just felt like a cash grab and as a way to stay relevant. It was also very unfortunate that there was a loud part of fans that took it to those racist and sexist places as a way to pile on the flops. Instead they just bring back actors whose character’s storyline ended and either keep them as is or recast them instead of taking the time go produce new engaging shows/movies. It’s a mess.
All of them are so bad. It's funny that Son is comparatively better than the other two.
It's like Marvel replaced the representation of Muscles and Brain with fragile ego girl bosses and the representation of good morals with performative moral hypocrisy.
Not to mention that the Marvel TV shows simply weren't as popular as the movies. And that Marcel has overaaturated the market with content. Turns out releasing 2 movies per year is better than releasing 3 movies and 10 TV shows. Since people who previously watched all their stuff now had to choose what they want to watch, and since some of the different shows/movies are dependant on each other for the story it becomes harder and harder to be invested in the MCU.
Or they were not hungry anymore after not so great Disney+ shows?
I watched 1 episode of Secret War and could not go on.
But bad writing is the actual answer no matter what.
Extending it to tv was the worst choice they made. I already felt overextended keeping up with the movies, I'm not going to start following it across dozens more hours per year.
Ok here's my opinion, they are worried too much about making sure they have a mixed cast that they worry less about good writing, not that they shouldn't have a mixed cast.
Your answer is wrong. No Way Home (2021) made 1.92b, Multiverse of Madness (2022) made 955M, Guardians 3 (2023) 856M, Deadpool and Wolverine (2024) 1.34b.
Racism is the reason the writing was bad. Sorry some people want to pretend like racism doesn't exist, but it's usually the driving factor behind anything boring.
To be fair, I thought Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+ was pretty good. But yeah, Brave New World was hot garbage. Only thing it was good for was finally acknowledging the Eternals movie and introducing adamantium.
Endgame was a suitable ending to the MCU. I was satisfied and by that point pretty much done with superhero content. It is a hard sell to try and get me to watch a buncha new people take the mantle on a Disney + show
This! I loved agatha all along. But not cuz it was tied to marvel. Just cuz i like witches.
But the rest. It was like they were making sequels and prequels just for the money.
The writing was bad, nothing was serious anymore.
What i loved about the marvel movies was how the villains were actual villains instead of people who just casually stop midfight to make a meme reference.
The whole everything is a joke and has to have references ruined marvel for me.
Like when the new hawkeye idk hailey steinfeild punched that sister of black widow and that resulted in an “ow that hurt” with some banter following it?? Its fun one time but if thats the entire fucking plot then im done
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was actually pretty solid, and had reasonably good writing. It was Brave New World that was a massive letdown. Hammy, soap opera level writing, a nonsensical plot, and hyping up Red Hulk only for him to be present for about five minutes.
That movie was awful. Sam deserved better.
For the others, yeah. Lazy writing for characters that should have had more effort put into their stories.
Racism and sexism absolutely played a part. However I think the biggest issue was the time commitment. So many tv shows meant tens of HOURS of watching to just stay caught up
She-Hulk- a Disney+ show that featured iffy CGI, some 4th wall breaking humor, and a guest appearance by a more successful character (Daredevil). Tried to launch Hulk's son. Never renewed.
Ironheart- a Disney+ show that built on a character hurriedly featured in Black Panther 2. The main villain is... Mephistopheles (sp?) ?! Never heard from again.
Captain America/ the Falcon- a Disney+ show- warmly received as it was on the heals of Endgame. A little too patronizing, but launched a 4th Captain America movie- an awful production built on hypnosis through 10 seconds of looking at a mobile phone, awful effects (eg, Sam Wilson surfing a missile) and integrating the most poorly received Marvel movie of all time (the Eternals). Sam Wilson's history in the MCU guarantees his role in Doomsday.
"everything is political" except when it's bad because of identity-based casting and obsession with pushing culture war talking points, then it's just bad writing
Do you think it is possible that sexism and racisms came into play in the development of these films? Less money, less prestige, less interest in putting their name on a film they felt would flop amongst the predominantly white, male comic book audience?
If you have to commit character assassination to prop up your new hero it’s probably not going to work out..
Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, Hulk.. It just leaves a bad taste in the mouth of fans who have been around for decades.
I mean the racism/sexism part would still explain the bad writing. Especially when you consider how they've treated blade despite him being the entire reason we even have an MCU today and how it took 200 years for Widow to get a standalone movie
The only reason I don't like that Ironheart is who she is is because Ironman 3 was clearly trying to set up that kid as his successor of some kind, but no, guess not
The projects were already at a disadvantage due to social factors like race and gender, and didn't get the quality they needed to overcome that, so they failed harder than they would have from either factor independently.
There was also the oversaturation of the medium, which has eased slightly since.
If you take a step back and look at, for example, Thor 2, considered arguably the worst movie in the MCU, it had the writing problems, but had a straight white male lead and was during the MCUs best era. So while it's considered bad, it didn't fail anywhere near as hard as these did. It still made roughly $140m net profit. Not a success, but compared to these three projects?
Race, sex, gender, and release schedule matter just as much as the writing.
Now for the really controversial part. I think Iron Heart was well written. At least a 7/10 easily. But it also contended with genuinely terrible marketing
She-Hulk was written like how she is in the comics. She’s snarky and cocky. If anything she was the only one well written but of course people don’t want to see such a character.
They did Sam’s Cap so dirty not making him take the reproduced solider serum as well has making his movie “The Incredible Hulk 2” but somehow worst than the first one.
Iron Heart has no proper build up (like why tf was Mifesto or what ever you call him brought up in that show), they literally wrote lines like “Tony had all the money in the world” like if he didn’t make the Arc Reactor in a cave (WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!), and of course the general audience was more racist towards her than anything else
This issue isn't exclusive to Marvel. The same ideologies where being pushed in LOTR, Star Wars and Star Trek. Poorly written by people pushing an agrenda. I don't even disagree with the agrenda, but subtle story archs change peoples minds, not beating audiences over the head with them.
Almost every show good and bad tries to do a mix of races and genders nowadays. But racist and sexist people like to leap at any opportunity where there’s an overlap. Their favorite targets are remakes since they usually suck because they’re remakes and rely on nostalgia rather than a budget or original ideas.
I didn't think they were poorly written, but they are very different from the originals without even accounting for race and gender differences.
She Hulk was a witty and fun. Hulk smashes.
Iron Man is witty and action packed with a flawed characters with a redemption arc. Iron Heart was none of that.
Steve Rogers is a man out of time who really isn't flawed at all, mostly in his unwavering morals to go along with his superpowers. Sam is a little more impulsive, he flies and has no real power.
They're very different characters. If you liked the original character for the character, you aren't guaranteed to like the replacement. But the audience that might like the replacement character, might not also be into superheroes.
When Maslani said she was a woman, therefore angrier on a day-to-day basis then Banner would ever be...it just undermines Hulk as a character.
Every time I see him in a movie I have 'yeah, but do you have the right to be as angry as other people, bro?' in the back of my head now.
What's wrong with them both just being able to get angry? For different reasons? But they had to put it in some sort of a hierarchy, with Hulk looking whiny by comparison or not having the right.
she hulk was mediocre i agree, iron heart was a solid show that people only hated on because ''haha mcu bad'', falcon/captain america had a well recieved show and a solid movie
They are all lesser characters. People skip this part and go into woke or writing. The writing would have to be immaculate to introduce characters, even the comics largely have less footing.
Yeah out of all of them I did at least enjoy She-Hulk, but the writing was still pretty awful. The main plot culminated in "men bad" and then literally self-imploded as a joke.
Been seeing a lot more of terrible writers getting big jobs lately. Like the nobody that wrote Supergirl or the nobody that wrote Jurassic Park Dominion, (didn't see any past that because Dominion was so bad.)
People complained about Sam getting the shield before the credits to Endgame even started rolling and "M-She-U" has been an annoyingly common talking point since VALKYRIE was introduced let alone Captain Marvel. To deny any claims that bigotry is clearly a factor is disingenuous AT BEST.
And don't even bother bringing up Black Panther because they only liked him when he was a supporting character.
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u/HotPot87 1d ago
They're gonna claim a racist or sexist reason.
Though the real reason was they were all in pretty poorly written Disney+ TV shows post Endgame when people where not as hungry for marvel content as they were in the 2010s