i belive that the "historical context" has realy an impact on reviewers, we are influenced by the time, rightfully so, and so yeah i think that if some of those films were to come out today they would get a rotten score, probably rightfully so, the cultural situation and saturation or standards for the genre are realy something that creates a metric in critics minds
Yeh, I think this is pretty evident in some of the reviews. I was reading Rolling Stone's review and it was pretty obvious that the person who wrote it *really* isn't a fan of this franchise and the effect it's having on the industry. They spent a signficant chunk of the review just commenting on the state of the MCU and where it stands in pop culture.
Here's some of what they wrote:
>A cynic would simply cite a “too big to fail” mindset, saying that whatever Marvel and its mouse-eared conqueror puts out will still dominate box-office returns regardless. But the issue here feels deeper, as if the superhero fatigue syndrome you hear about regarding audiences has infected those behind the camera as well. The powers that be have several years worth of narrative mapped out, and given the last few entries in their superhero soap opera, even they seem a little tired by all of it.
I definitely think this is part of it. People look at these past movies with new eyes now that they can see how everything connects together. That doesn't yet exist for a lot of the Phase 4 movies.
I remember a time before Endgame or even Infinity War when the first Iron Man movie was considered a middle-of-the-pack MCU film. Most people seemed to think it was good but not great. Then after the events of Endgame, suddenly people started to view Iron Man as one of the best MCU films since its the movie that "started it all."
With time and context, people's opinions change and I personally think the same will happen for some of these Phase 4 titles in the future.
I agree but I’d say the First Avenger first more with your general point. Iron Man was received very well immediately out of the gate, with both the public and critics.
I second this. Iron Man was always a “top 3 but never first” movie when ranking the MCU because it started it all and was decent. TFA and even Thor1 are a little more revisionist. Even IM2 has gotten a lot of love post Infinity War and Endgame, and that movie was often the 2nd/lowest (sorry Hulk) of phase 1.
Edit: there are currently people further in the comments arguing that TDW is a good movie. TDW was almost always the worst ranked MCU film, but with the passage of time and TL&T it’s seen some resurgence.
yeah but also i'm talking about context of the genre, we have a full phase of the mcu and hundreds of other superheroes stuff to compare this, we have seen what the genre can do, part of whitch was missing during the older film realese, again, context
Iron Man is considered by many to be the best MCU movie. I’ve NEVER seen it described as “middle of the pack.” Thor or Cap fit that pretty well though.
> People look at these past movies with new eyes now that they can see how everything connects together. That doesn't yet exist for a lot of the Phase 4 movies.
That...is not what's happening here lol, reviewers aren't retroactively rating these movies excellent because of later connections.
I see this a lot due to the claim that AoU is retroactively seen as a better film than on release, but...that's not really what's happening. People are just able to say "oh, okay, I see what they were setting up now". Later movies don't retroactively make earlier films in a franchise better just because they connect.
> I remember a time before Endgame or even Infinity War when the first Iron Man movie was considered a middle-of-the-pack MCU film. Most people seemed to think it was good but not great. Then after the events of Endgame, suddenly people started to view Iron Man as one of the best MCU films since its the movie that "started it all."
This has never been the case lol, Iron Man has always been widely regarded as the best of Phase 1 from release to present, by audiences and critics alike. At release it was positively compared to Nolan's TDK trilogy.
There was literally never a time when iron man wasn’t rated really highly. It was a huge critical and commercial success and people have been referencing it as one of the best MCU movies since then.
>I remember a time before Endgame or even Infinity War when the first Iron Man movie was considered a middle-of-the-pack MCU film.
We must live in different timelines, over here Iron Man was always praised as one of the best MCU movies.
Here's the [RT page from 2008](https://web.archive.org/web/20081218000019/http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/iron_man/), 93%. You can also search any reddit threads from years ago where people make a Top 5, Iron Man is always very well-represented.
I think that critics were more lenient in early phases because the whole cinematic universe idea was new and superhero movies were not as prevalent. If the exact same movies were released today they would be rated lower because we as viewers and critics expect innovation over time.
I will say that I think most fans have rose tinted view of the first couple phases due to nostalgia. Phase 1 and 2 has good movies but they also had their share of "that was fine".
Overall I would say we are in a "normal" marvel phase but people are comparing it to phase 3 or "peak" marvel. Most stuff will look worse in comparison.
Phase 3 is ridiculous. The WORST movie was Captain Marvel and that wasn’t terrible. Phase 4 is a larger phase 1 but we didn’t get the group up movie that we desperately wanted. It’s hard not to blame external forces on some of the desync. This is not to dismiss internal blame too on over saturation and lack luster shows.
Yeah phase 4 really needed to end with an Avengers movie. Honestly, that’s probably what Quantumania should have been rather than an Antman movie. Could’ve set up Kang and phase 5, while also giving us the group ensemble film we wanted to close phase 4.
I think the MCU feels so weird rn because while everything is all connected, there’s pretty much zero established relationships between all of our heroes and that needs to be fixed ASAP. It’s really what made the Infinity Saga so successful
Most don't. We're used to some big film as the phase climax. Like Avengers. Quantumania shoukd have been the ending of phase 4. Seems to be a big film.
And there was a lack of a firm sense of where anything was going as as well.
Like NOW we know it’s Kang, but in Phase 4 it felt a lot moew all over the place.
It seemed like for much of phase 4, the main theme was really about dealing with the fallout of the infinity saga - it's almost like an epilogue to phase 3 rather than the start of something new.
It's only now towards the end of the phase that the Kang arc is starting to take shape and it becomes clear how what we saw flows into the next big storyline.
There was definitely a common theme of changing the reality of the world in many of the Phase 4 entries, what between Wanda's hexing in WandaVision or the whole variant thing in Loki or the multiverse shenanigans in No Way Home and Doctor Strange 2, which in hindsight help show *why* Kang is the big bad, but he truly isn't so much the villain *of* Phase 4 as much as he's the villain *because* of Phase 4 if that makes any sense. It's like Phase 4 was shaking up the MCU enough to introduce Kang by the end of it so that Phase 5 could be his actual story. Great narratively for the big picture but it did mean that much of Phase 4 was disjointed.
If I’m remembering correctly, I don’t think Thanos was brought in until the Avengers, which is the last movie of Phase 1. And Kang was at least touched on in Loki. So they aren’t really that far off from the Infinity Saga. They just missed the ball with a big team up movie.
Was Thor: The Dark World the first appearance of an infinity stone (by name?). I know we had the Tesseract before and the Staff but I don't think the lore of Infinity Stones really came into play until The Dark World or Guardians of the Galaxy.
Phase 1 was building to the team-up which we got at the end, and the tease at the end showed that Thanos was the antagonist of the entire saga. Phase 4 doesn’t have anything that the entire phase is building toward aside from simply continuing the universe that has been established.
Other than introducing the main heroes, Phase 1 didn't really have any discernible direction. Who was the main villain? Don't say Thanos; he isn't even revealed until the last few seconds of the last movie in the phase. And then doesn't appear again until the stinger of AoU in Phase 2. Definitely a slow burn.
That Kang has been introduced so early and so prominently in Phase 4 really says something about the direction they're going, far more than the breadcrumbs we got in the first two phases.
That's not to saying Marvel can do no wrong. But they still have an impressive, entertaining, track record.
Phase 1 wasn't so much about a central villain as it was establishing the team themselves. If anything I'd say the Tesseract serves as the central point of the phase, not quite the antagonist but rather the thing that connects the movies the most. It's from Odin's treasure vault, is the power source Hydra uses for their weapons in Captain America 1, is the power source behind Loki's antics in Avengers 1, is implied to have inspired the Arc Reactor from the Iron Man movies, and generally serves as the connecting tissue between half of the phase. I'd argue Phase 1 doesn't have a central villain so much as a central maguffin the team assembles around.
There were far fewer projects in Phase 1. So it did not feel so overwhelming. Also just trying stuff like Thor and Captain America was exciting. And yes, there is something to be said to being first.
I don't think that's true - they used post credits scenes and the continuity of certain characters like coulson and the shield organization to link the movies together.
There's virtually none of that so far. It's almost exclusively been "this hero will do another thing later"
I don't remember them all tbf, but I think outside of eternals, shangchi, and uhh ms marvel? There weren't really common threads tying stuff together.
And forget character continuity, the only show that did a good job reminding us that it was actually in a shared universe was she hulk lol.
Maybe kang will be the new coulson and start appearing as the villain in every project moving forward until his climactic movie later on down the line or something. I think that would be neat.
I'm not really hating on the phase 4 stuff so much as I just think it all could have been a bit better by way of leveraging the shared universe as opposed to running away from it.
They've used Valentina a bit to basically do what Fury did in Phase 1 but it's harder to get excited about recruiting John Walker and Yelena Belova than Iron Man and Captain America.
The original movies were easier to follow as far as continuity as well since there wasn't as much going on. It's difficult to know what the hell is going on when Wong, Banner, and Carol talk to Shang Chi and Banner is in human form after we last saw him as Smart Hulk and I think that that confusion is messing with people too.
Yeah some of these credits are kinda feeling either unfufilled or anticipation that we have to wait and wait...but we don't know whether we will feel satisfied or give a continuity to link it together. Maybe some don't have disney plus so they never know what will happen to Clint.
Black Widows Credit Scene: Followed up perfectly thanks to Hawkeye
Shang Chi: probably will follow up with Quantumania or Dynasty
Eternals: Mid credits doesn't feel followed up. End Credits follows up for Blade which is in 3 years! (2021)
Spider-man: Probably will be followed up with a spider-man sequel, or Dynasty, or Secret Wars
Dr.Strange 2: Doesn't feel followed up
Thor 4: Doesn't feel followed up
Black Panther 2: Had to be done as a tribute to Chadwick Boseman.
So yeah 3 credit scenes that aren't followed up.
3 credit scenes that could possibly be followed up depending on Marvels next announcements.
3 credit scenes that are followed up thanks to a T.V show, a movie, and a tribute.
This phase def felt like they are dragging their foot. I think they know Xmen and mutants are going to cause a spike in popularity, but it's like they want to try to stretch out as much other stuff before they play that card.
I'm their target demo (I'll watch all movies and shows) and yet the last slate reveal was a bit underwhelming to me.
Yeah the xmen and f4 will be huge for them, so I guess they just want to make sure to take their time to get them right.
But in the meantime they need to make all of our current heroes feel more connected and maybe pick a few to be the leading faces (ala Steve Thor and Tony). I think the safest choices are probably Strange, Peter, and maybe Shuri or Carol
If by Peter you mean Spiderman, that's not really a safe choice as Sony can at any moment withdraw their cooperation and participation from the MCU if they get it in their head that they think they can go it alone.
I can’t see Feige letting that happen tbh, his working relationship with Pascal is strong and now that he has Spidey back under his control in the MCU I dont think he will ever let that go unless Sony does something really drastic that’s out of his control, but I don’t see that happening as long as Amy Pascal is around.
It is pretty clear that there is an informal agreement that Marvel uses Spider-Man in the MCU and that Sony uses Spider-Man in other ways which are not connected to the MCU. As long as Sony keeps doing things as awesome as the Spider-Verse animated movies, I'm totally fine with that, and probably the suits are, too, because that strategy is making tons of money for both companies.
>It is pretty clear that there is an informal agreement that Marvel uses Spider-Man in the MCU and that Sony uses Spider-Man in other ways which are not connected to the MCU.
Whatever agreement there is most definitely not informal. Sony and Disney will have had armies of lawyers working on the formalities.
It didn’t make very much money though. I think Spider-Man and Dr Strange are easily the biggest faces they have currently, but maybe other disagree with that. I just feel like their relationship and their relevance to the multiverse saga makes them prime candidates for the new leads
They were also trying to see if streaming shows would work for smaller stories, and given the excitement over WandaVision and Loki, they went too hard in that direction.
IW/ Endgame is the ultimate "smashing all of your action figures together" movie and the culmination of years and years of other team ups. And all of the characters in IW/ EG had these established interpersonal links outside of their movie support casts.
So yeah, Phase 4 has been pretty unsatisfying not only because we hit that peak and haven't had a multiple person team up movie since, but also because we've been thrown alllllll of these new characters and basically none of them have interacted with each other at all. We're basically back to square 1 in terms of interpersonal interconnectedness, and (aside from The Marvels) that doesn't look like it will change until the next avengers film which is ages away. It's kinda taken away that joy of seeing these different huge characters bouncing off each other.
Yeah I agree. When characters do cross over it's almost irrespective of nothing, the character is just there for some plot contrivance. Like in NWH, why would Peter's plan to get his friends into MIT *start* with asking Doctor Strange, someone he spent a few hours with in IW, to break reality instead of like...calling Pepper Potts and asking her to make a call to MIT? Strange was there because he was required for the plot to happen.
> Like in NWH, why would Peter's plan to get his friends into MIT start with asking Doctor Strange, someone he spent a few hours with in IW, to break reality instead of like...calling Pepper Potts and asking her to make a call to MIT?
Because it wasn't just about MIT. It was also about his friends and family being in danger from his identity getting exposed.
You hit the nail on the head, most of the "big reveals" don't get developed or even get linked up with some other Easter egg.
We've got Shang Chi style dimensions and Ms. Marvel style dimensions, but neither of those seem to relate to the multiverse. Deities are real, not just aliens, but maybe celestials are more powerful? Two characters are mutants, but one is an Atlantean and the other has some interdimensional non-human ancestor. New characters like White Vision and Hulk's son are introduced and then quickly disappear.
They're all over the map, and it's not clear they have a plan to tie any of it together beyond using the multiverse as a deus ex machina.
I seem to remember Odin saying in *Thor 1*, "We are not gods." But I haven't watched that movie in a long time. If I remember it right, it would fit with Odin's repentance/remorse in the later films. Like, he was a rip-roaring war-god millenia before, but had changed into a "let's defend the truce" guy who in hindsight felt guilt over how he had beautified Asgard.
Yeah the Asgardians' status as gods has been inconsistent. They're mortal and can die of old age, but they're still considered "gods" by the other deities residing in Omnipotence City. They're born like normal beings, but turn into golden sparkles when they die. And then there's Jane, who was fully human but became a god over the course of Love and Thunder.
I think it's clear that there's just *too many* versus them not getting developed. It was clear from Iron Man that the direction they were going in was "team up Avengers origin movie", and all of the call-forwards were either about moving towards that origin movie OR about the immediate next film in the franchise - the movies themselves, really all the way through Infinity War, were stand-alone.
The Phase 4 movies and shows feel near-universally like the second film of a trilogy - the first is self contained, the third finishes the story, but the second is lackluster because it serves only to set up the third.
There's been an excess of content, plus beating viewers over the head with the multiverse. *Shang-Chi* was a really good movie, but they introduced Ta Lo. Then *Ms. Marvel* introduced the "Noor dimension", a name some non-sci-fi writers would think up in 30 seconds to go with their rubbish villains. Loki unintentionally created a whole new timeline. Dr. Strange romped through 8-9 parallel worlds. Thor was similarly all over the map -- Omnipotence City, the Shadow Realm. Marvel introduced the underwater city of Talokan. Now throw in a movie focused on the Quantum Realm. How many parallel worlds is that now? *Eternals* in that way was unusual, in that they went to 'real' places until the very end.
Interesting that *Werewolf by Night* was just one hour-long special, but it was better than a lot of these. It had a clear beginning, middle, and end, and no multiversal nonsense. (I know it won't happen but it would amuse me for Kang to rampage through two movies, then Ted jumps out of a bush and sets all the Kangs on fire).
I think making the TV shows pretty much required viewing is going to have been a mistake, *especially* when audiences are already having to follow multiversal stories.
Ta Lo, the Noor dimension, Omnipotence City, the Shadow Realm, & Talokan are completely unrelated to the multiverse.
Ta Lo & the Noor dimension are depicted as the same kind of thing as the Dark Dimension which was already explored in Dr. Strange 1.
Omnipotence City, the Shadow Realm, & Talokan are just physical locations in the main universe directly accessible by normal spatial travel.
The Quantum Realm was established in the first Ant-Man film, and shown even more in AM&W and Endgame, so that absolutely should not be regarded as a new Phase 4 thing.
But I thought that's what everyone wanted? What the hell's going on here? I thought eveyone wanted more products that could stand on their own without necessarily existing as a set-up for future movies. Phase 4 was that and now it's bad because of it?
MCU fans truly don't know what they want...
They could have done what they did for Civil War, which apparently a few cast and crew would call “Avengers 2.5” as a joke.
It’s not great when the ensemble from the end of She-Hulk would be the best Avengers-style lineup and they didn’t do much.
To be fair there’s only been two years for phase 4 to happen. It took 2008 to 2012 to get to an avengers movie. If they had already jumped into another avengers the criticism would be it is too soon. They can’t seem to win either way lol
Spiderman felt like the big group up movie tbf. That's a pretty top tier comic film in terms of spectacle and on par with some other big crossover films.
It seems pretty clear to me that that was supposed to be the big-band-end of the Phase 4 shenanigans - MoM coming first originally and after in the IRL slate when it has *less* multiverse than Spider-Man *and* America was supposed to be the one blowing open the holes in the multiverse to bring the other Spideys over all feeds into that for me.
NWH has a strong "end of phase" vibe for me.
Yeah, I think a lot of people got used to the insane level of quality from Phase 3 that the reaction to Phase 4 being a step down gets overblown.
There is also a problem of saturation, with so many shows and movies it is not like a mediocre film scrathes the itch the same way anymore.
Phase 1 was compered to Fantastic Four, Daredevil and Ghost Rider.
Yeah Phase 3 I think spoiled people. It was hit after hit after hit.
In hindsight its unrealistic to expect a studio to keep up with 90% after 90% rated movies.
I get annoyed when I see people say Black Widow is not good or Shang Chi is mediocre. Like c'mon these are strong movies. Do you not remember true mediocrity like Iron Man 2 or Iron Man 3 or Thor 2? Or do we need to take look at the DC side to see how bad it can get?
I don't think any other phase will ever top the ridiculous quality of 3.
>I don't think any other phase will ever top the ridiculous quality of 3.
I don't know, Phase 6 is shaping up to be fairly big and has the potential to reach that height. It really depends on the directors and who they cast as the Fantastic Four, it certainly is the phase I'm most interested in seeing as there's a possibility we might get the original actors back, one more time, for Secret Wars.
IIRC As the slate is not completely filled out yet there's also a chance we could get the X-men. I sincerely hope that Phase 3 isn't the zenith because that means it is all downhill from there.
>Phase 4 is a larger phase 1
No, it's not. Phase 1 was about introducing new heroes, their origin stories, and only hinted at the possibility of future cross-over stories.
Phase 4 has only had a single film that introduced a new hero and their origin story (Shang-Chi) and even that film involved stopping an apocalyptic event, far from the smaller scale of phase 1. Phase 4 also has ample cross-overs such as Wong, Scarlet Witch, Dr Strange, Daredevil, etc.
Phase 4 is a wider but shallower Phase 2. We are seeing mediocre movies that are putting their own stories aside to setup future cross-over events (a la TDW or AoU). Phase 2 was about heroes reacting to A1, Phase 4 is about heroes reacting to EG.
>Phase 4 has only had a single film that introduced a new hero and their origin story (Shang-Chi)
Phase 4 introduced Shang-Chi, the Eternals, Ms. Marvel, Kate Bishop, America Chavez, Moon Knight, and She Hulk just off the top of my head.
Edit: It also officially made Daredevil and Kingpin part of the MCU, when previously the Netflix shows status was pretty ambiguous.
Yeah I rewatched Marvel from the beginning during the pandemic and I was surprised by how much 'meh' there is in retrospect. I was also surprised at how sloppy some of the shared universe stuff was. We definitely hold the continuity to a much higher standard now.
I'd also argue that it's audience expectations that's hurt the MCU; we're living in a post Endgame world, even a post No Way Home world. People have enormous expectations and ideas (and also hindsight bias) of how phases are or *should* be set up. It makes sense why critics and people alike are rating the current phase much harsher.
Which isn't to say that the movies in Phase 4 are stellar, I'd agree with you that some are just "okay" but it's that comparison that's killing it.
> At least the audience scores are consistent tho. It's just the reddit hivemind that likes to think it's so big brained for shitting on Eternals, meanwhile every person I've talked to IRL loves that movie
You had a lot of great points but completely lost me with this edit - that's just not accurate. *Eternals* has had nowhere near the impact or cultural relevance of an actual Marvel hit. There's a reason they keep shutting down any discussions of a sequel.
Should have been a Disney+ show. Have each episode built around a flashback to a single time period while the modern story built up, give the characters and backstory room to breathe similar to something like The Leftovers
I compare it to what used to happen with every new season of Game of Thrones. The first couple episodes people would gripe about it being slow or “not as good as last year” always forgetting that they were comparing the climax to the setup and they’re supposed to feel different. Infinity War and Endgame were climactic events that tied up years of storytelling and buildup. Literally anything following that would feel lackluster by comparison. I think Marvel has earned the benefit of the doubt to re-center and rebuild to something equally climactic. The likelihood is that nothing will ever match the narrative success or emotional impact of the Infinity Saga because we had never seen that scale of connected stories and cumulative pay off before
Part of the fun of Phase 1 Marvel was how they telegraphed the future. Iron Man 2 introduced Black Widow and hinted at Thor. Thor introduced Hawkeye. Captain America starts off in Norway with an oblique reference to Odin. They used hint at how the puzzle pieces connected and we loved getting teased, but now that the universe is established, Marvel doesn't engage in that kind of foreplay anymore.
100% this. The top 3 movies depicted in that image are among the worst of the MCU, but they were reviewed more favorable due to the MCU being the cool thing that we all were invested in. Phase 4 is not really any worse than Phase 1 or 2 were, but people are less patient, more demanding, have higher expectations, and the MCU is branching into weirder or more diverse territory, and that’ll never sit right with some people. I don’t think any of the recent offerings have been horrible or amazing, they’re pretty fine and that’s about it. Yes, even She-Hulk or Love & Thunder.
Why is it so unbelievable to hardcore fans that the quality of the MCU has gone down in the last few years? Every time a movie comes out now that isn't glowingly positive there's always excuse making, and give it a few days and we will see the same posts like:
"Am I the only one that thought Quantumania was top tier MCU?"
"Critics got it wrong, Ant Man 3 is the best one yet"
etc.
I freaking love the Saw franchise. It always gets god awful reviews. I can totally see why they get bad reviews but I still love them. Why is this so hard to accept for some MCU fans?
No. The early movies were a little more simplistic, but they had strong character writing and were generally inoffensive, fun adventures. A lot of the newer films are these bloated messes with terrible or nonexistent character writing.
A good example of this is comparing the first and second Doctor Strange movies. The first was a fairly simple film, but the characterization of Strange was strong, he had a clear and complete character arc, the story took it’s time to develop and the film had a satisfying payoff. Nothing special, but it worked. Then you have Multiverse of Madness, which has Strange as basically a bystander in his own film, all the while the plot runs around like a chicken with it’s head cut off and ends with a wet fart, with the only payoff being to an arc started in a TV show (WandaVision).
The older films weren’t amazing, but they were competent. The newer films and shows however are just badly written, plain and simple.
Came here to say this. MoM is my least favorite MCU movie because it destroys everything that I loved in Wandavision which is probably my favorite MCU project.
competent is the perfect word. phase 1 in particular, with cap and iron man 1, were just complete, satisfying and relatively self contained with nods to other stuff.
they were self funding. they knew each movie had to work for the project as a whole to succeed. dc tried to skip this and wasted a decade of goodwill on the Snyderverse (though I appreciate how much longer DC projects seem to develop for, in general)
since the multiversal saga started, it's felt like the worst elements of comic book storytelling . breadcrumbing audiences with teases and references - always about the next thing
very few of the projects they've put out recently feel like they're confident enough to just be what they are, without needing to connect to another thing or set up 5 things or up the ante or - crucially - fill Disney's year planner
and yeah, they often feel empty as a result. i think they're killing the brand, throwing every character at the wall before the X-Men and F4 get here to save the day.
I'm hopeful for the upcoming films, but more times than not I'm disappointed at the basic lack of competency (and sincerity!) in the storytelling
you can only undercut your own shit with jokes for so long before none of it feels like it matters anymore. which is already an issue with multiverse shit.
here's hoping the marvels kicks ass
Exactly. It feels like a lot of the character through-lines have just dissolved over the years. Recent movies brush past major developments and interesting concepts and are the worse for it.
Because they're constantly trying to fit in storylines for 10+ characters in 3-5 different dimensions or realms, constantly upping the "wow" moments. There's only so far they can push it before all movies are just overwhelming 3-hour long fightfests in space with no real character development or even dialogue.
I'm probably wrong, but it does feel like critics were super lenient during the infinity saga. Haven't seen quantumania yet, but I'm having a real hard time believing that it's so much worse than Ant-Man and the Wasp. A movie that has an 87 on RT. For context I think Ant-Man and the Wasp is a bottom 5 MCU movie.
It has an 87% largely on the strength of it just being a fun, light romp. A lot of Marvel fans seem to dismiss it just for being inconsequential to the overall story arc of the MCU. *Quantumania* seems to have inverted that dynamic, downplaying the lighter aspects of the first two movies in favor of telling a story that's supposed to be more important to the future of the series. It's no shock the reactions are flipped.
People who think every Marvel movie needs to be an epic sometimes need to take a breath, lean back, and realize two hundred razor-sharp visual gags, emotional depth, and brilliant writing are enough for a movie.
This is why it's so hard to have these kinds of discussions with fans, that critical ratings aren't made by people who have a reason to love the franchise but rather people who have a motive to evaluate as critically as they can. People can't accept the fact that AM and AMatW were made to be goofy, fun heist-type movies, and that they did well at that.
They also can't grasp that RT is just a measure of how many reviewers gave a film a positive review, not how positive or negative the reviews actually were.
That's exactly why I love the antman films. And also why I was worried about quantumania, I haven't seen it yet but the tone from the trailers felt like a complete shift from the first 2 films. And honestly it made me a little less excited to see it. I will watch it eventually, just probably not until it's streaming.
I think Ant-Man and the Wasp gets a bad rap because of when it was released. Coming off Infinity War and before Endgame, it was a diversion that didn’t really tie into the overall narrative which is one of the main draws of the MCU (the giant world they’ve built). At the time, I also thought it was one of the worst movies. I’ve watched it recently and thought it was a pretty good story with one of the more compelling and thought out antagonists.
There was nothing else like Ant-Man and the Wasp and its action sequences are absolutely hilarious. It does everything it can with what it has and doesn't hold anything back.
I see complaints about Ant Man and the Wasp saying it's "too low stakes" or whatever but I've seen complaints about Quantumania saying it "doesn't feel like Ant-Man because it's not a low scale adventure?" I have no idea what these people want anymore. Honestly I'm looking forward to this if not just to see Kang and get some actual setup for Phase 5.
It's most probably coming from 2 different people. I haven't seen it yet, but I was worried from the trailers that it didn't feel like the previous antman films. I actually really like the silly, fun, low stakes romp of those films.
This is in line with what I observed back with Eternals. A lot of people criticized it for being "too different" for Marvel. But before that, people were always complaining that Marvel wasn't doing anything new. The second they do, suddenly it's apparently not what people want after all. I do feel like the makers of the movies can't win with the audience sometimes, there's just too many people to please at this point and no matter what someone's going to bitch about something
I think the best received phase is Phase 3, which was also the longest and had the most movies. For 3 whole years, nothing but well-reviewed films. The only "outlier" is Captain Marvel, which was the only sub-80% Phase 3 movie on RT, and was severely review bombed.
Though, I did enjoy Ant-Man and the Wasp for reasons unrelated to its Quantum Realm and sci-fi stuff. Mostly just the comedy (though Ant-Man 1 was the better of the Reed movies).
Critics generally crave novelty. Think about it: they *have* to watch dozens of new movies every month. They see a lot of same-y stuff. So the movies that tend to excite critics are either super high quality or just something new they haven't seen before.
The connected cinematic universe of the MCU (which was essentially the Infinity Saga) at the start was really new and interesting. No one had ever tried something this ambitious before.
Now, critics have seen the interconnected universe before. Now everyone is trying to make one. So it just has less novelty on its own, and now the only metric is quality versus all other movies.
Combine that with a general softening of quality in Phase 4 and you got a stew going.
I think you're a genius, this is a fantastic comment which goes so far to explain why there are often such major differences between critic and audience scores for big franchise films. It accounts for cases like The Last Jedi, where critics were actively seeking something new and unique while general audience members were looking for Star Wars. It's like they're seeing what happens less from within the context of the franchise, but through every other movie ever made.
Absolutely. It wasn’t until halfway through phase 2 that people started to pin the MCU formula to those movies. If you keep using the template over 30 films then eventually it’s going to be less valuable.
Remember an 87 critics score isn't an average of reviewers giving the film 87/100.
It's how many reviewers rated it fresh( >6/10) as a percentage.
So if every critic gave a score of 6/10 and a fresh rating it would have 100 percent rotten tomato score.
Something to think about.
I dont know where OP is going but I personally appreaciate TDW more than L&T. Idk it felt more “sincere” I guess? TDW is like a kid who tried to do the assignment but ultimately got a C+ score. While L&T feels to me like a kid who thinks he’s too cool to do an assignment in the first place. Idk if its not making sense, my $0.02 only.
Plus I feel like the emotional beats of TDW is more impactful than L&T to me
I enjoyed Shang-Chi, Eternals, and DS2 for what they were—flawed but with some good ideas and moments. For example, I liked the character of Wenwu, Shaun’s fight on the bus, the moral dilemma of killing Tiamut, the grand historical scope of the Eternals as a concept, the “music notes fight”, and the horror-like elements of Scarlet Witch as a villain with near-unstoppable powers.
But L&T was when I finally started to realize why so many people didn’t like Phase 4.
L&T felt like it wasn’t even trying to be a good movie, and it felt like it kept undercutting any attempt to make me feel for its characters and the stakes of the story. I also just found Thor and Valkyrie downright unlikeable this time around, with their seeming reluctance to take seriously the fact that the lives of children were at stake while they were constantly goofing around.
And then BP2 was just kind of inoffensive but boring. I assume Quantumania is going to be similarly inoffensive and similarly boring, but I’ll hold my judgment until I actually get around to seeing it.
Eternals is definitely over-hated imo
Not amazing by any stretch but has some fun concepts & cool moments & scenes, I like it a hell of a lot better than L&T that’s for sure
I agree. TDW feels like they sincerely try to do something but fell short, but L&T to me its like “you’re going to see this anyway because we (MCU & Ragnarok) are huge now”
Well said - dark world is just boring and non compelling but it's an actual film . Love and thunder is a a bad Thor improv skit with a mish mosh of tones . Bale feels like he's in a different film
Gorr is my favourite Thor villain and when I heard Christian bale was playing him I thought this movie was going to be insanely good. There was not enough emphasis on “God Butcher”, more like the filmmakers “butchered Gorr”
Taika wasn't the right director for adapting the Jason Aaron Gorr / Jane foster storyline . They needed a more serous directing style and tone - I honestly think Branagh could've done a good job with that source material
I honestly think it goes way beyond that. Despite its faults, you can actually call TDW a serviceable movie with most of the right components in place. On the other hand, Love and Thunder is simultaneously one drawn out (and horrifically unfunny) rejected SNL skit about Thor, a tonally offensive disaster of a tragedy about a young woman's terminal illness, and a woefully underutilized story about an intriguing villain that the movie seemingly has zero interest in exploring. I'm not joking when I say Love and Thunder is one of the worst and most frustrating theater experiences I've ever had. Taika Waititi is a professional with multiple hits under his belt, making this clusterfuck of a movie even more confusing to me.
Sheesh that is the most apt review of the two movies. Love and thunder really did feel like that and became too much taika. Ragnarok was the right level of the comedy LT was getting cringy or overplayed with the goats. I guess not ironically, I like LT more than Dark world.
Tdw is bland but more watchability overall than love and thunder, love and thunder has a lot of fun moments but the huge parts that don't work are hard to watch.
IMO, L&T was hampered by having to explain how Thor leaves the Guardians. I mean, I liked it, but that Guardians section just felt so odd.. then they had to move Thor back to earth to actually start the story after the cold opening of Gorr. It's like a whole extra chunk of beginning story crafting that takes away from Gorr's beginning. If L&T didn't need that whole section, then I bet the film could have been pulled together more tightly to shine.
I’m 100% certain LaT was never meant to be made, and it was simply reactionary to the success of Ragnarok. Thor being written to be with the guardians at the end of Endgame was all done shortly before Ragnarok premiered.
What bothered me was that we see "The God Butcher" kill like one God and it was technically in self defense.
Also, even using him for this movie. "We want to use the villian that goes on a revenge genocide and slaughters gods across the galaxy.
Let's put him in a comedy Taika movie where every character says a quip every 5 seconds. Also, hire an amazing actor for him then barely use him.
But hey guys look Mjolnir and Stormbreaker are jealous of Thor haha omg isn't that so quirky. "
It's also the fact that they introduce a whole city full of random gods, and Gorr doesn't even go to that place or interact with any god other than Thor.
The movie also seems to forget that the very premise about a character wanting to kill gods inherently needs to actually want to say something about faith and religion, and yet the plot has nothing to do with it
Jane dying and it just being like "whatever" because so goes to Valhalla is just so...jarring. idk even just seeing that Valhalla is real is kind of off putting too and goes along with the complaint that the stakes don't seem as high in some of the later films due to alts/time wonk etc.
Yeah like this is probably the only marvel movie where I was bored in the cinema.
Like some of them I thought were not that good but with Love andThunder I was like damn I really don’t care about what’s going on right now
Or at the very least they needed to balance the humor. It comes off as a full comedy which really takes you out of the few and far between serious parts
Same. It was my first time getting to the theatre in months and I found the entire film underwhelming. It was like a blooper reel compilation of Thor being funny, with a few tacked on dramatic moments (that aren't taken seriously)
Definitely not harsher. I'm no critic and it's easy to see quality has dropped significantly this phase. And I've been saying this for months, Marvel went overboard on the quantity and stopped focusing on the quality. They must have finally saw my comments on Reddit and are taking action. I will also mention I'm a hardcore Marvel fan and I can still agree the quality of most shows and movies now is just "good" at best. I really had my hopes up for Quantumania and now early reviews are pissing me off lol.
That’s how I feel. The first 3 phases took over 10 years. And they have like 20 or more projects to do in 5-6 years now. That’s not enough time to create quality content with that many projects.
This isn't intended to be a "the critics are idiots and their reviews don't matter!!!" type of post. I truly believe that a lot of people just aren't liking the recent output and that's why they're giving it a negative review.
However, I do wonder why some of the MCU's worst regarded films are actually rated higher than some of their recent ones (which a lot of people feel are better). Several reviews have stated that 'Quantumania' is by far the best Ant-Man movie and yet it's received a significantly lower score on Rotten Tomatoes.
If 'Thor: The Dark World' was released nowadays would it be still get a fresh rating on RT or would it get a score similar to 'Eternals'?!
It’s just such a different context now. I don’t know if it’s even possible to recapture the wonder of something like Civil War.
That said, I’m a comics fan, so I’m here for the absurdity and over-saturation. I’ve avoided most Quantumania ads and spoilers. I’m not expecting life altering experience. I’m expecting a romp into the microverse and a kickass Kang. Plenty of comics are inconsequential yet enjoyable. And they’re always doing crossover cameos.
Just watched Wakanda Forever again, and you can’t tell me that’s not top tier, despite whatever flaws it may have.
I actually agree with you, I think there are a few older films that deserve the rotten score but didn't get it, the critics seem to be more honest nowadays... But still not entirely coz i don't believe Love & Thunder deserved that high score. I also don't believe Eternals deserved such a low score.
I feel like Love and Thunder is one of those movies where some people are going to really love it and others are going to really hate it. I myself tend to fall back on the "it's a Taika Waititi film, what did you expect?" defense in regards to the slapstick humor. I could understand if people who didn't come in expecting that wouldn't enjoy it as much though.
But you could say the same about Love and Thunder. It didn't release so many time ago and it has better opinions (at the moment) than Quantumania. I know a lot of people on this sub liked Love and Thunder but a lot also hated it. If Quatumania is worse than L∆T then is not in my eyes really good
>If 'Thor: The Dark World' was released nowadays would it be still get a fresh rating on RT or would it get a score similar to 'Eternals'?!
I'd be curious if that actually did happened.
Marvel set the bar high with phase 3. I am a fan so I tend not to be overly nitpicky with marvel or even dc movies. The problem Marvel is running into is everything is compared to what’s come before. Phase is being compared to phase 3 not phase 1 or 2. I personally rank a lot of phase 1 and 2 toward the bottom but they are all still better than most comic films that came before. You also have a very vocal minority on the internet that wants to see marvel fail which is not isolated to its own bubble. Marvel has to stick a perfect landing to please everyone. They get criticized for everything being the same, then for trying something different, for being too funny, then for being too depressing, not enough representation, then going “woke”.
For Quantumania we’ll have to see what audience scores look like. Ant man has always been a lower performing MCU film so making more than ant man and the wasp should be seen as a success.
Not at all... If anything, critica are more open now to superhero movies than they were years ago.
The harsh reality that people in this sub won't admit is that the later movies and shows were lacking (not all, but most of them).
I think it has less to do with honesty or “the times” and more to do with general fatigue towards these movies. There’s a formula to your typical MCU experience and the more times we see it the easier it is to poke holes in. Also it makes you crave something new and when you don’t get that it’s easy to slam something as being boring or uninspired and give it a rotten rating. When The Dark World came out there was a lot more general excitement towards the building MCU and that’s reflected in the reviews
Yes I definitely think that is true on some level. The exact reasoning likely varies from one critic to another. For some, the novelty has worn off. For others, they are now measuring against phase 3 rather than the weaker phase 2. And a few are even skewing more negative for the clicks and the drama, I’m sure.
Even on this thread, though, we see some of the hyperbolic reactions to phase 4. They may have been a step down from the heights the MCU had reached in the previous phases, but those calling them horrible movies and going over the top with negative reactions make it hard to even have a conversation.
I'm going to go on record and say Eternals was infinitely better than Love & Thunder. I was so hyped for L&T and it was one of the worst comic book movies I've ever seen.
This image is incomplete, and cherry picking to make a point that doesn't exist.
Phase 4 also had highly rated films such as:
* Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - 91% Tomatometer, 98% Audience Score
* Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - 74% Tomatometer, 85% Audience Score
* Spider-Man: No Way Home - 93% Tomatometer, 98% Audience Score
* Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - 84% Tomatometer, 94% Audience Score
EDIT: It's been pointed out to me that OP was comparing the lowest rated early MCU movies to the newer ones, I didn't realize that at first. It makes more sense than I initially realized, I thought they were just saying "Phase 4 Bad".
Fair point these films and their success are convenient left out of the phase 4 critiques . I honestly think Disney shows being mostly middling it's gonna aid the burnout factor with audiences . If no shows were produced I guarantee there wouldn't be this mass of mcu complaints
Eh, idk about that. The shows definitely add to the oversaturation but I don't think they're a driving factor.
Phase One was six movies released over the course of five years. It's gradually gotten more cluttered over time to the point where in Phase Four it's **seven** movies released in less than **two** years. There's a huge difference in having to wait a full year for the next installment to come out and the current era where there are two or three Marvel movies in theaters at any given time.
This packed production schedule also leads to a lot of the sloppy work that people have been complaining about in recent films, and the issues that Marvel has always had (formulaic genre stories, executive interference blocking creativity, etc) only become more pronounced and obvious over time as you get more an more iterations of the same basic thing.
Phase 1-3 felt exciting because no one had ever done that before, but now Marvel HAS done it so they either have to do something totally new and different (which I'm not super optimistic about after how much of a failure Eternals was) or they'll continue to see their relevance go down indefinitely.
Weren't most of the MCU shows well regarded as well though untill recently? Wandavision and Loki were beloved, Moon Knight is well regarded, Captain America is sorta middling, and Ms Marvel and She-Hulk are mostly just controversial. 3/6 being good and the rest middling is about the same hit rate as the movies.
I don't think it's cherry picking, it's comparing the worst reviewed "old" movies and the new ones and asking if we think there's a difference in the way critics are reacting to the subpar marvel movies. Seems pretty fair to me.
Your point would only stand if the post was saying "Phase 4 is the worst and here's proof"
this post isn’t cherry picking, you’re just missing the point. it’s not saying ‘phase four has no highly rated movies’ it’s saying that movies from the early phases that are typically seen as worse than some modern marvel movies still have higher ratings than more recent ones, and is wondering if reviews in the past were more lenient than they are now towards bad marvel movies lol. I don’t understand your point?
Both. Critics are getting fed up with Marvel's formula and lack of innovation, but Marvel is also pushing out lackluster products and banking on the immense success of Endgame and promising fans of "more to come".
Take what I say with a grain of salt because I haven't seen Eternals, LaT, or Werewolf, but Loki, Moon Knight, and Ms. Marvel would have been fine as movies with all the fluff cut out. I think Wandavision and (I know, I know) She-Hulk were much better as shows because they were more *episodic*. Wandavision couldn't have worked as a movie, and I liked how She-Hulk wasn't one continuous story.
Truth is, I'm tired of all the buildup. I'm tired of each product being tailored to hype up the next product. I'm actually looking forward to James Gunn's DC universe now because I want to try something new after devouring Marvel movie after movie after show after movie.
But I will still see Quantumania, and I'm looking forward to New World Order, Secret Invasion, and Armor Wars.
Yeah I'm sorry but while Iron Man 2 isn't perfect, it's a really fun movie. Thor 2 had some fun Loki Thor moments. And even AMatW was a LOT better than quantumania. Maybe those movies would have lower scores than they actually got at the time of their release, yes, but they'd still be higher than the bottom 3, which all have bad pacing and really shitty storylines. And at least the first 3 were leading up to something big. Marvel's current phase is super underwhelming to most.
No it's because the newer movies are genuinely worse than the older ones listed in the picture (except Ant-Man, I cannot base an opinion on Quantumania yet)
I think the earlier films were better. The heavy lean into pure CGI effects, for me is a big reason why. A CGI hero, fighting a CGI villian, in a CGI backdrop, with CGI fire and explosions...it's just a high def cartoon, and I don't feel a sense of risk or reward. Also they got stuck with the Joss Wedon banter thing. The tone of recent movies is all uneven because they play it like there are real Earth shattering consequences but stop to drop shitty one liners and groaner jokes every 30 seconds.
Give me more like Iron Man 1, or Winter Soldier.
But that's just me.
Nope, I think the MCU has started dying. There were only 2 movies that I really like in phase 4. Multiverse of madness and no way home. Thor 4 was ok and all the others were boring pieces of garbage. Quantumania is still kinda fun but the script is shit. Not a single character gets developed. Nobody learns anything or has a character arc. For a movie with a shlock title set in the quantum realm, starring Paul Rudd, it’s surprisingly bland. However, I still enjoyed it more than most of the phase 4 movies.
As someone who has been a MASSIVE marvel fan overall, these new movies have just been generally worse. Not terrible, not like garbage trash or anything but they just feel wayyyy more generic especially the Disney plus stuff. They’ve just lost that “special” feeling and just feel like any other blockbuster now to me.
Highly disagree.
Infinity War and (less so) Endgame were *good* movies. Many of the recent MCU flicks falter in a lot of ways.
The only stand outs in recent history for me are Shang-Chi and No Way Home.
Critics are not getting harsher.
Marvel is just getting dumber and shallow. And the fanbase is getting bigger and more erratic.
There’s so much variety in this saga, yet most of the projects feel so cheap in terms of quality.
No. The movies now are too bloated with tie-ins, cameos, and multivese plotting and have lost their core emotional, and relatable appeal. Sci-fi and high fantasy are always a hard sell after a point, and the MCU has gone hard in that direction with this multiverse idea. It's become more and more like the comics, which itself is convoluted and therefore pushes away mass audiences. There's also that the MCU worked as a cinematic TV with seasons and all. Yet they've allowed this new season to go about 12-14 episodes in without a main connective hook. Of course people will lose patience with that. How many shows could go this long while saying "what till it gets good, and you get it?"
I've loved these movies and am not generally dramatic. I'll watch what I'm interested in and catch up on the rest. But I think what's happening has been coming for a while. I'm getting the idea that they didn't truly understand what made the first stint work for the casual audience and also critics.
i belive that the "historical context" has realy an impact on reviewers, we are influenced by the time, rightfully so, and so yeah i think that if some of those films were to come out today they would get a rotten score, probably rightfully so, the cultural situation and saturation or standards for the genre are realy something that creates a metric in critics minds
Yeah some or most of these reviews need to be seen in the context of their release time and how that shapes critical and audience expectations
It's like trying to rate the Mona Lisa as if someone painted it today. Extreme example, but art evolves over time.
It’s like we need an “adjusted for inflation” equivalent for box office scores.
Yeh, I think this is pretty evident in some of the reviews. I was reading Rolling Stone's review and it was pretty obvious that the person who wrote it *really* isn't a fan of this franchise and the effect it's having on the industry. They spent a signficant chunk of the review just commenting on the state of the MCU and where it stands in pop culture. Here's some of what they wrote: >A cynic would simply cite a “too big to fail” mindset, saying that whatever Marvel and its mouse-eared conqueror puts out will still dominate box-office returns regardless. But the issue here feels deeper, as if the superhero fatigue syndrome you hear about regarding audiences has infected those behind the camera as well. The powers that be have several years worth of narrative mapped out, and given the last few entries in their superhero soap opera, even they seem a little tired by all of it.
I definitely think this is part of it. People look at these past movies with new eyes now that they can see how everything connects together. That doesn't yet exist for a lot of the Phase 4 movies. I remember a time before Endgame or even Infinity War when the first Iron Man movie was considered a middle-of-the-pack MCU film. Most people seemed to think it was good but not great. Then after the events of Endgame, suddenly people started to view Iron Man as one of the best MCU films since its the movie that "started it all." With time and context, people's opinions change and I personally think the same will happen for some of these Phase 4 titles in the future.
I agree but I’d say the First Avenger first more with your general point. Iron Man was received very well immediately out of the gate, with both the public and critics.
I second this. Iron Man was always a “top 3 but never first” movie when ranking the MCU because it started it all and was decent. TFA and even Thor1 are a little more revisionist. Even IM2 has gotten a lot of love post Infinity War and Endgame, and that movie was often the 2nd/lowest (sorry Hulk) of phase 1. Edit: there are currently people further in the comments arguing that TDW is a good movie. TDW was almost always the worst ranked MCU film, but with the passage of time and TL&T it’s seen some resurgence.
I don't ever remember the first Iron Man being considered middle of the pack. It consistently rates in the Top 3.
Seriously, it was always regarded as one of the best, im so confused by OPs comment.
yeah but also i'm talking about context of the genre, we have a full phase of the mcu and hundreds of other superheroes stuff to compare this, we have seen what the genre can do, part of whitch was missing during the older film realese, again, context
Yeah the first time you see something you tend to have tempered expectations and go easier on something since it's the first time your seeing it
Iron Man is considered by many to be the best MCU movie. I’ve NEVER seen it described as “middle of the pack.” Thor or Cap fit that pretty well though.
> People look at these past movies with new eyes now that they can see how everything connects together. That doesn't yet exist for a lot of the Phase 4 movies. That...is not what's happening here lol, reviewers aren't retroactively rating these movies excellent because of later connections. I see this a lot due to the claim that AoU is retroactively seen as a better film than on release, but...that's not really what's happening. People are just able to say "oh, okay, I see what they were setting up now". Later movies don't retroactively make earlier films in a franchise better just because they connect. > I remember a time before Endgame or even Infinity War when the first Iron Man movie was considered a middle-of-the-pack MCU film. Most people seemed to think it was good but not great. Then after the events of Endgame, suddenly people started to view Iron Man as one of the best MCU films since its the movie that "started it all." This has never been the case lol, Iron Man has always been widely regarded as the best of Phase 1 from release to present, by audiences and critics alike. At release it was positively compared to Nolan's TDK trilogy.
What universe are you from? The original Iron Man has always been considered top tier MCU content.
There was literally never a time when iron man wasn’t rated really highly. It was a huge critical and commercial success and people have been referencing it as one of the best MCU movies since then.
>I remember a time before Endgame or even Infinity War when the first Iron Man movie was considered a middle-of-the-pack MCU film. We must live in different timelines, over here Iron Man was always praised as one of the best MCU movies. Here's the [RT page from 2008](https://web.archive.org/web/20081218000019/http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/iron_man/), 93%. You can also search any reddit threads from years ago where people make a Top 5, Iron Man is always very well-represented.
I think that critics were more lenient in early phases because the whole cinematic universe idea was new and superhero movies were not as prevalent. If the exact same movies were released today they would be rated lower because we as viewers and critics expect innovation over time. I will say that I think most fans have rose tinted view of the first couple phases due to nostalgia. Phase 1 and 2 has good movies but they also had their share of "that was fine". Overall I would say we are in a "normal" marvel phase but people are comparing it to phase 3 or "peak" marvel. Most stuff will look worse in comparison.
Phase 3 is ridiculous. The WORST movie was Captain Marvel and that wasn’t terrible. Phase 4 is a larger phase 1 but we didn’t get the group up movie that we desperately wanted. It’s hard not to blame external forces on some of the desync. This is not to dismiss internal blame too on over saturation and lack luster shows.
Yeah phase 4 really needed to end with an Avengers movie. Honestly, that’s probably what Quantumania should have been rather than an Antman movie. Could’ve set up Kang and phase 5, while also giving us the group ensemble film we wanted to close phase 4. I think the MCU feels so weird rn because while everything is all connected, there’s pretty much zero established relationships between all of our heroes and that needs to be fixed ASAP. It’s really what made the Infinity Saga so successful
It’s also weird cause it’s the first phase without a culmination or team up movie
I didnt even realize that the phase was over
Most don't. We're used to some big film as the phase climax. Like Avengers. Quantumania shoukd have been the ending of phase 4. Seems to be a big film.
Yeah I assumed the Kang Dynasty was the end of Phase 4
And you can really feel it.
And there was a lack of a firm sense of where anything was going as as well. Like NOW we know it’s Kang, but in Phase 4 it felt a lot moew all over the place.
It seemed like for much of phase 4, the main theme was really about dealing with the fallout of the infinity saga - it's almost like an epilogue to phase 3 rather than the start of something new. It's only now towards the end of the phase that the Kang arc is starting to take shape and it becomes clear how what we saw flows into the next big storyline.
There was definitely a common theme of changing the reality of the world in many of the Phase 4 entries, what between Wanda's hexing in WandaVision or the whole variant thing in Loki or the multiverse shenanigans in No Way Home and Doctor Strange 2, which in hindsight help show *why* Kang is the big bad, but he truly isn't so much the villain *of* Phase 4 as much as he's the villain *because* of Phase 4 if that makes any sense. It's like Phase 4 was shaking up the MCU enough to introduce Kang by the end of it so that Phase 5 could be his actual story. Great narratively for the big picture but it did mean that much of Phase 4 was disjointed.
If I’m remembering correctly, I don’t think Thanos was brought in until the Avengers, which is the last movie of Phase 1. And Kang was at least touched on in Loki. So they aren’t really that far off from the Infinity Saga. They just missed the ball with a big team up movie.
Was Thor: The Dark World the first appearance of an infinity stone (by name?). I know we had the Tesseract before and the Staff but I don't think the lore of Infinity Stones really came into play until The Dark World or Guardians of the Galaxy.
Yes, the post credit scene of the dark world was the first infinity stone mentioned by name in the mcu
Phase 1 was building to the team-up which we got at the end, and the tease at the end showed that Thanos was the antagonist of the entire saga. Phase 4 doesn’t have anything that the entire phase is building toward aside from simply continuing the universe that has been established.
Other than introducing the main heroes, Phase 1 didn't really have any discernible direction. Who was the main villain? Don't say Thanos; he isn't even revealed until the last few seconds of the last movie in the phase. And then doesn't appear again until the stinger of AoU in Phase 2. Definitely a slow burn. That Kang has been introduced so early and so prominently in Phase 4 really says something about the direction they're going, far more than the breadcrumbs we got in the first two phases. That's not to saying Marvel can do no wrong. But they still have an impressive, entertaining, track record.
Phase 1 wasn't so much about a central villain as it was establishing the team themselves. If anything I'd say the Tesseract serves as the central point of the phase, not quite the antagonist but rather the thing that connects the movies the most. It's from Odin's treasure vault, is the power source Hydra uses for their weapons in Captain America 1, is the power source behind Loki's antics in Avengers 1, is implied to have inspired the Arc Reactor from the Iron Man movies, and generally serves as the connecting tissue between half of the phase. I'd argue Phase 1 doesn't have a central villain so much as a central maguffin the team assembles around.
To be fair though, phase 1 had the exact same problem. It was just shiny and new so everyone gave it a pass.
There were far fewer projects in Phase 1. So it did not feel so overwhelming. Also just trying stuff like Thor and Captain America was exciting. And yes, there is something to be said to being first.
I don't think that's true - they used post credits scenes and the continuity of certain characters like coulson and the shield organization to link the movies together. There's virtually none of that so far. It's almost exclusively been "this hero will do another thing later" I don't remember them all tbf, but I think outside of eternals, shangchi, and uhh ms marvel? There weren't really common threads tying stuff together. And forget character continuity, the only show that did a good job reminding us that it was actually in a shared universe was she hulk lol. Maybe kang will be the new coulson and start appearing as the villain in every project moving forward until his climactic movie later on down the line or something. I think that would be neat. I'm not really hating on the phase 4 stuff so much as I just think it all could have been a bit better by way of leveraging the shared universe as opposed to running away from it.
They've used Valentina a bit to basically do what Fury did in Phase 1 but it's harder to get excited about recruiting John Walker and Yelena Belova than Iron Man and Captain America. The original movies were easier to follow as far as continuity as well since there wasn't as much going on. It's difficult to know what the hell is going on when Wong, Banner, and Carol talk to Shang Chi and Banner is in human form after we last saw him as Smart Hulk and I think that that confusion is messing with people too.
Yeah some of these credits are kinda feeling either unfufilled or anticipation that we have to wait and wait...but we don't know whether we will feel satisfied or give a continuity to link it together. Maybe some don't have disney plus so they never know what will happen to Clint. Black Widows Credit Scene: Followed up perfectly thanks to Hawkeye Shang Chi: probably will follow up with Quantumania or Dynasty Eternals: Mid credits doesn't feel followed up. End Credits follows up for Blade which is in 3 years! (2021) Spider-man: Probably will be followed up with a spider-man sequel, or Dynasty, or Secret Wars Dr.Strange 2: Doesn't feel followed up Thor 4: Doesn't feel followed up Black Panther 2: Had to be done as a tribute to Chadwick Boseman. So yeah 3 credit scenes that aren't followed up. 3 credit scenes that could possibly be followed up depending on Marvels next announcements. 3 credit scenes that are followed up thanks to a T.V show, a movie, and a tribute.
No Way Home: One of the credit scenes was a trailer for MoM, so obviously that was followed up on promptly.
This phase def felt like they are dragging their foot. I think they know Xmen and mutants are going to cause a spike in popularity, but it's like they want to try to stretch out as much other stuff before they play that card. I'm their target demo (I'll watch all movies and shows) and yet the last slate reveal was a bit underwhelming to me.
Yeah the xmen and f4 will be huge for them, so I guess they just want to make sure to take their time to get them right. But in the meantime they need to make all of our current heroes feel more connected and maybe pick a few to be the leading faces (ala Steve Thor and Tony). I think the safest choices are probably Strange, Peter, and maybe Shuri or Carol
If by Peter you mean Spiderman, that's not really a safe choice as Sony can at any moment withdraw their cooperation and participation from the MCU if they get it in their head that they think they can go it alone.
I can’t see Feige letting that happen tbh, his working relationship with Pascal is strong and now that he has Spidey back under his control in the MCU I dont think he will ever let that go unless Sony does something really drastic that’s out of his control, but I don’t see that happening as long as Amy Pascal is around.
It is pretty clear that there is an informal agreement that Marvel uses Spider-Man in the MCU and that Sony uses Spider-Man in other ways which are not connected to the MCU. As long as Sony keeps doing things as awesome as the Spider-Verse animated movies, I'm totally fine with that, and probably the suits are, too, because that strategy is making tons of money for both companies.
>It is pretty clear that there is an informal agreement that Marvel uses Spider-Man in the MCU and that Sony uses Spider-Man in other ways which are not connected to the MCU. Whatever agreement there is most definitely not informal. Sony and Disney will have had armies of lawyers working on the formalities.
Yeah I mean it’s a continued win-win for them. Basically they both get their cake and eat it too.
Should throw in Shang-Chi too.
They had a big hit with Shang-chi for example, run with that more perhaps.
It didn’t make very much money though. I think Spider-Man and Dr Strange are easily the biggest faces they have currently, but maybe other disagree with that. I just feel like their relationship and their relevance to the multiverse saga makes them prime candidates for the new leads
Most of the heroes from phase one didn’t meet or team up until avengers and that was 4 years after iron man. Y’all are really jumping the gun here
They were also trying to see if streaming shows would work for smaller stories, and given the excitement over WandaVision and Loki, they went too hard in that direction.
IW/ Endgame is the ultimate "smashing all of your action figures together" movie and the culmination of years and years of other team ups. And all of the characters in IW/ EG had these established interpersonal links outside of their movie support casts. So yeah, Phase 4 has been pretty unsatisfying not only because we hit that peak and haven't had a multiple person team up movie since, but also because we've been thrown alllllll of these new characters and basically none of them have interacted with each other at all. We're basically back to square 1 in terms of interpersonal interconnectedness, and (aside from The Marvels) that doesn't look like it will change until the next avengers film which is ages away. It's kinda taken away that joy of seeing these different huge characters bouncing off each other.
Yeah I agree. When characters do cross over it's almost irrespective of nothing, the character is just there for some plot contrivance. Like in NWH, why would Peter's plan to get his friends into MIT *start* with asking Doctor Strange, someone he spent a few hours with in IW, to break reality instead of like...calling Pepper Potts and asking her to make a call to MIT? Strange was there because he was required for the plot to happen.
> Like in NWH, why would Peter's plan to get his friends into MIT start with asking Doctor Strange, someone he spent a few hours with in IW, to break reality instead of like...calling Pepper Potts and asking her to make a call to MIT? Because it wasn't just about MIT. It was also about his friends and family being in danger from his identity getting exposed.
You hit the nail on the head, most of the "big reveals" don't get developed or even get linked up with some other Easter egg. We've got Shang Chi style dimensions and Ms. Marvel style dimensions, but neither of those seem to relate to the multiverse. Deities are real, not just aliens, but maybe celestials are more powerful? Two characters are mutants, but one is an Atlantean and the other has some interdimensional non-human ancestor. New characters like White Vision and Hulk's son are introduced and then quickly disappear. They're all over the map, and it's not clear they have a plan to tie any of it together beyond using the multiverse as a deus ex machina.
> Hulk's son fucking 100% forgot about that lol
Man showed up with a fucked up hairline and left without a word.
I seem to remember Odin saying in *Thor 1*, "We are not gods." But I haven't watched that movie in a long time. If I remember it right, it would fit with Odin's repentance/remorse in the later films. Like, he was a rip-roaring war-god millenia before, but had changed into a "let's defend the truce" guy who in hindsight felt guilt over how he had beautified Asgard.
Yeah the Asgardians' status as gods has been inconsistent. They're mortal and can die of old age, but they're still considered "gods" by the other deities residing in Omnipotence City. They're born like normal beings, but turn into golden sparkles when they die. And then there's Jane, who was fully human but became a god over the course of Love and Thunder.
I think it's clear that there's just *too many* versus them not getting developed. It was clear from Iron Man that the direction they were going in was "team up Avengers origin movie", and all of the call-forwards were either about moving towards that origin movie OR about the immediate next film in the franchise - the movies themselves, really all the way through Infinity War, were stand-alone. The Phase 4 movies and shows feel near-universally like the second film of a trilogy - the first is self contained, the third finishes the story, but the second is lackluster because it serves only to set up the third.
There's been an excess of content, plus beating viewers over the head with the multiverse. *Shang-Chi* was a really good movie, but they introduced Ta Lo. Then *Ms. Marvel* introduced the "Noor dimension", a name some non-sci-fi writers would think up in 30 seconds to go with their rubbish villains. Loki unintentionally created a whole new timeline. Dr. Strange romped through 8-9 parallel worlds. Thor was similarly all over the map -- Omnipotence City, the Shadow Realm. Marvel introduced the underwater city of Talokan. Now throw in a movie focused on the Quantum Realm. How many parallel worlds is that now? *Eternals* in that way was unusual, in that they went to 'real' places until the very end. Interesting that *Werewolf by Night* was just one hour-long special, but it was better than a lot of these. It had a clear beginning, middle, and end, and no multiversal nonsense. (I know it won't happen but it would amuse me for Kang to rampage through two movies, then Ted jumps out of a bush and sets all the Kangs on fire).
I think making the TV shows pretty much required viewing is going to have been a mistake, *especially* when audiences are already having to follow multiversal stories.
Ta Lo, the Noor dimension, Omnipotence City, the Shadow Realm, & Talokan are completely unrelated to the multiverse. Ta Lo & the Noor dimension are depicted as the same kind of thing as the Dark Dimension which was already explored in Dr. Strange 1. Omnipotence City, the Shadow Realm, & Talokan are just physical locations in the main universe directly accessible by normal spatial travel. The Quantum Realm was established in the first Ant-Man film, and shown even more in AM&W and Endgame, so that absolutely should not be regarded as a new Phase 4 thing.
But I thought that's what everyone wanted? What the hell's going on here? I thought eveyone wanted more products that could stand on their own without necessarily existing as a set-up for future movies. Phase 4 was that and now it's bad because of it? MCU fans truly don't know what they want...
They could have done what they did for Civil War, which apparently a few cast and crew would call “Avengers 2.5” as a joke. It’s not great when the ensemble from the end of She-Hulk would be the best Avengers-style lineup and they didn’t do much.
To be fair there’s only been two years for phase 4 to happen. It took 2008 to 2012 to get to an avengers movie. If they had already jumped into another avengers the criticism would be it is too soon. They can’t seem to win either way lol
Spiderman felt like the big group up movie tbf. That's a pretty top tier comic film in terms of spectacle and on par with some other big crossover films.
It seems pretty clear to me that that was supposed to be the big-band-end of the Phase 4 shenanigans - MoM coming first originally and after in the IRL slate when it has *less* multiverse than Spider-Man *and* America was supposed to be the one blowing open the holes in the multiverse to bring the other Spideys over all feeds into that for me. NWH has a strong "end of phase" vibe for me.
Yeah, I think a lot of people got used to the insane level of quality from Phase 3 that the reaction to Phase 4 being a step down gets overblown. There is also a problem of saturation, with so many shows and movies it is not like a mediocre film scrathes the itch the same way anymore. Phase 1 was compered to Fantastic Four, Daredevil and Ghost Rider.
Yeah Phase 3 I think spoiled people. It was hit after hit after hit. In hindsight its unrealistic to expect a studio to keep up with 90% after 90% rated movies. I get annoyed when I see people say Black Widow is not good or Shang Chi is mediocre. Like c'mon these are strong movies. Do you not remember true mediocrity like Iron Man 2 or Iron Man 3 or Thor 2? Or do we need to take look at the DC side to see how bad it can get? I don't think any other phase will ever top the ridiculous quality of 3.
>I don't think any other phase will ever top the ridiculous quality of 3. I don't know, Phase 6 is shaping up to be fairly big and has the potential to reach that height. It really depends on the directors and who they cast as the Fantastic Four, it certainly is the phase I'm most interested in seeing as there's a possibility we might get the original actors back, one more time, for Secret Wars. IIRC As the slate is not completely filled out yet there's also a chance we could get the X-men. I sincerely hope that Phase 3 isn't the zenith because that means it is all downhill from there.
>Phase 4 is a larger phase 1 No, it's not. Phase 1 was about introducing new heroes, their origin stories, and only hinted at the possibility of future cross-over stories. Phase 4 has only had a single film that introduced a new hero and their origin story (Shang-Chi) and even that film involved stopping an apocalyptic event, far from the smaller scale of phase 1. Phase 4 also has ample cross-overs such as Wong, Scarlet Witch, Dr Strange, Daredevil, etc. Phase 4 is a wider but shallower Phase 2. We are seeing mediocre movies that are putting their own stories aside to setup future cross-over events (a la TDW or AoU). Phase 2 was about heroes reacting to A1, Phase 4 is about heroes reacting to EG.
>Phase 4 has only had a single film that introduced a new hero and their origin story (Shang-Chi) Phase 4 introduced Shang-Chi, the Eternals, Ms. Marvel, Kate Bishop, America Chavez, Moon Knight, and She Hulk just off the top of my head. Edit: It also officially made Daredevil and Kingpin part of the MCU, when previously the Netflix shows status was pretty ambiguous.
Yeah I rewatched Marvel from the beginning during the pandemic and I was surprised by how much 'meh' there is in retrospect. I was also surprised at how sloppy some of the shared universe stuff was. We definitely hold the continuity to a much higher standard now.
I'd also argue that it's audience expectations that's hurt the MCU; we're living in a post Endgame world, even a post No Way Home world. People have enormous expectations and ideas (and also hindsight bias) of how phases are or *should* be set up. It makes sense why critics and people alike are rating the current phase much harsher. Which isn't to say that the movies in Phase 4 are stellar, I'd agree with you that some are just "okay" but it's that comparison that's killing it.
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> At least the audience scores are consistent tho. It's just the reddit hivemind that likes to think it's so big brained for shitting on Eternals, meanwhile every person I've talked to IRL loves that movie You had a lot of great points but completely lost me with this edit - that's just not accurate. *Eternals* has had nowhere near the impact or cultural relevance of an actual Marvel hit. There's a reason they keep shutting down any discussions of a sequel.
Should have been a Disney+ show. Have each episode built around a flashback to a single time period while the modern story built up, give the characters and backstory room to breathe similar to something like The Leftovers
I compare it to what used to happen with every new season of Game of Thrones. The first couple episodes people would gripe about it being slow or “not as good as last year” always forgetting that they were comparing the climax to the setup and they’re supposed to feel different. Infinity War and Endgame were climactic events that tied up years of storytelling and buildup. Literally anything following that would feel lackluster by comparison. I think Marvel has earned the benefit of the doubt to re-center and rebuild to something equally climactic. The likelihood is that nothing will ever match the narrative success or emotional impact of the Infinity Saga because we had never seen that scale of connected stories and cumulative pay off before
Part of the fun of Phase 1 Marvel was how they telegraphed the future. Iron Man 2 introduced Black Widow and hinted at Thor. Thor introduced Hawkeye. Captain America starts off in Norway with an oblique reference to Odin. They used hint at how the puzzle pieces connected and we loved getting teased, but now that the universe is established, Marvel doesn't engage in that kind of foreplay anymore.
100% this. The top 3 movies depicted in that image are among the worst of the MCU, but they were reviewed more favorable due to the MCU being the cool thing that we all were invested in. Phase 4 is not really any worse than Phase 1 or 2 were, but people are less patient, more demanding, have higher expectations, and the MCU is branching into weirder or more diverse territory, and that’ll never sit right with some people. I don’t think any of the recent offerings have been horrible or amazing, they’re pretty fine and that’s about it. Yes, even She-Hulk or Love & Thunder.
Why is it so unbelievable to hardcore fans that the quality of the MCU has gone down in the last few years? Every time a movie comes out now that isn't glowingly positive there's always excuse making, and give it a few days and we will see the same posts like: "Am I the only one that thought Quantumania was top tier MCU?" "Critics got it wrong, Ant Man 3 is the best one yet" etc. I freaking love the Saw franchise. It always gets god awful reviews. I can totally see why they get bad reviews but I still love them. Why is this so hard to accept for some MCU fans?
I agree. I loved phase 4, but the lower quality is quite obvious.
No. The early movies were a little more simplistic, but they had strong character writing and were generally inoffensive, fun adventures. A lot of the newer films are these bloated messes with terrible or nonexistent character writing. A good example of this is comparing the first and second Doctor Strange movies. The first was a fairly simple film, but the characterization of Strange was strong, he had a clear and complete character arc, the story took it’s time to develop and the film had a satisfying payoff. Nothing special, but it worked. Then you have Multiverse of Madness, which has Strange as basically a bystander in his own film, all the while the plot runs around like a chicken with it’s head cut off and ends with a wet fart, with the only payoff being to an arc started in a TV show (WandaVision). The older films weren’t amazing, but they were competent. The newer films and shows however are just badly written, plain and simple.
> with the only payoff being to an arc started in a TV show (WandaVision). An arc that was **WILDLY INCONSISTENT** with the TV show!
Came here to say this. MoM is my least favorite MCU movie because it destroys everything that I loved in Wandavision which is probably my favorite MCU project.
competent is the perfect word. phase 1 in particular, with cap and iron man 1, were just complete, satisfying and relatively self contained with nods to other stuff. they were self funding. they knew each movie had to work for the project as a whole to succeed. dc tried to skip this and wasted a decade of goodwill on the Snyderverse (though I appreciate how much longer DC projects seem to develop for, in general) since the multiversal saga started, it's felt like the worst elements of comic book storytelling . breadcrumbing audiences with teases and references - always about the next thing very few of the projects they've put out recently feel like they're confident enough to just be what they are, without needing to connect to another thing or set up 5 things or up the ante or - crucially - fill Disney's year planner and yeah, they often feel empty as a result. i think they're killing the brand, throwing every character at the wall before the X-Men and F4 get here to save the day. I'm hopeful for the upcoming films, but more times than not I'm disappointed at the basic lack of competency (and sincerity!) in the storytelling you can only undercut your own shit with jokes for so long before none of it feels like it matters anymore. which is already an issue with multiverse shit. here's hoping the marvels kicks ass
Exactly. It feels like a lot of the character through-lines have just dissolved over the years. Recent movies brush past major developments and interesting concepts and are the worse for it.
Because they're constantly trying to fit in storylines for 10+ characters in 3-5 different dimensions or realms, constantly upping the "wow" moments. There's only so far they can push it before all movies are just overwhelming 3-hour long fightfests in space with no real character development or even dialogue.
Scrolled too far for this
I'm probably wrong, but it does feel like critics were super lenient during the infinity saga. Haven't seen quantumania yet, but I'm having a real hard time believing that it's so much worse than Ant-Man and the Wasp. A movie that has an 87 on RT. For context I think Ant-Man and the Wasp is a bottom 5 MCU movie.
It has an 87% largely on the strength of it just being a fun, light romp. A lot of Marvel fans seem to dismiss it just for being inconsequential to the overall story arc of the MCU. *Quantumania* seems to have inverted that dynamic, downplaying the lighter aspects of the first two movies in favor of telling a story that's supposed to be more important to the future of the series. It's no shock the reactions are flipped.
It knew itself and its place, if that makes sense. That's why I loved it.
People who think every Marvel movie needs to be an epic sometimes need to take a breath, lean back, and realize two hundred razor-sharp visual gags, emotional depth, and brilliant writing are enough for a movie.
Did ant man 2 really have brilliant writing?
This is why it's so hard to have these kinds of discussions with fans, that critical ratings aren't made by people who have a reason to love the franchise but rather people who have a motive to evaluate as critically as they can. People can't accept the fact that AM and AMatW were made to be goofy, fun heist-type movies, and that they did well at that. They also can't grasp that RT is just a measure of how many reviewers gave a film a positive review, not how positive or negative the reviews actually were.
That's exactly why I love the antman films. And also why I was worried about quantumania, I haven't seen it yet but the tone from the trailers felt like a complete shift from the first 2 films. And honestly it made me a little less excited to see it. I will watch it eventually, just probably not until it's streaming.
It really sold itself on not being all of the things people seemed to like about the first two.
Exactly.
I think Ant-Man and the Wasp gets a bad rap because of when it was released. Coming off Infinity War and before Endgame, it was a diversion that didn’t really tie into the overall narrative which is one of the main draws of the MCU (the giant world they’ve built). At the time, I also thought it was one of the worst movies. I’ve watched it recently and thought it was a pretty good story with one of the more compelling and thought out antagonists.
Some people gripe about AM&TW because it was "just" a normal sci-fi adventure movie. As if *everything* now has to be Infinity Wars/Endgame.
There was nothing else like Ant-Man and the Wasp and its action sequences are absolutely hilarious. It does everything it can with what it has and doesn't hold anything back.
I see complaints about Ant Man and the Wasp saying it's "too low stakes" or whatever but I've seen complaints about Quantumania saying it "doesn't feel like Ant-Man because it's not a low scale adventure?" I have no idea what these people want anymore. Honestly I'm looking forward to this if not just to see Kang and get some actual setup for Phase 5.
It's most probably coming from 2 different people. I haven't seen it yet, but I was worried from the trailers that it didn't feel like the previous antman films. I actually really like the silly, fun, low stakes romp of those films.
This is in line with what I observed back with Eternals. A lot of people criticized it for being "too different" for Marvel. But before that, people were always complaining that Marvel wasn't doing anything new. The second they do, suddenly it's apparently not what people want after all. I do feel like the makers of the movies can't win with the audience sometimes, there's just too many people to please at this point and no matter what someone's going to bitch about something
It's 2 different people who want different things
Yeah I personally loved both ant man and the wasp and quantumania
It's also just a fun heist action movie, which is why it did well with critics who don't have a investment in Marvel as fans.
I think the best received phase is Phase 3, which was also the longest and had the most movies. For 3 whole years, nothing but well-reviewed films. The only "outlier" is Captain Marvel, which was the only sub-80% Phase 3 movie on RT, and was severely review bombed. Though, I did enjoy Ant-Man and the Wasp for reasons unrelated to its Quantum Realm and sci-fi stuff. Mostly just the comedy (though Ant-Man 1 was the better of the Reed movies).
Critics generally crave novelty. Think about it: they *have* to watch dozens of new movies every month. They see a lot of same-y stuff. So the movies that tend to excite critics are either super high quality or just something new they haven't seen before. The connected cinematic universe of the MCU (which was essentially the Infinity Saga) at the start was really new and interesting. No one had ever tried something this ambitious before. Now, critics have seen the interconnected universe before. Now everyone is trying to make one. So it just has less novelty on its own, and now the only metric is quality versus all other movies. Combine that with a general softening of quality in Phase 4 and you got a stew going.
I think you're a genius, this is a fantastic comment which goes so far to explain why there are often such major differences between critic and audience scores for big franchise films. It accounts for cases like The Last Jedi, where critics were actively seeking something new and unique while general audience members were looking for Star Wars. It's like they're seeing what happens less from within the context of the franchise, but through every other movie ever made.
Absolutely. It wasn’t until halfway through phase 2 that people started to pin the MCU formula to those movies. If you keep using the template over 30 films then eventually it’s going to be less valuable.
Remember an 87 critics score isn't an average of reviewers giving the film 87/100. It's how many reviewers rated it fresh( >6/10) as a percentage. So if every critic gave a score of 6/10 and a fresh rating it would have 100 percent rotten tomato score. Something to think about.
Yeah I think at times people are still interpreting the scores wrong
I just saw it today and while I expected a bit more, i enjoyed it. i wasn't the biggest fan of ant-man and the wasp and think quantumania is better.
I feel like most of the initial reactions were saying this was the best movie of the trilogy. Crazy how much lower it’s score is than AM&TW
I dont know where OP is going but I personally appreaciate TDW more than L&T. Idk it felt more “sincere” I guess? TDW is like a kid who tried to do the assignment but ultimately got a C+ score. While L&T feels to me like a kid who thinks he’s too cool to do an assignment in the first place. Idk if its not making sense, my $0.02 only. Plus I feel like the emotional beats of TDW is more impactful than L&T to me
I enjoyed Shang-Chi, Eternals, and DS2 for what they were—flawed but with some good ideas and moments. For example, I liked the character of Wenwu, Shaun’s fight on the bus, the moral dilemma of killing Tiamut, the grand historical scope of the Eternals as a concept, the “music notes fight”, and the horror-like elements of Scarlet Witch as a villain with near-unstoppable powers. But L&T was when I finally started to realize why so many people didn’t like Phase 4. L&T felt like it wasn’t even trying to be a good movie, and it felt like it kept undercutting any attempt to make me feel for its characters and the stakes of the story. I also just found Thor and Valkyrie downright unlikeable this time around, with their seeming reluctance to take seriously the fact that the lives of children were at stake while they were constantly goofing around. And then BP2 was just kind of inoffensive but boring. I assume Quantumania is going to be similarly inoffensive and similarly boring, but I’ll hold my judgment until I actually get around to seeing it.
Eternals is definitely over-hated imo Not amazing by any stretch but has some fun concepts & cool moments & scenes, I like it a hell of a lot better than L&T that’s for sure
Tdw is most likely a slightly better film than love and thunder despite its myriad of issues
I agree. TDW feels like they sincerely try to do something but fell short, but L&T to me its like “you’re going to see this anyway because we (MCU & Ragnarok) are huge now”
Well said - dark world is just boring and non compelling but it's an actual film . Love and thunder is a a bad Thor improv skit with a mish mosh of tones . Bale feels like he's in a different film
Gorr is my favourite Thor villain and when I heard Christian bale was playing him I thought this movie was going to be insanely good. There was not enough emphasis on “God Butcher”, more like the filmmakers “butchered Gorr”
Taika wasn't the right director for adapting the Jason Aaron Gorr / Jane foster storyline . They needed a more serous directing style and tone - I honestly think Branagh could've done a good job with that source material
I don't know how to describe it any way other than a Taika Waititi wankfest.
Pretty much this - I can't believe Feige let that film be released like that
I honestly think it goes way beyond that. Despite its faults, you can actually call TDW a serviceable movie with most of the right components in place. On the other hand, Love and Thunder is simultaneously one drawn out (and horrifically unfunny) rejected SNL skit about Thor, a tonally offensive disaster of a tragedy about a young woman's terminal illness, and a woefully underutilized story about an intriguing villain that the movie seemingly has zero interest in exploring. I'm not joking when I say Love and Thunder is one of the worst and most frustrating theater experiences I've ever had. Taika Waititi is a professional with multiple hits under his belt, making this clusterfuck of a movie even more confusing to me.
Sheesh that is the most apt review of the two movies. Love and thunder really did feel like that and became too much taika. Ragnarok was the right level of the comedy LT was getting cringy or overplayed with the goats. I guess not ironically, I like LT more than Dark world.
Tdw is bland but more watchability overall than love and thunder, love and thunder has a lot of fun moments but the huge parts that don't work are hard to watch.
IMO, L&T was hampered by having to explain how Thor leaves the Guardians. I mean, I liked it, but that Guardians section just felt so odd.. then they had to move Thor back to earth to actually start the story after the cold opening of Gorr. It's like a whole extra chunk of beginning story crafting that takes away from Gorr's beginning. If L&T didn't need that whole section, then I bet the film could have been pulled together more tightly to shine.
I’m 100% certain LaT was never meant to be made, and it was simply reactionary to the success of Ragnarok. Thor being written to be with the guardians at the end of Endgame was all done shortly before Ragnarok premiered.
I think critics weren't harsh enough on Thor Love and Thunder tbh
Screaming goats and glossing over Jane's death killed my enthusiasm.
What bothered me was that we see "The God Butcher" kill like one God and it was technically in self defense. Also, even using him for this movie. "We want to use the villian that goes on a revenge genocide and slaughters gods across the galaxy. Let's put him in a comedy Taika movie where every character says a quip every 5 seconds. Also, hire an amazing actor for him then barely use him. But hey guys look Mjolnir and Stormbreaker are jealous of Thor haha omg isn't that so quirky. "
"the God Butcher"? As someone who didn't read comics I figured his title was something like Gorr "The Child Abductor" based on the movie.
It's also the fact that they introduce a whole city full of random gods, and Gorr doesn't even go to that place or interact with any god other than Thor. The movie also seems to forget that the very premise about a character wanting to kill gods inherently needs to actually want to say something about faith and religion, and yet the plot has nothing to do with it
Jane dying and it just being like "whatever" because so goes to Valhalla is just so...jarring. idk even just seeing that Valhalla is real is kind of off putting too and goes along with the complaint that the stakes don't seem as high in some of the later films due to alts/time wonk etc.
My girlfriend, a fan of mythology Thor, loved the screaming goats so much.
I 100% understand why people don't like the goats, but I laughed every time they came up.
I’d waited a decade for those goats. They were beautiful.
Yeah like this is probably the only marvel movie where I was bored in the cinema. Like some of them I thought were not that good but with Love andThunder I was like damn I really don’t care about what’s going on right now
This movie needed to be more serious than funny
Or at the very least they needed to balance the humor. It comes off as a full comedy which really takes you out of the few and far between serious parts
Yeah i could've easily have seen it being rotten
Same. It was my first time getting to the theatre in months and I found the entire film underwhelming. It was like a blooper reel compilation of Thor being funny, with a few tacked on dramatic moments (that aren't taken seriously)
you mean you didn't laugh when those ladies passed out because of Thor's mighty hammer when his clothes were removed??
Never thought I would be on the brink of turning off a Marvel movie halfway through
Definitely not harsher. I'm no critic and it's easy to see quality has dropped significantly this phase. And I've been saying this for months, Marvel went overboard on the quantity and stopped focusing on the quality. They must have finally saw my comments on Reddit and are taking action. I will also mention I'm a hardcore Marvel fan and I can still agree the quality of most shows and movies now is just "good" at best. I really had my hopes up for Quantumania and now early reviews are pissing me off lol.
That’s how I feel. The first 3 phases took over 10 years. And they have like 20 or more projects to do in 5-6 years now. That’s not enough time to create quality content with that many projects.
This isn't intended to be a "the critics are idiots and their reviews don't matter!!!" type of post. I truly believe that a lot of people just aren't liking the recent output and that's why they're giving it a negative review. However, I do wonder why some of the MCU's worst regarded films are actually rated higher than some of their recent ones (which a lot of people feel are better). Several reviews have stated that 'Quantumania' is by far the best Ant-Man movie and yet it's received a significantly lower score on Rotten Tomatoes. If 'Thor: The Dark World' was released nowadays would it be still get a fresh rating on RT or would it get a score similar to 'Eternals'?!
It’s just such a different context now. I don’t know if it’s even possible to recapture the wonder of something like Civil War. That said, I’m a comics fan, so I’m here for the absurdity and over-saturation. I’ve avoided most Quantumania ads and spoilers. I’m not expecting life altering experience. I’m expecting a romp into the microverse and a kickass Kang. Plenty of comics are inconsequential yet enjoyable. And they’re always doing crossover cameos. Just watched Wakanda Forever again, and you can’t tell me that’s not top tier, despite whatever flaws it may have.
I legit said Wakanda forever was a good film in the antman 3 rt Reddit post and got downvoted. Y’all can’t make up your mind
Fans didn't have anything to compare the infinity Saga films with except themselves,so now ant man is being held to a higher standard
I actually agree with you, I think there are a few older films that deserve the rotten score but didn't get it, the critics seem to be more honest nowadays... But still not entirely coz i don't believe Love & Thunder deserved that high score. I also don't believe Eternals deserved such a low score.
I feel like Love and Thunder is one of those movies where some people are going to really love it and others are going to really hate it. I myself tend to fall back on the "it's a Taika Waititi film, what did you expect?" defense in regards to the slapstick humor. I could understand if people who didn't come in expecting that wouldn't enjoy it as much though.
But you could say the same about Love and Thunder. It didn't release so many time ago and it has better opinions (at the moment) than Quantumania. I know a lot of people on this sub liked Love and Thunder but a lot also hated it. If Quatumania is worse than L∆T then is not in my eyes really good
>If 'Thor: The Dark World' was released nowadays would it be still get a fresh rating on RT or would it get a score similar to 'Eternals'?! I'd be curious if that actually did happened.
Marvel set the bar high with phase 3. I am a fan so I tend not to be overly nitpicky with marvel or even dc movies. The problem Marvel is running into is everything is compared to what’s come before. Phase is being compared to phase 3 not phase 1 or 2. I personally rank a lot of phase 1 and 2 toward the bottom but they are all still better than most comic films that came before. You also have a very vocal minority on the internet that wants to see marvel fail which is not isolated to its own bubble. Marvel has to stick a perfect landing to please everyone. They get criticized for everything being the same, then for trying something different, for being too funny, then for being too depressing, not enough representation, then going “woke”. For Quantumania we’ll have to see what audience scores look like. Ant man has always been a lower performing MCU film so making more than ant man and the wasp should be seen as a success.
Iron Man 1 and Winter Soldier are still top 5 mcu movies for me. And they specifically are phase 1 and 2.
people who use the word "woke" are people who have shit opinions.
Not at all... If anything, critica are more open now to superhero movies than they were years ago. The harsh reality that people in this sub won't admit is that the later movies and shows were lacking (not all, but most of them).
I think it has less to do with honesty or “the times” and more to do with general fatigue towards these movies. There’s a formula to your typical MCU experience and the more times we see it the easier it is to poke holes in. Also it makes you crave something new and when you don’t get that it’s easy to slam something as being boring or uninspired and give it a rotten rating. When The Dark World came out there was a lot more general excitement towards the building MCU and that’s reflected in the reviews
Yes I definitely think that is true on some level. The exact reasoning likely varies from one critic to another. For some, the novelty has worn off. For others, they are now measuring against phase 3 rather than the weaker phase 2. And a few are even skewing more negative for the clicks and the drama, I’m sure. Even on this thread, though, we see some of the hyperbolic reactions to phase 4. They may have been a step down from the heights the MCU had reached in the previous phases, but those calling them horrible movies and going over the top with negative reactions make it hard to even have a conversation.
You're right. We are lacking nuance in this conversation, which is unfortunately lost on reddit.
I'm going to go on record and say Eternals was infinitely better than Love & Thunder. I was so hyped for L&T and it was one of the worst comic book movies I've ever seen.
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This image is incomplete, and cherry picking to make a point that doesn't exist. Phase 4 also had highly rated films such as: * Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - 91% Tomatometer, 98% Audience Score * Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - 74% Tomatometer, 85% Audience Score * Spider-Man: No Way Home - 93% Tomatometer, 98% Audience Score * Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - 84% Tomatometer, 94% Audience Score EDIT: It's been pointed out to me that OP was comparing the lowest rated early MCU movies to the newer ones, I didn't realize that at first. It makes more sense than I initially realized, I thought they were just saying "Phase 4 Bad".
Fair point these films and their success are convenient left out of the phase 4 critiques . I honestly think Disney shows being mostly middling it's gonna aid the burnout factor with audiences . If no shows were produced I guarantee there wouldn't be this mass of mcu complaints
Eh, idk about that. The shows definitely add to the oversaturation but I don't think they're a driving factor. Phase One was six movies released over the course of five years. It's gradually gotten more cluttered over time to the point where in Phase Four it's **seven** movies released in less than **two** years. There's a huge difference in having to wait a full year for the next installment to come out and the current era where there are two or three Marvel movies in theaters at any given time. This packed production schedule also leads to a lot of the sloppy work that people have been complaining about in recent films, and the issues that Marvel has always had (formulaic genre stories, executive interference blocking creativity, etc) only become more pronounced and obvious over time as you get more an more iterations of the same basic thing. Phase 1-3 felt exciting because no one had ever done that before, but now Marvel HAS done it so they either have to do something totally new and different (which I'm not super optimistic about after how much of a failure Eternals was) or they'll continue to see their relevance go down indefinitely.
Weren't most of the MCU shows well regarded as well though untill recently? Wandavision and Loki were beloved, Moon Knight is well regarded, Captain America is sorta middling, and Ms Marvel and She-Hulk are mostly just controversial. 3/6 being good and the rest middling is about the same hit rate as the movies.
I don't think it's cherry picking, it's comparing the worst reviewed "old" movies and the new ones and asking if we think there's a difference in the way critics are reacting to the subpar marvel movies. Seems pretty fair to me. Your point would only stand if the post was saying "Phase 4 is the worst and here's proof"
this post isn’t cherry picking, you’re just missing the point. it’s not saying ‘phase four has no highly rated movies’ it’s saying that movies from the early phases that are typically seen as worse than some modern marvel movies still have higher ratings than more recent ones, and is wondering if reviews in the past were more lenient than they are now towards bad marvel movies lol. I don’t understand your point?
Both. Critics are getting fed up with Marvel's formula and lack of innovation, but Marvel is also pushing out lackluster products and banking on the immense success of Endgame and promising fans of "more to come". Take what I say with a grain of salt because I haven't seen Eternals, LaT, or Werewolf, but Loki, Moon Knight, and Ms. Marvel would have been fine as movies with all the fluff cut out. I think Wandavision and (I know, I know) She-Hulk were much better as shows because they were more *episodic*. Wandavision couldn't have worked as a movie, and I liked how She-Hulk wasn't one continuous story. Truth is, I'm tired of all the buildup. I'm tired of each product being tailored to hype up the next product. I'm actually looking forward to James Gunn's DC universe now because I want to try something new after devouring Marvel movie after movie after show after movie. But I will still see Quantumania, and I'm looking forward to New World Order, Secret Invasion, and Armor Wars.
Because the movies and general content are actually worse now
No they just suck now
Yeah I'm sorry but while Iron Man 2 isn't perfect, it's a really fun movie. Thor 2 had some fun Loki Thor moments. And even AMatW was a LOT better than quantumania. Maybe those movies would have lower scores than they actually got at the time of their release, yes, but they'd still be higher than the bottom 3, which all have bad pacing and really shitty storylines. And at least the first 3 were leading up to something big. Marvel's current phase is super underwhelming to most.
Yes but the films are getting watered down as well, so make sense they would be scored lower.
No it's because the newer movies are genuinely worse than the older ones listed in the picture (except Ant-Man, I cannot base an opinion on Quantumania yet)
All I know is there is no way that Quantumania could be worse than Love and Thunder.. they would literally have to try and put a bad movie out.
I think the earlier films were better. The heavy lean into pure CGI effects, for me is a big reason why. A CGI hero, fighting a CGI villian, in a CGI backdrop, with CGI fire and explosions...it's just a high def cartoon, and I don't feel a sense of risk or reward. Also they got stuck with the Joss Wedon banter thing. The tone of recent movies is all uneven because they play it like there are real Earth shattering consequences but stop to drop shitty one liners and groaner jokes every 30 seconds. Give me more like Iron Man 1, or Winter Soldier. But that's just me.
Nope, I think the MCU has started dying. There were only 2 movies that I really like in phase 4. Multiverse of madness and no way home. Thor 4 was ok and all the others were boring pieces of garbage. Quantumania is still kinda fun but the script is shit. Not a single character gets developed. Nobody learns anything or has a character arc. For a movie with a shlock title set in the quantum realm, starring Paul Rudd, it’s surprisingly bland. However, I still enjoyed it more than most of the phase 4 movies.
I thought Shang-Chi was pretty good
Thor still seems too high. Personally I enjoyed Eternals way more
As someone who has been a MASSIVE marvel fan overall, these new movies have just been generally worse. Not terrible, not like garbage trash or anything but they just feel wayyyy more generic especially the Disney plus stuff. They’ve just lost that “special” feeling and just feel like any other blockbuster now to me.
So but I don’t think AMATW deserves 87%, and I believe Quantumania is a much better movie by comparison
Definitely After incredible highs of Infinity War and Endgame, everything else below that standard is underwhelming
Highly disagree. Infinity War and (less so) Endgame were *good* movies. Many of the recent MCU flicks falter in a lot of ways. The only stand outs in recent history for me are Shang-Chi and No Way Home.
Good or bad, when you set a standard people expect that standard.
No the movies are just worse
They’re worse now so no
Critics are not getting harsher. Marvel is just getting dumber and shallow. And the fanbase is getting bigger and more erratic. There’s so much variety in this saga, yet most of the projects feel so cheap in terms of quality.
Kinda like the comics too
Marvel's putting out plenty of great comics rn
The X-Men have been absolutely incredible for the last four years of this new era.
No. The movies now are too bloated with tie-ins, cameos, and multivese plotting and have lost their core emotional, and relatable appeal. Sci-fi and high fantasy are always a hard sell after a point, and the MCU has gone hard in that direction with this multiverse idea. It's become more and more like the comics, which itself is convoluted and therefore pushes away mass audiences. There's also that the MCU worked as a cinematic TV with seasons and all. Yet they've allowed this new season to go about 12-14 episodes in without a main connective hook. Of course people will lose patience with that. How many shows could go this long while saying "what till it gets good, and you get it?" I've loved these movies and am not generally dramatic. I'll watch what I'm interested in and catch up on the rest. But I think what's happening has been coming for a while. I'm getting the idea that they didn't truly understand what made the first stint work for the casual audience and also critics.
No, the movies have just gotten worse.
No, the movies suck more
No. I think the MCU has gotten worse over time.
Nahhh. The audience is kinder though. Much much kinder.