Now that MoM is getting closer to home release, I want to do a brain dump of my thoughts on phase 4 as a whole. I don't really follow a whole lot of the Discourse on marvel stuff (outside this topic, on and off) so these might be mildly hot takes but they've been smoldering inside me for a while and I'd like to get them out of my head.
Non-specific spoilers for all of phase 4, including Multiverse of Madness, ahead.
Movies: So so far in phase 4 we've had 5 movies (Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Eternals, Spider Man 3, and Dr Strange 2). Of those, I kind of think that there has been about 4 halves of a good movie, with Spider Man being the closest to complete and Eternals missing the mark. I don't know if the movies are just Not For Me, or if the Covid wait messed with the edits, or if the schedule changes just messed everything up, but I don't think any of the phase 4 movies have fully landed for me the way the infinity saga movies did. I'm not saying they're Fantastic Four (2015) bad but just average, which is a cut below my expectations. I think part of this is that the (cinematic) component parts of phase 4 have been mostly unconnected from one another - there have been rumblings of things for the future but you don't have anything like the stones as obvious plot devices. The Multiverse also doesn't really do much for me from what I've seen of it. There also is no big team-up coming, which I kind of think is the whole *point* of having everything connected.
Disney+: Phase 4 has had 6 TV shows, plus one airing (WandaVision, Falcon/Winter Soldier, Loki, What If?, Hawkeye and Moon Knight, plus Ms. Marvel). IMO there are about 3.5 good shows, with Loki and Hawkeye clicking with me, and WandaVision and Moon Knight almost clicking (WV I'm just not at all interested in the TV show part, MK just has bad vibes by design). I think the miniseries format just doesn't do them any favors since you need to make a good impression fast and maintain it, and I don't think the showrunners are consistently good at that. I don't think this is necessarily a trait of marvel TV stuff since I liked Agents of SHIELD and the Netflix series (even Iron Fist was fine!) but I guess it might be a format that's Not For Me?
Commonalities: This might just be an issue of contracts expiring but the other thing that bugs me is that we've basically gone back to origin stories again, except instead of for the title characters, they are for future content - all of the Disney+ stuff has introduced people that are going to Show Up in the future, but aside from WandaVision, they haven't really changed the status quo much. I do wonder if the changes in release dates have messed with plots and screwed things up, but if that's the case maybe Disney just needs to change strategies if they're being too ambitious with schedules.
Caveats: Between the Delta and Omicron (and whatever we're on now) waves of Covid, and overall dissatisfaction with my job, my opinions might be biased by being on edge and just not in a great mood, both being in a public theater, and in general. That's kind of why I want to post this just as a (partly literal) sanity check - if other people have similar opinions, or if I just need to take a break from watching Marvel shows/movies if they just aren't going to land for me any more.