I haven't been reviewing anything Marvel related lately. I skipped out on Moon Knight and Mrs Marvel, and while I did watch (and enjoy) Multiverse Of Madness, I didn't have the energy to actually add it to the combined Phase 4 review. This was a long time coming, and if you read all of my MCU TV show reviews back-to-back, you can probably notice a slow decline in enthusiasm for the franchise. Phase 4 of the MCU has a lot of issues right now, and while I used to be eager to follow every movie they've made, I just can't bring myself to care anymore. I wanted to talk about the reasons why:
Oversaturation: This is probably the most common complaint about the MCU, the infamous "superhero fatigue". Frankly, I wouldn't say I have superhero fatigue, per se. I saw the recent Batman movie and loved it, I loved Peacemaker, I watched the Hellboy movies recently and the second one shot up to my all-time favorites, I'm not tired of superhero movies. I am, however, tired of MCU films, because there has been a lot coming out lately. Prior to the pandemic, we got around 2-3 MCU movies a year and nothing more. In 2021 alone, we got four movies and five TV shows, adding up to a whopping nine pieces of MCU media. And it's not like I could skip any of them, they were all important to the overarching MCU story, and it left me absolutely exhausted by the end of that year. Every time I finished an MCU show, another one would start up. Every time I'd think I was safe, a movie would come out that I had to go out of my way to watch. It was too much for me, and following the MCU as closely as I used to felt more and more like a burden.
It also seems to have a pretty noticeable impact on Marvel Studios as well. Disney has all the money in the world that they can use for these movies but when they're churning out so much content, even they're going to start to suffer from some production issues. WandaVision got a rushed ending, Falcon And The Winter Soldier had rewrites because an entire plotline was removed, Black Widow and Thor Love And Thunder had noticeably bad CGI at points, the list goes on. I don't want to point fingers at the crew who's working on these movies and shows, of course, it's not their fault that the MCU has to have this much material made in such a short time, it's not their fault Disney can't delay their movies (outside of COVID circumstances as course) to maintain the MCU's tight continuity, and it's not their fault that almost everything they work on is filled to the brim with special effects due to the higher-ups' seeming refusal to do anything practical. At this point, it feels like the MCU is the movie version of fast food, a constant stream of content produced quickly and cheaply, putting quantity over quality. I wouldn't be surprised if one day we hear complaints from screenwriters and VFX artists about being overworked, this way of making movies can not be sustainable.
Edit: So... umm... literally the day after I wrote this, a whole bunch of the MCU's VFX artists started to speak out about being overworked and underpaid. I hate that this felt inevitable, that you could tell from the movies themselves that the VFX artists were being overworked, but I hope that this increased outspokenness about the matter can lead to some sort of change.
Lack Of Direction: In its first three phases, the MCU felt like it had a sense of direction. In Iron Man, the first movie of the MCU, Nick Fury shows up and announces the Avengers Initiative, and thus all of the following films in that phase slowly build up to The Avengers, bringing that subplot more and more into the forefront with each successive film. Once we get to The Avengers, Thanos shows up, and now we have that threat to deal with up until the end of Phase 3. There's always a single focus that the MCU is building towards, but it also made sure that almost all of its movies are enjoyable on their own, with Civil War and the last two Avengers films being the only ones that you'd really need context for.
In Phase 4, on the other hand, there isn't this kind of focus or direction. We don't have an overarching villain like Thanos or a goal like assembling the Avengers. There is a running theme about the multiverse but we have no idea what the appearance of the multiverse would even be building towards. And not to mention the vast web of other subplots and storylines that movies are also setting up, like Valentina, the new Avengers, Kang, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, should I go on? The MCU feels aimless right now because it doesn't feel like I'm going anywhere with any of its movies, all of the post-credits scenes used to feel like exciting hooks for the sequel and major plot bombs, but nowadays, they feel more like a vague advertisement for some random MCU film coming out in an indeterminate number of years (or days at this rate).
Safeness: But for me, my biggest issue with the MCU is just how frustratingly safe it has been. Feige, the movie's directors, and the fans tend to claim that every MCU movie is different and toys around in a new genre or with a new tone, but that's not the case at all. There are plenty of MCU movies that flirt with a tone or genre, WandaVision and Multiverse Of Madness flirt with horror, Eternals flirt with character-driven drama, Shang Chi flirts with wuxia, and most painfully Black Widow flirts with an incredibly dark Bourne-esque tone, but these movies never end up committing to it. They all end up reverting back to the homogenized "MCU action film" by the final act, with even Shang Chi ending on a mindless CGI dragon fight. This is the worst when it comes to the season finales of the Disney+ shows, because they should be the culmination of everything the show has led up to, but more often than not, feel like the most generic, safe, and least interesting parts of their respective shows. While WandaVision burned me the most, none of the MCU's finales really blew me away, and seeing the reviews of Moon Knight's finale, I fear that's not going to change any time soon.
I also wanted to bring up how safe the production of these films has felt as well, which somewhat links with my first point about Marvel rushing out movies. I brought up how every third act feels the same, but there's also the fact that (outside of Shang Chi) most of the action in the MCU is done by a second-unit team which makes them all feel similar, or the fact that these movies are almost entirely lacking in color or diverse camerawork (outside of Multiverse Of Madness), or the fact that the abundance of self-aware humor has completely eliminated the sincerity you need to make a superhero movie work. And the frustrating thing is that Marvel Studios tries to act like it has all of these things! Sam Raimi is brought in for one film to give it some visual flair, but Thor Love And Thunder is back to the usual MCU dullness. William Pope came in to bolster the action in Shang Chi, but that extra flair never ended up sticking. Even Eternals goes for a grand, visceral, almost DCEU-esque sense of scale that the other movies would never take cues from. The MCU never commits. It tricks you into thinking it's changed and that it's trying something new, but it never happens. This is what's frustrated me the most. Every time I watched a Disney+ show, I held onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, they'd be able to stick the landing and create something better than "just good", but they never do it.
The final straw for me was when I watched Top Gun Maverick in an IMAX theater, and I forgot that watching a movie could be this exciting. I forgot that the action could genuinely thrill me and have me on the edge of my seat, I forgot that the visuals could wow me through sheer movie magic, and I forgot that I could cheer not because of cameos or nostalgia, but because I care about the characters. I wasn't just casually enjoying myself like I would with an average MCU movie, I was fully engrossed and engaged. Top Gun Maverick is a simple blockbuster action film, not unlike any other MCU movie, but the passion and craft that went into it was so great that I feel it completely ruined the MCU for me. I'm still probably going to watch the next Spider Man and Guardians films because I like Spider Man and I like James Gunn, but otherwise, I've decided that I'm going to stop committing to watching and reviewing MCU media anymore. I've lost my love for the franchise, and I feel I have much better movies and shows that I would like to devote my time to instead.
The MCU was my childhood, The Avengers was my Star Wars, but now, I think it's time I let it go.
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