It's possible they mean AFTER. The sheer quantity of marvel content afterwards means even if I cared enough to follow it after the saga ended I wouldn't be able to
Don't forget you needed to watch z show on Disney+ for those 2 episodes of crossover and all the context the rest of the episodes give to the crossover
It was content overload and why even now I've not fully gotten back into the MCU
This was my problem. After however long without seeing shang chi or moon knight, after finding out the blade and black knight teases were never coming, then we had thors "kid" and hercules, it just felt like there was no point in getting hyped or invested. I got burned too much
Black Knight, meant be set up in post Blade MCU (most likely scrapped until Midnight Suns post Secret Wars—- if ever)
Hercules might still happen, in a post Secret Wars MCU
My actual response:
But yes Disney Marvel went gung ho on audiences never getting enough of the MCU, but boy they did they get lazy, and forgot to keep audiences happy/interested. Franchise fatigue.
Disney have a bad habit of getting lazy with their writing "we're disney they'll watch whatever we give them and they'll love it" thats been their stance for the last 15 years. Why do you think they've been constantly releasing live action remakes of everything despite people openly saying they are tired of them
They tried doing too much at once. The Infinity Saga was pretty streamlined. Now they’re bouncing around between building up Kang, the supernatural side of the MCU, the Young Avengers and a million character teasers that went nowhere. There’s so many projects that you can skip completely before DD/SW.
Exactly: Bad writing, and pushing a message over plot, casting, etc. When will studios learn that a) The audience isn't stupid, b) can tell when a storyline is crap, and c) we don't buy the B.S. of the studios blaming the viewers as racist and sexist --we just don't want to pay for garbage movies and shows.
Anybody want to entertain the idea that Stan Lee's death removed a central pillar of continuity from the franchise, there was no more "final authority" on any of it and rule by multiple committees tried to please everyone and succeeded in pleasing nobody?
I'm not saying Stan ruled with an Iron hand while he was alive, but I suspect he effectively did a bit more than make cameo appearances.
its crazy that theyre still upvoting you and downvoting me. Bold “my actual response” is chqtgpt 101. so is —-. we’re getting closer and closer to dead internet theory.
Oh man, I forgot all about Moon Knight. It's a bummer they didn't bring him into the movies at all, even the ensemble ones.
I had a hard time getting through the show, that was back when it was all pretty fresh and I felt like keeping up was an achievable goal. I think it was somewhere around Ms Marvel that I decided watching shows I didn't care about wasn't worth my time and stopped around 3 episodes in.
god moon knight is so freaking good as a standalone series. my dad and I got super into it and watched each episode together as they came out. The next to last episode, you know, where everything happens, we both had tears streaming on our cheeks. and we don’t usually react like that to stuff.
Shang Chi was awesome. I still think that behind the scenes, China killed any sequels for it, somehow, even though Disney did make a point to stand up to the CCP when the film was released, which is commendable.
Honestly id just watch them on my own pace without order. On there own moon knight shan shi and even loki are good shows and movies in those cases and enjoyable. Its easier then forcing myself to watch them one after the other and needing to keepe track of context clues and all.
Not to mention the sloppier writing set up just to force the plot; Multiverse of Madness is what killed my excitement for DrStrange movies - Scarlet Witch giga-power-scaled all to contrive a "I want a baby" plot... if Scarlet can literally think a change into reality, which she does all movie long including in separate alternate realities where she is not as power-scaled, why tf is there this bizarre "I want a baby" plot at all? Both the Wandavision show and MoM movie just didn't know what it wanted to do with a character that fundamentally alters reality on a whim and had to force a shitty motivation just to find a conclusion that ultimately does nothing except introduce yet another new hero into the MCU to then forget about once they realize audiences don't care about yet another obscure Marvel heroenough to make sufficient profits......
So much interesting settings and characters that were thrown away just because hyper-power-scaling your heroes/threats does not make for interesting stories...... Spiderman has shown that you can do superheroes without needing every threat to be existential... DrStrange has plenty of small scale "monster of the week" stories that could have been just as easily adapted without needing a world-ending threat.
Anyone else notice that none of the new characters from the D+ shows were announced in Doomsday? It's like every plotline that developed for Kang Dynasty was completely abandoned.
On one hand, that would make some sense for how long it's taken to shed themselves of all the plotlines. But on the other hand, I'm not sure why Disney would agree to that stipulation with a largely-unknown actor in a role without a corresponding morality clause. So I'm somewhat inclined to say that's probably not true, or at least it's not telling the entire story.
Yeah, during the multiverse sequence, a plotline where it's apparently entirely forgiveable to show the same character portrayed by a completely different actor.
That is another problem yeah, if a plot gets dropped you feel like you wasted your time catching up cuz you watched stuff in a hurry to be ready for something that never came rather than watching it whenever you felt like it cuz there was no pressure
And there's never a plan, a large multi film plan. They just let each movie/series develop on their own, and then follow up or just ignore it depending on audience response
And the CGI getting sloppier due to pace of production and budget. I don’t need to be behind on multiple poorly done superhero shows at the same time. It got to feeling like a gatcha game where you had to tune in daily just to keep up with the wave of content even if it wasn’t great. Because my time is limited and I had better shows/movie that I wanted to watch more.
I'm reminded of the Douglas Adams time traveling immortal character who literally watched every movie and TV show ever made anywhere in the Universe. Us mere mortals in this 8 billion to one game have to pick and choose, we're already at a content saturation level where there's not enough time in our lives to watch everything already made... Even if only one person in a million "makes a movie" and that 90 minutes of content takes them ten years to make before they start another one... that's 800 new movies, 1200 hours of content coming out every year.
We're already at 120 years of backlog to get through before you start "catching up" on the new content: "An estimated 15 million to 25 million hours of unique, professionally produced movie and television content currently exist worldwide. This encompasses roughly 120 years of non-stop, 24/7 film and TV viewing"
The last one I watched was the Scarlett Witch tv show. It was such a cool, weird concept but as soon as it flipped the switch from the weirdness that it was into standard superhero fare it got boring.
Then the second Dr strange film flat out undid 80% of the actual character growth of the TV series. Rendering it fairly pointless. (The relevant info that was kept can be summed up in, like, a couple sentences that could have just been narrated instead.)
I remember reading a rumour that JM had negotiated a clause in his contract that only he could play Kang and it couldn’t be recast. But this doesn’t make sense to me because surely his firing makes his contract null and void? It really bothers me that we had huge build up with the Council of Kangs and it was just…glossed over and resolved as if it was nothing.
Overall the Multiverse Saga has been messy, I agree that Doom is the better villain. I hope they keep him as a recurring villain after Secret Wars and he’s not just killed off. I’d love to see his character done justice finally.
This was my issue. You didn't have to watch everything, but it felt like you might and you wouldn't know until it was too late. But then you would watch something and it was like 50/50 if they would drop it immediately afterwards.
What really killed me though was She-Hulk ending where they flat out make it a plot point to acknowledge many of the issues the franchise has and then end it with LOL we're not not going to do anything different though so deal with it!
At that point I was off the train completely. I'll show up for what people tell me is good and the rest. Well, I don't have to watch stuff if it's not good.
For me it was seeing how offscreen, real world licensing agreements got in the way of great stories.
‘Infinity saga is going on but not a single character from the Xman universe shows up and the FantasticFour is off being recast for the 100th time. And not a single other Superbad has a problem with Thanos grabbing all the stones specifically Kang the conqueror because his actor is being cancelled irl’ capitalism ruins great eart yet again
And then the basically constant confirms that we were gonna be hitting the “reset universe” button after Secret Wars made it way harder to even want to watch the projects cause I know they might not matter in 4 years
Yeah, I think it was Disney getting too greedy (shocker, right?). Once they started tying everything together in hope you’d have to go to every movie and as well as get a Disney subscription so you can’t sue them if your wife dies…
I'm surprised there wasn't like some fortnite crossover event that needed to be played to unluck hidden lore for the new marvel TV show in order to understand the next 3 marvel films...
It just got too frequent which made it all feel like slop.
This was it for me. I was open to the idea of Sam being Cap’s legacy despite the teasing of Bucky being it but the fact that I had to supposedly watch it on Disney+ irked it for me. I mean, I have watched the snippets though on YouTube and for me, it was definitely a good series but I think it could be densed in two-three movies instead of a series like what they did with the originals. Could be that Disney wanted MCU to promote Disney+ and/or MCU feared these legacy characters would flop so investing on a 2-3 movies for the established franchises would be a disaster.
This was exactly why I stopped following the cw dc shows. You got so far into one of them then you got to a cross over episode and needed to watch multiple seasons of multiple shows to catch up.
When the shows and movies you watch start to feel like homework, most of the enjoyment disappears.
Yeahh that was exactly it for me. Like you have to watch EVERYTHING now. Before you didn't have to. Each contained movie series felt like their own thing. Like you can watch Iron Man 1, 2, Avengers, 3, AoU, Civil War, Infinity War and Endgame and it feels like one contained story. Same with the Thor movies and the Cap movies. You didn't need to see every marvel movie to understand what was happening. Now, the smallest side character in a filler episode of a streaming show could have dramatic impact on something in a major movie.
You generally didn't though. Like it added extra fun context and gave deeper story but there were little to no points you legit needed to consume extra content (especially outsode movies) to get what was going on. Marvel fandom was pushing that you did but honestly there felt like there was less meaningful connection than the second half of the infinity saga.
Like others brought up the fact entire plotlines and characters were getting tossed aside was way more of a drag.
Honestly - I would have watched them if they were worth watching. But the quality went downhill pretty quickly. The first few shows were great, but then they just sort of got mediocre. And ain't no one got time to waste on mediocre television.
Yep I had the same issue with Return of the King. I’m sorry you want me to watch two 4 hour movies or read a book series to understand the plot? Not very accessible for an average viewer.
Once I was obligated to watch WandaVision to know what was going on in Dr Strange, which in turn completely abandoned the Baron Mordo storyline, I basically lost all interest in the MCU.
And then Thor was a giant piece of shit and that convinced me that skipping movies entirely was probably a better use of my time.
Content Overload was the killer... I have every movie/show up to Endgame bought and stored in my private cloud service, but everything after that has just seemed so... meh...
Yeah this was me. Its not just a 2 hour movie every 6 months. Now you need to watch three shows with two seasons each to keep up. As a working adult with a family, I barely have enough time sleep most days. Unless Superheroes are your main hobby, who has the time for that?
Same, I've just now gotten around to watching some of the shows here and there. Other than Loki, that one was great and I watched it when it released haha
This i literally filled up all my 6 months of being off work last year to watch the marvel content. was sick and in bed watching TV basically all day for that time it took forever. I still only watched maybe 90% and the thing about cross overs and the shows is sooo freaking true. was just exhausted trying to keep up with the 12 shows, and 39 movies, and forwarding thru 45 minutes of credits so I can watch the important after credit scenes lol it's way too much.
Then finally got all caught up according to the guide I had to follow to watch the content, they released 4 more movies and 2 more shows and a new season for 5 more shows
Crossover episodes are fun but only when they don’t influence other plot lines in another show. Like sure I like seeing the characters interact but don’t make me go watch another show for the conclusion
It was so much better when it was only movies you had to catch up on, and it was usually only movies that featured the main stars of the avengers movies.
Part of me understands the frustration there, but another part of me thinks about how comics are constantly referencing other comics and have been forever.
Granted, with physical comic books the time investment to find the referenced book is pretty low, especially if you have Marvel Unlimited. Whereas when shows and movies do it, I'm far less likely to go spend 10+ hours on a show, or even 2+ hours on a movie to get fully up to speed on the story.
So I'm a bit torn, because on one hand, having a bunch of interconnected stories that encourage exploring the universe more is a very cool concept that I love about comic books. On the other hand, I just can't get over the time suck that it would take to do the same thing with comic movies/shows, and truthfully I think the bigger problem is that they haven't made that other media compelling enough to drive me to it anyway.
If it makes you feel any better, Feige has already announced that there will be a lot of mutant content coming. I feel like they haven't learned anything from the Superhero burnout.
I loved Hawkeye and Moonknight because they were largely disconnected stories that built off the established universe, that should be the formula for Marvel shows in my opinion. Just added world-building and deepening of the lore instead of trying to make everything matter to everything else
Edit: Daredevil Born Again does this well too, but I started wondering where the fuck Spider-Man was during all of it lmao
I loved Hawkeye and Moonknight because they were largely disconnected stories that built off the established universe, that should be the formula for Marvel shows in my opinion.
This formula was the exact reason (most of) the Netflix shows were successful. When those shows got the axe, I knew that was likely signaling the end of those types of self contained stories involving Marvel characters.
Daredevil and Punisher have never been my faves in the comics, but were the two shows I enjoyed the most, even more than most of the newer movies for the exact reason that they were well written and weren't trying to tie into everything else. They were just good stories driven by a smaller cast of characters.
The thing that made the big comic events like the Infinity Gauntlet and Secret Wars so great back in the day were that they were things that occurred rarely. More recently, it seems like there's some big event happening once per year and it's exhausting. I stopped reading comics because every time I turned around there was some other thing that was going to "change the Marvel Universe forever" and I just couldn't do it anymore.
The movies are following that model where there's always some big catastrophe they're building up towards. The Infinity Saga ended and before we as an audience had a chance to breathe, they started throwing Secret Invasion stuff at us.
And honestly, I wasn't even a fan of Infinity War or Endgame. I hated how they changed the entire Thanos story from the comics. No, I didn't need an exact interpretation as I know that would be impossible, but changing it from Thanos collecting the Infinity Gems himself to sending lackeys to do it for him took a lot of the wind out of the character for me. They also completely dropped the ball on Adam Warlock (one of my few critiques of the GoTG movies) and characters like Silver Surfer and Mephisto, pivotal characters in the comics story arc, were completely absent. I know in the case of SS it had to do with rights and I wouldn't have even minded so much if they'd stayed more true to some of the other elements, but all these things combined just annoyed me so much that it kind of ruined the whole experience for me.
Making Thanos some rando cosmic warlord who wanted balance in the universe was the absolute lamest motivation they could have come up with and I'll die on that hill.
Sorry, I just realized this turned into an entire rant I hadn't planned on.
TL;DR: The shows should be small, disconnected stories so we can enjoy the characters facing non-apocalyptic threats.
I just didn't understand why when Thanos had all of the stones he didn't just make x2 resources instead of deleting half of the life in the universe. I feel like it would be easier to make a quadrillion avocados.
They also completely dropped the ball on Adam Warlock (one of my few critiques of the GoTG movies) and characters like Silver Surfer and Mephisto, pivotal characters in the comics story arc, were completely absent.
Also leaving Death out completely was questionable. Thanos does so much just to get her attention/affection.
He was obsessed with Death. As in the physical embodiment of death. He wanted to gain power to become her equal and that's why he collected the Infinity Gems.
The snap was to impress her and try to win her over but she still wouldn't give him the time of day, literally. She wouldn't speak directly to him and essentially iced him out.
Comics Thanos is also quite insane. The nickname The Mad Titan is literal. He's a megalomaniacal nut. There was no, "My work here is done so I'm just gonna chill and wait for someone to come kill me" moment in the comics after the snap like they did in the movie. He was literally trying to become a god.
The only reason they were able to beat him was because he did some kind of astral projection thing and left his body unprotected and they were able to take the gauntlet off him. But that doesn't play as well in a movie.
Plus Thanos in MCU is much much weaker than Thanos of the comics who is a pure beast. he has so many powers and hi tech weapons at his disposal that he can absolutely solo ragdoll all the Avengers without ever using the Infinity Stones
But in the movies, he is just alien purple hulk with all of his glorious backstory erased.
And he doesnt care about balance or whatever. he is a simp for Death, but a darn awesome one.
I actually think that would be the wrong formula.
Moon Knight was supposed to be a launching pad, and that failed because of mcu fatigue and Eternals not doing well.
The shows should be largely disconnected, but also include a beloved existing character and not star a new character they want to launch.
The shows should offer more from a beloved character, but in a way that doesn’t make them mandatory. Wandavision was great, made good use of the show format and audience that skipped it needed little more than ‘she got corrupted by a dark book’ to catch on.
The shows that tried to cover a new character largely flopped because who cares? Ms. Marvel, she-hulk.
Hawkeye did better because she continued the clint story.
Daredevil is a good exception, because they chose to make him a show hero with a show format and multiple seasons.
So the shows should be largely disconnected but then when they are they fail because who cares… uh, what? Do you guys even know what you want or are you just looking for excuses to complain? It’s ok to just not be interested in the MCU, you don’t have to pretend they did something wrong.
Try actually reading the full comment? I’ll try simplifying
Show based on new unknown characters -> who cares? -> fail
Show based on beloved character -> most likely a succes.
To prevent overloading more casual people? Make most of the shows somewhat disconnected so they don’t feel like mandatory viewing for casual people.
WandaVision is great and can easily be explained for those that missed it.
Missing Falcon and Winter Soldier isn’t a big deal (and had promise if it wasn’t for the pandemic)
I really like the mcu and have watched most of it. Series are just very time intensive to watch and they went ham. They churned out so much that the audience turned apathetic and now half of the shows don’t go anywhere and have become a dead end for the main hero. That’s just sad.
I had a feeling it was trying to imitate references in comics but at least the comics helped you get the reference by using these yellow text boxes "as seen in Spiderman Issue No. ___" but the movies don't even have these which I hate a lot.
At this point they should either have a 4th wall breaking hero catch us up on where x character has been/has been up to or just do a compilation video of said character before certain screenings.
Having a catch up real before the movie is actually a really good idea. If they put in a 10 minute explainer before the movie starts or have 1-2 minute character recaps between ads that could be pretty cool.
And they had an excellent opportunity to do that with how they set up She Hulk. In hindsight, perhaps that team knew it wasn’t being renewed and wrote a beautifully absurdly self aware, streaming service menu hopping finale as a middle finger send off, but I adored what they did and would have happily watched more.
If Kevin Feige could have spent five minutes to explain why e.g. Daredevil is not called up for the fight against Thanos then She Hulk would have been the perfect deliverer of a “hey, it’s a comic book movie, it’s not going to be logical”. I would have paid good money for She Hulk and Deadpool to sit in a diner and pick all of the Infinity Stones continuity apart over a coffee and muffin.
Maybe not the most conventional, but I think it'd be great if it was Deadpool. As a character that already regularly breaks the 4th wall, I think it'd be funny to have him recap events to the audience prior to the start of a new film/show. I suppose the key disagreement here would be that it makes the character seem omniscient. As a character within the same universe, he wouldn't always know all of the information the audience has seen from the other shows and movies. So...
Deadpool being omniscient in the context of breaking the 4th wall for a recap is very much in keeping with the established theme of how he breaks the 4th wall.
It's like he has omniscience, but it works only within that context, like a ridiculously over-specified superpower.
Thats what really got to me. Half of one movie is the main plot line of a different heroes movie. And I liked the way Endgame ended. After that it was just an ugly money grab.
People say this but this new saga was by far the least connected tons of storylines were basically dropped or ignored. Most of the shows and some movies even could easily be skipped, like sure a lot of characters were introduced, but so much of it could easily be explained away in their next appearance and that basically happens with most of the tv character who showed up elsewhere.
Ironically the biggest issue was that they made people feel like they had to be up to date and see everything to understand only for the majority of it not to matter in the end.
This is what always happened to marvel comics historically, that's why every couple of decades they'd do a complete reboot of the characters. So newer generations could join in without having to keep track of everything that happened before.
This and the fact that they put post credit scenes in the tv shows…. Where the only place to watch was Disney plus…. Where they auto play the next episode when the credits come up….
Looking at you WandaVision. I had no clue what or why things were happening in the last episode.
It went from being “look at this amazing story full of amazing characters we have spent a decade crafting” to “good luck keeping up. That’ll be $20 a month so you can watch mediocre shows but be lost if you don’t”
It was a combo. Everything was connected in sometimes unexpected ways (eg. you can't just go watch a new Spiderman movie wothout checking if there was some hulk movie or something else you needed to watch first), there was so much coming out between movies and tv shows that it was hard to even have that much time to watch stuff, and so much of it was low quality (even if it wasnt bad, much of it was just mid). All that together meant that keeping up with everything was a large time investment that didnt feel worth it, but felt necessary if you wanted to watch the next new thing. So many people just dropped off.
Thats why I said it was a combo of those three things. Lots of content would be fine if it were all good or if I could just watch whatever I wanted from it without it being so interconnected. Same with and of the others.
Yeah. This concept was fun in the start when it was 1 or 2 movies a year. But after infinity war it just exploded.
You want to follow the whole story? Well we got 7 diffrent shows and 7 movies just this year. Each containing a small tidbit to complete the overarching story.
It was genius to connect everything, but it did create burnout. After endgame I needed a break and then they were like nah he’s 7 tv shows and a few movies
It’s almost like Feige fell for the classic trap of comics post-grand crossover storytelling.
The interconnected payoffs should be optional icing on cake, not a prerequisite to understanding the story. Otherwise, you alienate folks from cracking open the story to begin at with.
You're actually touching on something that's been a constant issue for any fans who aren't rabid collectors of comics for decades. They cross-promoted storylines across all the different titles to get you to buy them all. Hardcore collectors can follow a storyline easily, but it's hard to keep casual readers hooked, when they only get 30% of a storyline from the comics they actually like to read.
This is the whole reason why it dropped off for me- I didn’t mind all the TV shows & movies following Endgame, but the fact they were all CONNECTED was annoying. Oh you HAVE to watch this to understand that. There are so many Easter eggs is that one, that you’ll only get if you watch this one too, and then this other one is the next steps after this & on its own just doesn’t make sense!
what? that was the whole point of the mcu lol. And as someone who’s still watching. That’s actually happening like barely at all now and that’s why i dislike it. Entire shows and movies that feel disjointed or don’t mention other heroes who could show up.
Just wait til the average people see Doomsday.
Not only is it all things MCU (incursions, TVA, FF, Gambit and Shang-Chi, multiverses, timelines etc etc) but all the big Sony properties mixed in so Spidey vs Wolverine and god k owes what else is gonna get shoved in.
In what way was the origin of the giant head necessary to understand the plot of brave new world though? It was just a setpiece for an action sequence that could've taken place anywhere.
And what do you mean "again"? Are you complaining in a marvel thread about Air Force One?
I don't like how you have to have Disney+ to watch all the series to know wtf is happening in the movies these days. Had to find an alternate source to watch Loki so I understood what was happening in deadpool vs wolverine.
I didn’t mind it initially, but when it got to secret invasion, I stopped watching after episode 1. And for the first time since the mcu started I wasn’t up to date with it all, and like a domino effect once I skipped one show I didn’t have the same urgency to watch the next one or the next one.
This, I went to watch the second doctor strange movie and for whatever reason felt like I was missing something, but I definitely watched the first one so it just got exhausting.
It still is. Now you have to be up to date on the entire MCU, PLUS you need to watch the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, all the fox X-Men movies, the fox Fantastic Four movies, Venom, the Spider-Verse movies, The Incredible Hulk show from the 1970s and the 1940s Captain America serial or you’re gonna be very confused about Avengers: Iron Man But Evil.
Thats what got me to stop buying mainstream comics when I was younger. It was bad enough trying to keep up with Spider-Man when his story was told over 5 comics monthly, after a certain point in the comics it was ALWAYS a world crossover event going on...Spider Island, Original Sin, Secret Wars, Fear Itself, so on and so forth.
Which is funny because I fell off quickly after Endgame because of how much of the content was meaningless. WandaVision was the end for me; the way the teased so much FUN multiverse stuff only to have it be nothing and go nowhere. Why would I keep tuning in if every post credit scene goes nowhere lol
And many of them were just terrible. The ant man movie and Wakanda movie were just so bad. Generic and mostly just what felt like a rushed green screen job.
I don't think you needed to watch any of it. Most of those movies are really good as standalones except for maybe infinity war and endgame, you do kinda need to see both.
You definitely get much more out of it if you know all the little things. But you could go to Spiderman and have a great time without caring about the rest.
Welcome to the infinity war Saga. It was the largest crossover in comic book history. Infinity war saga touched every single marvel comic in production. If you thought the movies were a lot try following the comic books.
This criticism never made sense to me. MCU movies and shows are filled with a nauseating amount of expository dialogue. Characters constantly say things no natural person would ever say for the sole purpose of explaining what's going on or who a character is to the audience.
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u/the-silent-man 1d ago
We were given too much to quickly