LogFAQs > #974563084

Over the last little while I got caught up on all the MCU stuff I missed lately, which is everything post Love & Thunder except for Wakanda Forever which I liked a good amount. Heres my thoughts on everything:

She-Hulk: A delightful show, Tatiana Maslany was stellar, loved that it wasnt afraid to be light and silly. The jokes were great, even in the slower episodes 5 and 6 it was getting chuckles out of me. Also along with WandaVision the only show so far to really be taking advantage of the TV format and not just be a film in six parts. Also great use of Daredevil and reminded me why Charlie Cox was so good in that role. This one gets a big thumbs up from me.

Werewolf by Night: A bit slow to start but when it got going this was also really, really good. I really appreciated how much they went with the Universal monster movie vibe (from Disney no less) right down to a dodgy looking Werewolf costume. The action scene with both that guys throat getting cut and the scene with the blood splattering the camera were highlights.

Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special: Its light silly fun, what more can you expect? The really admirable thing about this is the way it gives Mantis some much needed development.

Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania: This has to be the worst MCU film. I would struggle to say its outright bad as most of these films are so focus-tested that is almost impossible but it is highly mediocre and generic. The problem is they took the Ant-Man movies which had been deliberately smaller (pun unintended) more comedic family-friendly affairs and turned them into MCU by numbers. Its not that its vastly different that is the problem, its that they traded in all the fun unique things about Ant-Man for just another MCU film, but one that looks worse. On which point to be honest if the visuals had been good, I would rank this higher - the problem is when you have a film that is so VFX heavy if they dont look good it makes the whole film look fake and bad. They didnt even make the Quantum Realm feel like a tiny world, it just feels like it could be set in space and even the subtitles refer to the creatures as aliens. It just felt like Star Wars that looks worse. Kang was alright but didnt really add anything that wasnt already covered in Loki. In fact it repeats the same beats - one variant holding all the others back.

On the positive side this was great for Janet, who is the actual Wasp of the title. I enjoyed the opening and closing sequences set in the normal sized world which had the dynamism you expect from an Ant-Man movie. When it did try to be funny the humour usually landed (like Scott counting his holes) even though there was a surprising lack of it. The script was better than Multiverse of Madnesss at least. I just think the effects werent there and the whole concept didnt work for an Ant-Man movie.

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3: This was a lot more like it. I loved it, a lot better than Volume 2 and my second favourite post-phase 3 movie. The darkness worked surprisingly well. Chukwudi Iwujis performance as the High Evolutionary makes a villain that may be boring on the page one of the MCUs best. I have a hard time thinking of a better ending for these characters. Also the Adam Warlock scenes were clearly Gunn practicing for Superman haha.

Secret Invasion: The first episode I wasnt sure about, I loved the tone but it felt really choppy and slapped together with an awkward fridging at the end. The second episode was much better, I really enjoyed it. That is the kind of more serious thing I feel has been missing from the MCU of late. Hopefully the rest of the series will be like the second episode rather than the first one.

Overall watching a bunch in quick succession drove home what I had already been feeling. The problem isnt the quality of the output necessarily (other than Quantumania) it is the volume of the output. I have liked nearly all of it but its too much to keep up with and it lessens the drive to watch. So its a good thing they decided to slow down.