Let's Talk : MCU

I'm mostly known to be into comics books. I don't dislike the MCU, I like it, but I'm more into comics book. Especially when it comes to anything Hulk. However, because of MCU Sam coming back soon, I've been talking a lot about the MCU rather than talking about comics. I've been rewatching a few film and I wanted to talk about it. So let's talk MCU.

I have a deep love for the MCU. As a person who grew up in a country where comics book were very niche, the MCU was my biggest introduction to them.

I knew comics from 90s cartoon such as Batman, Justice League, Spider-Man and X-Men (Hulk apparently too but ironically I don't remember this one). I loved them a lot, but I never really looked deeper than that. So my only approach of comics book was everytime I would see a nerd in a movie or show from USA.

Then you had the Spider-Man, X-Men, Batman and Superman movies, though honestly I was never into CBM so I didn't really care back then.

I don't wanna put too much time talking about my personal life in a post about the MCU, but long story short I started watching the MCU when I was at my worst and it helped me feel better and forget about the pain.

Thor is the first MCU movie I watched and the first thing that made me feel good and gave me a little bit of fun. It was like following a very small light in the darkest fog and eventually that little light led me back to a lighthouse (Hulk comics, Sam) and this lighthouse got me back on the path I lost and now through this past I'm trying to get back "home", to myself.

As much as I love the MCU, it's far from perfect and ironically the thing I hate the most about it is everything related to Hulk (and yet I'm very easy to please). I'm gonna talk about all that today, about super hero fatigue also and the sudden hate trend the MCU gets.

I'm a big fan of some MCU projects and I remember a time when I was incredibly excited over any trailers. Back when you weren't allowed to make the sligthliest genuine criticism against the MCU or people would threaten to murder or rape you (I'm not exagerating, I got this kind of threat a few time), from the people threatening to murder or rape you if your dare liking anything about the MCU (it also happened to me, yes).

But like a lot of people, I slowly started feeling tired of it until one day for a totally unrelated reason I started highly limiting my time on social media. And I realized that my problem wasn't the MCU itself but people. The way people mention the MCU even if it's not related to whatever they're talking about (doesn't matter if it's to simp or hate over it), like lately how people are "LOOK SHADOW'S SHOES ARE MCU-IZED LOL" about the latest Sonic trailer. The way medias keep talking about the MCU to make clicks through its trend. Everything has to be about the MCU somehow 'cause it's trendy and makes it easy to create engagement through it. And I think it's part of the "super hero fatigue", that's why I don't believe in it. I mean, Spider-verse did pretty well and even big directors who hate Marvel movies praised it.

But I do think there's a fatigue over these kinda "easy to make" blockbuster. Yet another Jurassic Park, yet another Ghobusters, yet another CBM (Marvel, DC or even something else), you get what I mean. I think it's rather a fatigue over laziness, hoping people will jump in because they see a familiar face. That's what you can see with Disney lately. Frozen 3-4, Zootopia 2, Moana 2, Stitch live action, Snow White live action, Toy Story 5. None of these movies should exist, live action have nothing really new or different to tell and are full CGI anyway so what's even the point? The point is easy money with minimum effort and expend, that's the point. Disney is trying to refill their bank account and repair the big flop Disney+ was in the quickest most profitable way, using popular names to bring you back to theater and it's hard to blame them (and trust me I do) when people do fall for it and would rather watch yet another Toy Story rather than a new franchise with something fresh. You can't blame Marvel for Making another Deadpool if you don't show up for Eternals. To me there's a global problem with the cinema industry and I think the little talk Miyazaki and Pete Docter had together recently perfectly summarize that. When Docter asked Miyazaki "when do you make change for yourself and when do you make change for audience" he answered "I never think about the audience", that's the thing here that make Ghibli a symbol of quality over time while people are getting slowly tired of Disney. Ghibli don't care about box office, they care about telling a story. And I think you can do both, you can care about box office while telling a very good story, Disney used to be great at that, but unfortunatly you have more and more blockbuster that are just playing with your nostalgia without really trying and leaning to a "blobuster only" mindset and removing the "telling a story" one. It used to exist before, of course, but it seems kinda more obvious now, the way cinema is slowly turning into a big factory and how people controlling it care less and less about cinema itself. But I really don't think the MCU alone is to blame for that because back in the 90s it was already a thing, you had a shit tons of franchises with a lot of movies and minimum effort as well. I think it's just more obvious with the MCU because it's bigger, longer, there's a new MCU projects every two months so it's an easy target and talking about the MCU always bring a lot of attention, that's also why hating on it became a trend, because it became some kind of clickbait and a way to say "I'm superior because I have real artistical tastes", whatever it means to them, because Scorsese said it was shit so you look cool agreeing with that. Internet doesn't allow moderation. Everything is either perfect or the worst possible shit ever and that's it. You can find greatness in mediocrity, you can't find mediocrity in greatness. Because allowing whatever you like to not be perfect and whatever you dislike to not be an absolute shit means you're not perfect either and people hate this idea. They want to shine through their taste because they have nothing else to make themself interesting.

And let's talk about Scorsese's MCU opinion too while we're at it 'cause it's now the root of pretty much everything you hear about the MCU. There's not a single person in the cinema industry who isn't asked about it even when they have absolutly no connexion to the MCU.

I think Scorsese was right when he called the MCU a "theme park", however he was incredibly wrong when he said that as if it was a bad thing. I love theme park and I think most of you love it as well because when you go to a theme park you just forget about everything and have fun. I love deep movies, I love getting depressed and angry over them and having them bring back my traumas and question society and humanity but I also love to "rest" and watch something simple from time to time and just chill, just like no matter how much I love gastronomy from time to time I go to fast food because it's easier and you know you're gonna have an easy good time. Simple doesn't mean bad. So yes, the MCU is a theme park, so is Disneyland and yet you have no idea of the amount of details and incredible artistical work a shit tons of people did and still do in it to make it near perfect. Just because it's simple doesn't mean it's poor quality or lazy.

I could spend hours talking about some very smart things about the MCU before Endgame and after. Even now, there's still a lot of very powerful and impactful moments they made with a lot of care, through writing, through acting, through staging. Hell I could write a whole-ass essaie on that simple Loki moment and even explain how incredibly comics accurate it is even if there's nothing like that in the comics and the code they used to make that possible, playing with the 4th wall and things like that.

I mean, the MCU has the power to make you cry or feel tense through a simple lack of music in a logo intro.

Art doesn't have to be perfect and good to be Art, it's a Supremacist take to think otherwise. Your kid drawing stickmen of you is objectively "bad" compared to what pro can do but it's still Art and it still brings you emotions because Art is about communication, it's about having something to tell and while it's not deep the MCU does tell stories and does make you feel excited, angry, sad, curious etc... Art is personal, that's why you can't fucking define it, because it's personal.

And yes, the MCU is far from perfect, I have A LOT of problem with it but I still think most haters take are of very bad faith or just pointing the wrong problem.

Let's talk about Hulk for a moment and not even because I'm a fan of it (though it helps) but because it's the biggest exemple of what I mean.

I LOVE the Incredible Hulk movie, it's on my top 5 all time favorite movie even with its problem and I think it's a very great interpretation of Bruce and Hulk. Leterrier did very great given the absolute chaotic shit he had to face for that movie. For exemple, I love how Hulk is "hidden" in the beginning of the movie when he's presented as a threat to the viewers and reveal himself once you understand he's the "good guy". It's a very simple horror code that works very well here.

But I really dislike what they did with both Bruce and Hulk after Ultron. It's sad to see a character like Bruce Banner, one of the smartest Marvel character ever, being so dumb to make characters like Tony or Shuri shine (as if they even needed him for that). It's sad that a character created through horror movies can't properly respect his heritage (that's why I hope they'll play with horror codes for MCU Sam Sterns too when Cap 4 comes out). It's sad that even his blip got forgotten because Tony's snap was just cooler and more emotional. And it's sad having a character about mental illness, depression, suicide even, being written as a comic relief and his struggles as jokes because anxiety sure is an incredibly FUNNY experience apparently. Look at this naked dude saying he's freaking out, HAHAHA. Marvel Studios really NEED to completly change the way they treat mental illnesses and to make it more than a joke.

I'm upset at the MCU for failing to adress all these very important topics properly, I'm upset at how they erased Bruce's dissociative identity disorder, I'm upset and how they erased his abusive past and I'm upset at how they failed to adress anything about Bruce and Hulk's relationship. The Incredible Hulk movie tried. You could clearly see Bruce suffering PTSD, depression. You even have a (removed) scene of Bruce trying to kill himself. The whole ambiance of the movie is slow and heavy, in a very depressing and somewhat horror coded way. It was great.

There is a huge problem with Hulk's writing but it was never "gngngn Hulk is not strong anymore he's lame" like everybody is crying about and IN FACT one of the main problem with MCU Hulk is how it makes most of you believe that his strength is what matter about this character. No, the problem isn't Prof Hulk, the problem is how Prof Hulk happened off-screen. The problem is how since Ultron we have absolutly no on-screen developpment for Hulk and even less for Bruce because a lot of directors who worked on Hulk only see him as a giant strong beast breaking shit and see no interest in developping him.

And because the MCU is incredibly popular and kinda "control" the vision people have of a Marvel character, Hulk who was in the holy trinity of the most popular Marvel character ever, became the least fav Avengers because "he's boring". So yeah, people screaming they want Savage Hulk back are ironically part of the problem they point out and that's a problem you often see, people rightfully complain about the MCU but for the wrong reasons, making it very annoying and useless, no matter if you like the MCU or not.

And yet, as I said there's a lot of things to point out with the MCU. The homophobia for exemple. Loki being canonically they/them non-binary genderfluid in comics is summarized through a very small sentence you can see by pausing at the right moment and with a good vision so it's not visible enough to recognize yet still "here", damage controle. "We put something so people don't cry over erasure but it's not visible to avoid hurting our bigoted public". That's Loki, by the way :

Immortal Thor 1 (2023) writing by Al Ewing pencil by Martin Cócollo

Loki 4 (2019) writing by Daniel Kibblesmith pencil by Jan Bazaldua

Loki opening

And no, the problem isn't Sylvie. That's another good exemple of pointing out the wrong problem. Sylvie is NOT Loki, she's her own self, that's the whole point of the goddamn show, being more than just "Loki" and being to be herself. That's also the point of the Loki comics. She's closer to a new version of Enchantress than she is from Lady Loki (thus the reason she's a variant card for ENCHANTRESS and not LOKI) but people just love hating on women when they're "in the middle" of their gay ship so what can I say. Because as always, bisexual people are only relevant if they're gay, kinda missing the point of "bisexual" here. Without her, the problem with Loki's gender and sexuality would remain.

Everything LGBTQ+ is easy to censore so they can export their movies in country where it's forbidden while protecting themself from homophobia allegation, it's called pink-washing, being homophobic and using LGBTQ+ to shield yourself or sell merch and Disney are the "best" at doing this. It's easy to find people who worked for them pointing this out, Alex Hirsch, creator of Gravity Falls, for exemple. MCU Loki is bisexual, like his comics self, you learn that through a very little clumsy little sentence "a little bit of both" that can be very easily ignored or cut off and has absolutly no impact on his story and character to avoid upsetting people who love when their characters are all about heterosexuality while feeling offended when a gay character is gay. Valkyrie is bisexual, like her comics self, you learn that through a little sentence that I don't even remember in a movie with a very loud humor, making it sounds like a joke rather than a statement.

Ayo and Aneka powerful lesbian couple has been reduced to a 2sec moment (cut off in a lot of countries) head kiss in the epilogue of Wakanda Forever with no dialogues.

And you know what makes it worst ? It's how Marvel keeps bragging about their LGBTQ+ representation, congratulating themself over it. I remember the Russo Brothers being so proud of themself for putting a gay nameless character portrayed by one of them who was talking about a dude he was flirting with or whatever and making so many fuss about it like it was all progressive and impressive when it's a 2sec sentence of a guy saying "him" to talk about the flirt he found that most people didn't even notice. It came out in fucking 2019.

Their LGBTQ+ erasure would be less upsetting if they would just shut the fuck about being "allies" and shit and stop pretending it's progressive when you have projects like She-Ra about lesbians and trans people properly written and shown and successful without making their personality about being LGBTQ+ and using it to sell and get views.

Eternals did a better job but it got censored in a few countries. Marvel belongs to Disney and Disney don't do human rights, they do whatever the World Govs follow and right now they're kinda open so Disney kinda is, but given the rise of bigotry all around the world, wait a year or two and you'll see Disney cancelling all their LGBTQ+ friendly projects, making less and less projects with black people or women as their lead because "it doesn't sell" (it won't sell because they'll put little to no effort in it so it flops so they have an excuse to no longer allow that without being tagged as bigoted) and rewriting half their shit to please every single bigoted lunatic investors they'll get. Read this in the future and you'll see I was right. And once we inevitably comeback to a more "friendly" progressist era, then Disney will switch their politic again, 'cause it's all about power and money, it's capitalism deary.

Remember how Black Panther almost never happened and it's Kevin Feige (if I remember well) who had to push very hard for it just like he's currently trying to save Eternals 2 and that's another point I strongly disagree with, the hate Kevin Feige takes.

I'm not even a fan of him, he's still a corporate guy selling his stuff but I'm tired of reading "he doesn't read comics, he doesn't like comics, he doesn't care". I think Feige read way more comics than us because he's the freaking CEO of Marvel INCLUDING Marvel comics. Feige does love and care for Marvel, it's very visible through what he does and says, he often has to fight against Disney to allow movies like Captain Marvel or Black Panther to exist because Disney only cares about the toys they can sell to white boys while Feige want to tell stories. I think a lot of people forget that the biggest income for a franchise like Marvel and therefore Disney is merch. That's why every characters have a different design in each movies, to sell toys and Disney didn't think they could sell toys to little girls so they didn't care about developping women and they didn't think black children buy toys either because racism. And good thing Feige took risks, I mean, who the fuck cared about Groot before the MCU? And how many money did they make out of him? Same for Iron Man, United Staters tend to forget that comics aren't popular outside of their country so pretty much nobody really cared about Tony Stark before the MCU. That's why Bob Iger sayin he doesn't want to take risk anymore bothers me so much 'cause without risk neither Marvel nor Disney would be the empire they currently are.

Now here's another problem, the overbundance and saturation of cameos for fanservice.

I have a hard time caring about the two upcoming Avengers movies because of that honestly.

If the MCU worked better before Endgame it's not because of a fatigue, it's because prior to Endgame you didn't have that much characters and every movie was about developping them rather than developping a "bigger story". Even if all movies were slightly connected, you could just enjoy the Cap franchise or the Iron Man franchise without really caring about anything else. Now it's the other way around, Marvel put the "main storyline" above the characters, they develop another "endgame" situation rather than developping their characters and it can't work because we can't get attached to these new characters like we did with the first Avengers team. We can't because Marvel makes them less interesting and important than their multiverse storyline and we can't because there's just too much. And that's even dangerous 'cause if a movie is delayed or cancelled they have to rewrite everything and it shows, you can feel the changes. You would think that Chadwick's tragic passing, COVID and the (rightful) strike would teach them to know better but here we are. Everything is delayed and rewrote every months because Marvel can't help but tell you what movies you'll see for the next 10 years instead of shutting the fuck up and revealing it a year or so prior to it's release. There's a reason the video game industry stopped showing things too early. Because IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK, it works better when they show it a year or a few months before its final release.

We reached a point where people just watch MCU projects to see what it's going to tease rather than watching the character it's about and enjoy the story. That's why people felt disappointed in Wanda Vision or Moon Knight while loving Deadpool, because the MCU made it a standard for their movies to just throw random cameos and fanservice and making their movies and series some big trailers for other projects which are also going to be giant trailers and it's sad, that's why I don't necessarly blame people for expecting cameos and big-ass trailers rather than a more modest project about the characters they should be watching, because the MCU made it a standard themself.

There's a good exemple of that, Mandalorian s2 finished a few days before Wanda Vision started if I remember well and you had two totally different reactions for these. Wanda Vision was "bad" because no Doctor Strange cameo, Mandalorian was "good" because Luke Skywalker and that's the thing with cameos, Luke worked incredibly well because a cameo was unexpected while no Wanda Vision cameo was disappointing because it was expected. And sure you could say "well it's fans being angry at things they made up", sure, it's true but if they weren't so used of having what they're crying for they wouldn't be that upset over it. Basically the MCU spoiled them and now they have to deal with spoiled brats. That's why phase 4-5 were supposedly highly disliked (supposedly 'cause outside of social media people are actually normal).

And honestly a lot of projects were good in these two phases. Eternals, Shang Chi, Doctor Strange 2, Loki, Wakanda Forever, GotG 3 were even better than some phase 1-2-3 movies, it just suffer that new standard the MCU set up and the hate trend.

And it problably suffered the "lack of hype".

Because that's one of the biggest problem with Marvel currently and it was born of that standard.

Too. Much. Projects.

There's simply too much. You don't have time to care about a story or a character because there's already another one coming. Honestly Endgame wasn't that good compared to some other MCU projects, out of the whole movie only the final battle was peak when you think of it (so 1/3 of the movie) but it worked incredibly well because of the hype they built for a years over it. Between IW and Endgame you only had Captain Marvel and it happened prior to IW so you had nothing to really distract you from the waiting and the waiting create hype, the less the better. That's why the promote era of Avengers Endgame is the best MCU memory of a lot of people and ultimatly Endgame became the best MCU movie in their mind while being honestly not that good (don't get me wrong, it's good, but a lot of MCU movies are way better, like Black Panther, for exemple).

This trailer didn't show anything relevant, that's why it was so good. Which is yet another problem, the MCU shows too much. Curiosity is part of the hype, it's the first law of erotism and horror in Art in fact and it works for pretty much everything. Suggesting create more emotions than showing because forcing your brain to imagine it makes it more invested.

And y'know, that's why I'm having so much fun with MCU Sam (Sterns) right now, because we don't know shit about him, we have two shot (one is from a leaked trailer most of us weren't even supposed to see) and the very vague things Tim Blake Nelson tells us and that's why it brings back my interest for the MCU, because I feel exactly like I felt during the promo era of Endgame, because Sam is an important character to me, I want to see what happened to him the same way I wanted to know what happened to our heroes in Endgame. And of course it works on me because I cares about MCU Sam so much and because I waited over 16 years and carefully watched everything just to get a little glimpse of him, an answer. Everytime we got a new projects I prayed that it would be the project that would be the pay off. So yes, him being back feels incredibly rewarding and that's why Endgame worked.

And honestly when Feige joked about it I thought "I mean, it's not like a lot of people were waiting for that dead end, sure people were curious about it at best but that's pretty much it" and yet, yet I keep seeing people feeling incredibly hyped over Tim Blake Nelson. Hell, the crowd cheered for him before he even started talking during SDCC last Summer, because it feels rewarding and not needed, kinda like finding a neat bonus in a video game or like adding whipped cream to top your ice cream, not needed but incredibly good nonetheless.

Endgame felt rewarding because it felt like a "bonus" to all our stories rather than a project teased over years through other projects, if that makes sense. We didn't really know it would be the conclusion of most of our heroes arcs and we didn't need it either, so that's not the reason we felt so hyped about it. We were hyped 'cause it was a bonus, we didn't really know it would pay off nor how when he first saw Thanos in Avengers, we thought of a little homage to comics rather than a teasing. So when it happened, it felt insane because nobody told us years prior to it "so we're making this whole saga about this and it will lead to that".

I don't think the MCU is dead, far from it. Different yes. It did mistakes, yes, but nothing impossible to solve and while it will never be able to bring back the 'first time' hype of the previous Saga, it's still very enjoyable and it's far from too late to fix their issues. Just like comics were supposed to die a shit tons of time and are still around, less powerful but still very good, with some ups and downs. The MCU will stick around for quite some times no matter if we love or hate it and I think people should stop making so much fuss about it 'cause the over buzz (good or bad) is the main and biggest issue here.

Stop treating your personal taste and pop culture as some way to climb a social ladder, remember that you can point out problems on things you love and still deeply enjoy it just like something you dislike can have a lot of positivity, if not to you to other people. Cinema won't die before of the MCU, it didn't invent shit.

So chill and until next time, enjoy~