The Marvels , you know that new superhero movie

[Psyren]

This was supposed to be positive.

It is though? "Positive" doesn't mean "without flaw."

[Trafalgar]

It is though? "Positive" doesn't mean "without flaw."

This "positive" review lists as many flaws as strengths.

[Psyren]

This "positive" review lists as many flaws as strengths.

I saw 4 positives and 2 flaws, but even if you had been right from a quantity perspective, that doesn't mean they all had the same weight either.

(I assume you're counting "refreshingly brief" as a negative, but the context of that is The Marvels clocked in at 1:45, which makes it the shortest MCU title... ever. It's also shorter than every DCEU movie. So it's refreshing in the context of other superhero movies, which before now have come in at 2 hours or more.)

[Trafalgar]

I saw 4 positives and 2 flaws, but even if you had been right from a quantity perspective, that doesn't mean they all had the same weight either.

(I assume you're counting "refreshingly brief" as a negative, but the context of that is The Marvels clocked in at 1:45, which makes it the shortest MCU title... ever. It's also shorter than every DCEU movie. So it's refreshing in the context of other superhero movies, which before now have come in at 2 hours or more.)

"Refreshingly brief" means "I am glad it wasn't longer". At 62%, it's worse than "The Incredible Hulk". Its a badly reviewed movie that did poorly at the box office. I normally don't put too much stock in review aggregator sites but when the positive reviews say things like "not the worst MCU movie ever" or "it's not a disaster" or it's "so reliant on its audience having seen multiple streaming serials that it’s honestly like a popcorn flick assigned its audience homework", I tend to not want to spend my money.

[Zevox]

"Refreshingly brief" means "I am glad it wasn't longer".

Uh, no it doesn't. Sounds more like it implies being discontent with other films commonly being longer than this.

"so reliant on its audience having seen multiple streaming serials that it’s honestly like a popcorn flick assigned its audience homework"

Speaking as someone who has seen precisely 0 Marvel streaming shows, whoever said that doesn't know what they're talking about. The movie explains itself just fine, not seeing the streaming shows that Kamala and Monica were in is no impediment to watching and enjoying it whatsoever.

[Delicious Taffy]

Why are people not going to see The Marvels? This is from the critics consensus on Rotten Tomatoes:

This was supposed to be positive.

Look, this thread is for negativity and financial doomerism only.

[Psyren]

Uh, no it doesn't. Sounds more like it implies being discontent with other films commonly being longer than this.

Exactly right.

And again, even Trafalgar had been correct at 3-3, he hasn't responded to the weighting rebuttal.

[Dragonus45]

This "positive" review lists as many flaws as strengths.

It's not the kind of thing where x strengths Vs y positives is just straightforward math. You can have something like good cast chemistry overcome a lot of flaws on it's own the same way that you can often get away with a weaker middle of a story but a bad ending can overwhelm even the best experience up till that point.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Why are people not going to see The Marvels? This is from the critics consensus on Rotten Tomatoes:

Funny, refreshingly brief, and elevated by the chemistry of its three leads, The Marvels is easy to enjoy in the moment despite its cluttered story and jumbled tonal shifts.

This was supposed to be positive.

Breaking down for my own point of view:

• Funny: Positive - I want to watch something entertaining, not an entire film of grim and gritty.
• refreshingly brief: Positive - I don't have a lot of time to spare, and going to a cinema is already a huge investment in time and money (travel there and back, time and cost of film, time and cost of meal as we will probably be eating out as well...). I'm really fed up of loooong movies that should be shorter. Length does not equate to quality, and too many movies would be improved by removing a lot of the fluff. This isn't just a MCU problem either.
• elevated by the chemistry of its three leads: Positive - the three actors concerned put enough effort in to make the film worth watching despite its flaws.
• easy to enjoy in the moment: Mostly positive - I like my films to be able to take introspection, but for a one-off piece of escapisim that's fine.
• cluttered story: Negative - they have too much going on in the film. If they want a shorter film they need to take out everithing that they don't have runtime for. If they really can't they need to go for a longer film.
• jumbled tonal shifts: Negative - they need to be internally consistent (at least mostly - some tonal shifts are necessary for the story, too many just make a mess)

Note that "refreshingly brief" and "cluttered story" are not contradictory. If the content is necessary the increased length of the film can be justified; if the content is unnecessary the increased length of the film is not justified.

That's three positives, one mostly positive and two negatives. Still comes out as a positive to me. Not that I'm going to see the film, mind you, but it does put it on the "Get on DVD" list when it gets that far, which is more than the Captian Marvel film managed.

[Tyndmyr]

Celestials being the coolest part of Eternals is an admissoin that every other part of Eternals was rubbish.

Oh, I quite agree. The Celestial at least had an interesting motivation, though. A character that actually has a motive, is interesting, and is doing something relevant on the screen? That's more than what one can say about the rest.

It was two and a half hours!

The problem wasn't that it had no time, the problem was that it had no idea what to do with all the time it had. It did establish who its characters were and why they were acting the way they did, what it didn't do was make any of them compelling to spend time watching do any of that except the one that literally decides he has a better movie to be in 2/3 of the way through.

I think ultimately Chloe Zhao wasn't the right director. Her best output is when she does close observations of a single subject against the backdrop of the empty places of America. A bunch of insufferable pillocks arguing for hours about the Trolley Problem doesn't suit her strengths.

I mean, they introduced, halfway through the movie, a random movie making guy who knew one of the Eternals, and kept him around for a bunch of scenes because, I dunno, reasons I guess? Why? Don't you have a better use for your time than this utterly pointless side character who contributes nothing to the plot?

Of all the films in the MCU, the Eternals is probably the worst. It's...frustrating in so many ways. I agree that it likely would have been even worse with more time. You can't get to an interesting film by just adding more boredom.

The problem with Eternals was that every single member of its dysfunctional family was a bellend. Druig might have caught the **** on release but who else did you really care whether they succeeded at their goals?

You have to have one way in, one character who you actually care about them and what happens to them, and in Eternals the best you get is Kingo and he literally decides he has something better to do partway through and doesn't come back until after the movie is over.

Yeah. I should have followed Kingo's example.

There are a lot of big franchises sputtering in the 'barely profitable' zone since 2020. James Bond, DC, Fast&Furious, Mission Impossible, Transformers, Harry Potter, Monsterverse (Godzilla, Kong, et al), all of these are at best troubled.

Well, they chose to kill off James Bond, so, that's something of a problem for continuity. Not an unsolvable one, but certainly not the kind of thing one does if one wants to continue the franchise in a profitable fashion, generally.

DC's been routinely weird. Batman's been good, but everything else is a crap shoot at best. They never really managed to get consistently good, I think, and can't manage the sort of planning that got us the MCU's Thanos arc. Justice League was an attempt at it, but it didn't quite get there.

It kinda boggles the mind that Fast and Furious is as successful as it is. I don't see any way that 10 could have been successful after looking at it a bit more. The 340 mil budget seemed insane. Only two films in the entire franchise would turn a profit on that kind of budget, both a relatively thin one. It seems as if they hurled money at the production assuming that more success would follow and it...didn't. You probably could keep this running as a decent franchise with a more modest budget, but the way they're going is unreasonable.

MI is another one where...the story is done. Most of the films have been more or less the same, there isn't really much more reason for Ethan Hunt to yet again be betrayed. That and Tom Cruise is getting up there in age.

Transformers, Harry Potter....again we keep running into the problem of the story having been more or less told in competition, yet more and more entries are bolted on. Same as the above, really. Once a franchise runs out of story, the end tends to follow inevitably. Whatever one thinks of the Matrix, there wasn't a critical story need for a fourth one in the way that there's a need for more Game of Thrones books.

It's fine to have a story so big that it doesn't fit into a single film, but beating a single film's worth of story into more and more eventually ends up looking really rough....and it seems as if studios are trying to solve that problem with massive budgets, but that isn't working super well. One wonders at why they don't invest more in the story itself. Writers are comparatively cheap.

[sktarq]

It's fine to have a story so big that it doesn't fit into a single film, but beating a single film's worth of story into more and more eventually ends up looking really rough....and it seems as if studios are trying to solve that problem with massive budgets, but that isn't working super well. One wonders at why they don't invest more in the story itself. Writers are comparatively cheap.

I suspect that people looked at the MCU and thought it was the budgeting, the preset fanbase mobilization, the spectacle/CGI, and good marketing that made the movie and universe so successful and not the story.

And I kinda get that. There are plenty of great movies who have wonderful stories and which make ziltch. Heck one could say that is the point of many "Oscar bait" type movies. And if the MCU type movie was set up as the opposite of that in the minds of the executives I could see how they tossed story even though it really is the heart of any good film.

And as for "new" stories well that is a risk...in the world of $100mm+ bets people want something that seems like the best bet possible and importantly one they can defend to their bosses if it goes rump over teakettle. Problem with that is it can lead to form of checkbox thinking (and not the type harped on in casting) where "good history of popularity in other media" is a more useful trait (which is more objective) than "a good script" (which can be more easily ignored as poor judgment when the job cuts come a-culling)

[VampiricLongbow]

I suspect that people looked at the MCU and thought it was the budgeting, the preset fanbase mobilization, the spectacle/CGI, and good marketing that made the movie and universe so successful and not the story.

And I kinda get that. There are plenty of great movies who have wonderful stories and which make ziltch. Heck one could say that is the point of many "Oscar bait" type movies. And if the MCU type movie was set up as the opposite of that in the minds of the executives I could see how they tossed story even though it really is the heart of any good film.

And as for "new" stories well that is a risk...in the world of $100mm+ bets people want something that seems like the best bet possible and importantly one they can defend to their bosses if it goes rump over teakettle. Problem with that is it can lead to form of checkbox thinking (and not the type harped on in casting) where "good history of popularity in other media" is a more useful trait (which is more objective) than "a good script" (which can be more easily ignored as poor judgment when the job cuts come a-culling)

IMO, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the best Transformers movie in terms of scripting, pacing and a balance between story and fighting but it also made the least amount of money of any live action Transformers movie. So there definitely is something to the idea of a movie being good but audiences not rewarding it for being good.

[Divayth Fyr]

IMO, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the best Transformers movie in terms of scripting, pacing and a balance between story and fighting but it also made the least amount of money of any live action Transformers movie. So there definitely is something to the idea of a movie being good but audiences not rewarding it for being good.

To be fair - like with the MCU - many people are just done with Transformer movies. No matter how good the new one(s) may be.

[Tyndmyr]

To be fair - like with the MCU - many people are just done with Transformer movies. No matter how good the new one(s) may be.

Yeah, that's me. I saw a couple of the early ones because of nostalgia and friends that enjoyed them, and wasn't honestly that enthused. Too much, well...Michael Bay.

They could be awesome now, I have no idea, I haven't been to one in years, and want exactly zero of them.

[Psyren]

Franchise oversaturation is definitely a real thing. It just took the MCU longer than most to get there.

Once audiences feel like "I missed a bunch of these so I won't know what's going on" - whether that's true or not - it's time to take a pause and consider rebooting.

[Errorname]

IMO, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the best Transformers movie in terms of scripting, pacing and a balance between story and fighting but it also made the least amount of money of any live action Transformers movie. So there definitely is something to the idea of a movie being good but audiences not rewarding it for being good.

You could make that argument, but personally Rise of the Beasts just felt like generic franchise-schlock and even if it's technically better executed, the other films are just more interesting. I'd argue that Bumblebee is just flat out a decent movie, and it's a lot better looking and a lot less cluttered, and while I despise the Michael Bay films they're also utterly immense spectacles that shock and appall the senses.

[Morgaln]

Oh, I quite agree. The Celestial at least had an interesting motivation, though. A character that actually has a motive, is interesting, and is doing something relevant on the screen? That's more than what one can say about the rest.



I mean, they introduced, halfway through the movie, a random movie making guy who knew one of the Eternals, and kept him around for a bunch of scenes because, I dunno, reasons I guess? Why? Don't you have a better use for your time than this utterly pointless side character who contributes nothing to the plot?

Of all the films in the MCU, the Eternals is probably the worst. It's...frustrating in so many ways. I agree that it likely would have been even worse with more time. You can't get to an interesting film by just adding more boredom.

I have to disagree with calling Eternals the worst MCU movie, simply because Thor: Love and Thunder was so incredibly bad. But I agree that Eternals is incredibly frustrating. There was so much potential there and all of it was wasted because they didn't dare to do something new. My biggest complaint is that they killed off Kro; they really had the opportunity to create a great antihero there, by having the Eternals and the Deviants come to an understanding and agree that the real enemy for both of them are the Celestials.

Funnily enough I actually agree with Stark. It isn't just about his daughter, after all. He's just a stand-in for everyone that has lived the last five years. Nearly four hundred thousand babies are born on Earth alone every single day and even after Thanos killed half the population of the universe that would still translate to well over three hundred and fifty million people born on Earth during the five years before Endgame. That's more than the entire population of the USA right now, just for a sense of scale.

Thanos killed half the universe to make life more comfortable for the remaining half. How would killing one person for every ten you're bringing back to life be any better?

That's just the human cost, as well, remember. Now do it for the entire universe. Hundreds of millions of lives on every inhabited planet across a functionally infinite universe. When you consider the actual sheer size of the number of lives Thanos took with a snap of his finger, you begin to appreciate just how right Stark was. You can't undo what Thanos did. The scale is too vast, the consequences too severe. All you can do is bring back the people he killed. There is no other alternative. The people that were born in the five years after Thanos snapped his fingers are no less deserving of life than anyone that he killed with that snap.

Yeah it means there will be years, decades, even lifetimes of struggle for civilisations across the entire universe but getting back the people you lost makes it worth it. Stark was right.

I'm not sure it was the right call. Bringing back those billions of people probably lead to death and suffering down the road, as worlds struggled to incorporate this sudden influx of people into the infrastructure again. It's to be expected that many people brought back from the blip probably didn't survive or at least are far worse of now than they were before the blip. But changing the past and preventing the blip from happening in the first place changes the timeline. Sure, people that were born during those five years might not be born in the new time line. But that's because they never existed in that timeline in the first place. No one remembers them, no one misses them, no one suffers because they weren't born. They certainly don't suffer, because they don't exist. I would consider that less problematic, but your mileage may vary. Incidentally, this is pretty much the same kind of trolley problem Eternals tried to set up. It didn't work there, so it's probably better they didn't try that in Endgame as well.

[GloatingSwine]

IMO, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the best Transformers movie in terms of scripting, pacing and a balance between story and fighting but it also made the least amount of money of any live action Transformers movie. So there definitely is something to the idea of a movie being good but audiences not rewarding it for being good.

It wasn't as good as Bumblebee, there's clearly at least 10-20 minutes of it missing where Wheeljack does literally anything except exist, and it has at least one too-many climaxes (Shutting down the portal should have worked first time so that Scourge could see himself fail and that should have been the catalyst for Prime finally being able to overcome him rather than "Prime just decides to try hard for once").

It did fanservice good though. Till all are one!

[VampiricLongbow]

I have to disagree with calling Eternals the worst MCU movie, simply because Thor: Love and Thunder was so incredibly bad. But I agree that Eternals is incredibly frustrating. There was so much potential there and all of it was wasted because they didn't dare to do something new. My biggest complaint is that they killed off Kro; they really had the opportunity to create a great antihero there, by having the Eternals and the Deviants come to an understanding and agree that the real enemy for both of them are the Celestials.

The Eternals is the biggest disappointment, for me, as a movie. The idea was bold, interesting and different. The execution and integration with the wider MCU was lacking, IMO. I fear the same thing will happen when Marvel inevitably gets around to adding Sentry to the MCU.

I really feel like the eternals should have been the vehicle to launch a new era of space-based stories, while Shang-Chi should have been the vehicle to launch a new era of Earth-based stories.

It wasn't as good as Bumblebee, there's clearly at least 10-20 minutes of it missing where Wheeljack does literally anything except exist, and it has at least one too-many climaxes (Shutting down the portal should have worked first time so that Scourge could see himself fail and that should have been the catalyst for Prime finally being able to overcome him rather than "Prime just decides to try hard for once").

It did fanservice good though. Till all are one!

They definitely cut some of the scenes down but I am not sure it massively hurt the overall narrative. Your proposal sounds nice! You should email Hasbro and tell them to reshoot the ending

Bumblebee was also fun and it did not do well at the box office either.

[Psyren]

I have to disagree with calling Eternals the worst MCU movie, simply because Thor: Love and Thunder was so incredibly bad. But I agree that Eternals is incredibly frustrating. There was so much potential there and all of it was wasted because they didn't dare to do something new. My biggest complaint is that they killed off Kro; they really had the opportunity to create a great antihero there, by having the Eternals and the Deviants come to an understanding and agree that the real enemy for both of them are the Celestials.

Yeah, I was hoping the whole "Handsome Good Eternals vs Ugly Evil Deviants" thing would have been more directly subverted, the way that the Handsome Kree vs Ugly Skrulls thing was, except the Eternals and Deviants conflict is miles more interesting.

I'm not sure it was the right call. Bringing back those billions of people probably lead to death and suffering down the road, as worlds struggled to incorporate this sudden influx of people into the infrastructure again. It's to be expected that many people brought back from the blip probably didn't survive or at least are far worse of now than they were before the blip. But changing the past and preventing the blip from happening in the first place changes the timeline. Sure, people that were born during those five years might not be born in the new time line. But that's because they never existed in that timeline in the first place. No one remembers them, no one misses them, no one suffers because they weren't born. They certainly don't suffer, because they don't exist. I would consider that less problematic, but your mileage may vary. Incidentally, this is pretty much the same kind of trolley problem Eternals tried to set up. It didn't work there, so it's probably better they didn't try that in Endgame as well.

One of the main things that made Endgame work is that it took the time to show us what life was like for everyone post-Snap, even 5 years on people were still suffering from it and society had essentially stalled, and even regressed in many ways. It got out in front of the "we're better off, should they even be changing anything?" question directly. Maybe bringing everyone back suddenly comes with its own problems, but they showed it was still better than the alternative of doing nothing. And Carol was useful to show us that it wasn't just Earth that was in continuing turmoil. As the audience, we were already invested in the idea of Thanos "losing" so that little push at the beginning of the movie is all they needed.

[Tyndmyr]

I have to disagree with calling Eternals the worst MCU movie, simply because Thor: Love and Thunder was so incredibly bad. But I agree that Eternals is incredibly frustrating. There was so much potential there and all of it was wasted because they didn't dare to do something new. My biggest complaint is that they killed off Kro; they really had the opportunity to create a great antihero there, by having the Eternals and the Deviants come to an understanding and agree that the real enemy for both of them are the Celestials.

Thor: Love and Thunder was definitely really bad, but at least it was so terrible it was an interesting sort of bad. The Eternals is mostly just boring. It's not even "god, the goats screaming are annoying" it's just a snoozefest.

But I suppose it's a distinction without much difference. Both films are definitely terrible, even if a somewhat different form of terrible.

[warty goblin]

Love and Thunder and Eternals are the only two MCU movies I found unwatchably bad, as in I stopped watching after like 40 minutes. Thor because it was agonizingly cringe, Eternals because it was bafflingly dull. There were too many characters, they were all one note, and they all had the same note of vague ennui. And the visuals weren't good, not technically, just gloopy nothing I'd expect from a mobile game. Admittedly this is still better than Love and Thunder, running really bright colors run through the MCU's patented Blah-o-Rama color grading made it look like a depressed computer ate too many skittles and threw up on the screen.

[Ramza00]

Yeah, I was hoping the whole "Handsome Good Eternals vs Ugly Evil Deviants" thing would have been more directly subverted, the way that the Handsome Kree vs Ugly Skrulls thing was, except the Eternals and Deviants conflict is miles more interesting.

Kirby did that in the original comics, they are not good comics (definitely not Kirby’s best work), but were the Deviants bad or good, and same thing with the Eternals is quickly explored.

But by issue 15 or 16 Marvel was tired of not making money from the Eternals and the formerly separate AU that the Eternals crossovered with the main comics with the eternals fighting a Hulk robot, then later writters (after Kirby left Marvel the second time) created a huge cosmic mythology of the Earth solar system involving the Eternals, the Kree, and so on.

[Lemmy]

Well, anyway... "Good" news for The Marvels: with Wish coming out and Aquaman following soon... it seems The Marvels will no longer be the biggest Disney flop or the biggest super-hero flop of the year.

Progress... I guess?

The Marvels, I just don't care. No one does... But I honestly hope Aquaman flops hard.

2023 was indeed a pretty damning year for pop culture cinema and TV... Mario and Barbie were huge hits, but other than that... Did we have anything other than failures or, at best, barely a success?

To be clear, they literally did, which is what I was responding to above.

Did they? The only person I can see who said it was Psyren, but I'm pretty sure he was being facetious. Especially considering that so far he's been the one to argue the hardest that Disney is doing well.

[warty goblin]

I'm kinda looking forward to Aquaman. The first one was just marvelously and aggressively dumb in a charmingly sincere sort of way. I'm hoping number two channels the same honest stupid tone as the first one.

Although the sequel is missing the obvious play of being a rock'n'roll road trip movie about the drum playing octopus and its badass rock band. Movie of the century right there.

[Trixie_One]

I'm kinda looking forward to Aquaman. The first one was just marvelously and aggressively dumb in a charmingly sincere sort of way. I'm hoping number two channels the same honest stupid tone as the first one.

Yeah I had a lot of fun with the first one. The repeated bits of talking interrupted by a explosion to get back to the action was increasingly funny as they just kept on doing it.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I'm kinda looking forward to Aquaman. The first one was just marvelously and aggressively dumb in a charmingly sincere sort of way.

I liked the effort they put into making the different undersea kingdoms wildly distinct from each other. It wasn’t just ‘oh these fish people wear blue while the ones over there wear white!’ There was a ton of variety in looks and outlooks. Like if Subnautica was a superhero movie.

Also nice to see a solid father-son relationship in a superhero movie for once.

[Psyren]

2023 was indeed a pretty damning year for pop culture cinema and TV... Mario and Barbie were huge hits, but other than that... Did we have anything other than failures or, at best, barely a success?

Oppenheimer did pretty well too IIRC, though that may have been due to opening opposite Barbie and people just hanging out in the theater all day for the memes.

Did they? The only person I can see who said it was Psyren, but I'm pretty sure he was being facetious. Especially considering that so far he's been the one to argue the hardest that Disney is doing well.

What I actually said is that Disney isn't dying. This was in response to people convinced that another trailer for The Marvels was the straw that would break the camel's back and collapse their media empire or whatever.

[Tyndmyr]

Well, anyway... "Good" news for The Marvels: with Wish coming out and Aquaman following soon... it seems The Marvels will no longer be the biggest Disney flop or the biggest super-hero flop of the year.

Actually going to see Wish tonight. No idea if it's good, but at least it's something different, and I'm all about that.

I will probably see the next Aquaman. I don't have a lot of expectations, but the first one was at least entertaining. If a movie can't be good, at least avoiding being boring is a major plus.

2023 was indeed a pretty damning year for pop culture cinema and TV... Mario and Barbie were huge hits, but other than that... Did we have anything other than failures or, at best, barely a success?

GotG 3 was pretty solid, IMO. I also enjoyed the D&D movie, even if it apparently didn't do well overall...perhaps I might have a bit of bias due to enjoying the source material, perhaps Wizards sandbagged themselves by being overtly evil near the release, who knows? John Wick 4 was also enjoyable enough.

I also quite enjoyed the live action One Piece adaptation. Never got into the original anime, and I understand skepticism as most live action adaptations of Anime are dodgy at best....but this one actually was surprisingly decent.

Sure, lots of rough entries all in all, but a few good bits here and there.

[Errorname]

The Marvels, I just don't care. No one does... But I honestly hope Aquaman flops hard.

I give Aquaman higher odds than most of it's peers this year, that first movie was surprisingly successful.