Board 8 > MCU General 19: Could the MCU be Born Again?

(+) Yeah! (+)

LightningStrikes posted...

I mean it has what, a 65 on Metacritic? Thats good (film scales are not game scales) but it basically means its been getting mostly 3/5s with some 4/5s. Normal MCU scores. I have seen very few people dislike it but not exactly raves.

I guess I was basing the raves expectation on how you said that the reviews were "very positive" in post #265. A 65 on Metacritic is fine but I wouldn't describe that as a super positive reception.

I dont know, I was borderline on the very. It depends on how you interpret it, the scores themselves arent incredibly high but it had a wide degree of approval, 87% positive. So it can be considered very in that nearly everybody is positive on it, though not necessarily raves. If the language was too imprecise then I apologise.

Also we are grading on a curve a bit, it is still very good for a recent MCU film. That is what, third highest since No Way Home? It is better than what GotG3 got even.

LightningStrikes posted...

I dont know, I was borderline on the very. It depends on how you interpret it, the scores themselves arent incredibly high but it had a wide degree of approval, 87% positive. So it can be considered very in that nearly everybody is positive on it, though not necessarily raves. If the language was too imprecise then I apologise.

No need to apologise. It is a matter of interpretation, and yours is certainly a valid one. I personally prefer IMDb to RT for gauging the quality of a movie (though I'm aware that IMDb has its own problems). For the record, the movie currently has a 7.5 on IMDb, which is a really good score (though I expect it to go down in the coming weeks).

UltimaterializerX posted...

The Critical Drinker liked it and he hates everything.

Yeah, all the YouTube critics LMS watches (i.e. the anti-woke ones) like the Critical Drinker seem to really like this movie.

I haven't watched it yet, but I'm sure I'll like it but not love it. It frankly feels like really low praise for Marvel movies nowadays. Thunderbolts, for instance, has a ton of problems and was good, but not great. I feel like people have really overrated it because the MCU quality has been so bad lately. The script was obviously torn apart and hodge podged and hamstrung by people making decisions that shouldn't be. And from what it sounds like, they ripped a ton out of Fantastic Four that would have made the movie better.

Why do that? Why sabotage the quality of your movie to get a few more showings in at the theater? Especially since MCU movies aren't really must see immediately that weekend films anymore.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Speaking only for myself, I started following Drinker with the Game of Thrones stuff and hardly believe in the anti-woke garbage.

I don't watch him because I can't stand that stupid voice he's doing in his videos. In my mind, I always lumped him in with the anti-woke crowd on YouTube but perhaps that's unfair. The fact that he uses terms like "M-She-U" isn't a good sign, though.

Drinker is absolutely an anti-woke grifter and it's obvious in virtually every video he does.

For the record, my original post was literally just talking about Board 8. I rarely read movie reviews and definitely not for cape flicks. I definitely do not care at all about Youtube critics.

Haven't watched Ironheart or Fantastic Four yet so I've been avoiding this topic for a bit. But, I did finish watching the first season of The Punisher.

I actually liked this a lot. I think the Netflix series are the strongest when they're just dealing with street-level things without any mysticism, which The Punisher was all about. The Punisher himself is great, he's a man on a mission and I think that Jon Bernthal really did a good job of portraying that. The character dynamics with everyone else in the series was good too and I also liked how they didn't shy away from the violence.

It would've been cool if the Punisher was in The Defenders. I wonder why they didn't include him. Speaking of which, next up is Jessica Jones season 2.

DD1 > TP1 > DD2 > TD > JJ1 > IF1 > LC1

Uh apparently Eyes of Wakanda just dropped all of its episodes.

They're really just dropping the rest of these shows and barely advertising them. Lol

Seems like their mentality now is "those who really want this stuff are looking for it and will know where to find it"

Those seven people will be stoked I'm sure

Well, I almost think the idea is not to advertise it to the general public because they've gotten so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff they think they have to keep up with that they just give up and drop out

So what is this show about?

Maniac64 posted...

So what is this show about?

Animated anthology about Wakandan War Dogs, who are trying to bring artifacts of Wakandan technology back home.

It was fine overall. Reminded me of a Wakandan focused What If...

80% drop for Fantastic Four.

They busted this franchise by having no quality control and releasing stinkers at the box office like Quantumania and Love & Thunder that even their good movies don't have legs.

also this wasn't a good movie

To clarify, an 80% drop from the first Friday including Thursday previews. An 80% drop for the weekend would be historically bad, it will probably be about 65% which is simply bad. Also Love & Thunder did really well at the box office, it beat Ragnarok outside of China. It really was from Quantumania where it started to fall apart.

With Fantastic Four domestically I think a lot of it is fans rushing to see it opening day and then not doing repeat viewings with the casual audience not showing up. You can contrast it with Thunderbolts*, a film thats easy to recommend to anyone, which had a much better hold with virtually identical audience scores. This is also what happened to Civil War, dropped like a rock despite great critic and audience scores. I mean Fantastic Four was what, the second best opening for a characters debut movie in the entire MCU? It got an outsized rush of fans going to see it straight away that did not translate to broader audience interest.

This is the only explanation that makes sense to me. Its not a whole MCU thing because we just saw an MCU film have a much better drop. Its not about the perceived quality of the film, because the critic and audience scores are good. I think the domestic market for F4 just isnt as big as the opening weekend made it seem.

Of course the bigger issue this film will face commercially is the collapse of superhero movies in Asia. That is the actual biggest contributor to MCU films recent woes.

Dakota Johnson was rumored to be on set for Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Madame Webb crossover?!

Hulk and Scorpion are also confirmed to be in it, Mister Negative is possibly in it too

Just give me more Spider-Man please

I'd guess that's part of why Brand New Day is just a street level Spider-Man story with no multiverse or grand scale stuff to it.

I just saw Fantastic Four and I thought it was great. Definitely the best MCU movie in a while. They really made the characters pop in this and their dynamic is great.

However, I agree with the complaints that it felt like there was too much cut from this movie. This needed another 15 minutes or more to cook. Give us more of the Fantastic Four doing awesome stuff and building up their relationships more. A little more character development. Silver Surfer probably could've used a little more time to cook too. It's clear they ripped a ton from the start of this movie, and they just rocket us all the way into the plot way too quick after the montage.

It's a movie I greatly enjoyed but I really just felt like it was held back and needed more. I was left wanting more from it, and that makes me sad since I really wanted this movie to be outstanding, but it never got there, and it feels entirely studio inflicted.

I know I sound more down on it, but I just want to be able to say with my full chest they gave us the best thing they could. Even with movies in the early MCU like, say, Thor 2 or Iron Man 2, I felt like they tried to give us the best thing they could. It had issues, and it wasn't the best, but when I watched them I felt like they presented us the best, most full movie they could to satisfy fans. I didn't get that with this movie or something like Thunderbolts. It felt like they gave us the best movie to satisfy the studio. And that kind of sucks.

That said, it doesn't make me any more excited for the MCU because who can trust them still? But I'll at least be mostly satisfied if they keep giving us quality like this again.

It's honestly not as bad as people say. It's better than The Marvels and Quantummania at least. Also better than Shang-Chi but I'm the only one in the world who thinks that's the worst one.

If you go into Cap 4 knowing it's actually Hulk 2 it's a much better experience.

colliding posted...

It's honestly not as bad as people say. It's better than The Marvels and Quantummania at least. Also better than Shang-Chi but I'm the only one in the world who thinks that's the worst one.

I thought it was pretty solid tbh. Definitely better than those two (Marvels probably underrated but not great). Sort of mid-low MCU, more on the low side? But I think there's probably only 3 I don't like.

colliding posted...

It's honestly not as bad as people say. It's better than The Marvels and Quantummania at least. Also better than Shang-Chi but I'm the only one in the world who thinks that's the worst one.

Shang Chi is my least favorite MCU movie and I've seen all of them!

Shang-Chi's got incredibly clear positives and incredibly clear negatives to me. Hated Ben Kingsley's character sadly. Awkwafina's wasn't great either. Loved the action, loved the villain, but I cannot fucking TELL YOU how much I hated that dragon. Like you just completely undercut the entire emotional core - Shang-Chi vs. his dad - all so you could have a stupid CGI fuckfest that meant nothing and looked awful. SO STUPID

Shang-Chi had like one good fight on a bus and I hated the entire rest of it. Didn't connect with any of the characters, the plot was a fucking mess, the climax is just awful. I do not see what people see in it AT ALL.

Exactly. It's still the worst in spite of the fact that it has the bus fight. Normally, I'd say something like "at least it has the bus fight, it can't be the worst." But no, it ends up still being the worst because everything after it is a disaster.

I liked Shang-Chi

I thought Shang-Chi was fine. Nothing special but serviceable. The final battle sequence was definitely unnecessary though.

I thought I was the only one who didn't like Shang-Chi! I remember seeing unanimous praise for it in this topic when it came out and thinking "uh OK guess I'm missing something."

Shang-Chi has more going for it than the bus scene!

...there was the scene where they fight on the scaffolding on the side of the building. That's it though. The entire thing falls apart once they go to the hidden village.

Hey Shang-Chi is very good until the last 20 minutes. Of course its no Eternals, but few MCU movies are!

Shang Chi was one of the first MCU movies I felt was way too long, and is probably the reason they keep gutting the run time of these other MCU movies now.

I feel like Eternals is the one you can "thank" for reducing runtimes because that movie had no business being nearly 3 hours long

Leonhart4 posted...

I feel like Eternals is the one you can "thank" for reducing runtimes because that movie had no business being nearly 3 hours long

It should have been a series, not a movie.

I've had the exact same thought about Eternals many times. It actually feels like a prestige TV show, and nearly every one of the plot beats and characters would be improved if they were given like... eight hours to develop instead of two and a half.

Eternals had the best live action portrayal of super speed ever done. That alone was enough for me to like the movie, even if I can barely remember any of the character names.

But yeah it would have been better as a show overall, I don't think anyone would argue against that.

I would have said Eternals was the reason they refuse to let a movie go over two hours now, but I thought it was obvious they considered it more high art than cape slop they've shoveled out lately, and thought it was worthy of that run time.

But yes, it should've been a TV series or something. Or interesting.

eternals zzzzzz

just bring back Kingo and jettison the rest

I'll allow Makkari cameos if there's an uproar

I liked Eternals more than most but "amazing" is a stretch