The Marvels , you know that new superhero movie

[Ramza00]

ramza, seriously, how the **** can you keep track of or even understand this stuff. I read that second paragraph of yours three times and I still have no clue what it means.

If it was any other subject I'd assume that you just explained it in a really confusing way, but given that it's Marvel I suspect that you just described it 100% factually and it really is that insanely convoluted.

Comics are a baroque^{ugly pearl} mess and I have been out of it for like 60% of my life. *laughing joke* for I do relapse

How you ask? Well when I was an elementary school kid in the first or second grade all the boys were talking about these new shows this Power Rangers and the X-Men on the Fox Kids, so that is how the Baroque mess got to me. Stupid sad rogue who could hit like a semi truck, fly, and was allowed to be sad and not just awesome.

Most of comics is nonsense, but there are some good stuff in there. For example I mentioned Chris Claremont earlier who was doing the X-Men after 1975 and was also doing some comics before that. Well he was an English Major and Politics Major, who adored the classics like Shakespeare and Milton but every cheap dime paperback Sci-Fi novel he could devour. Thus I learned to like this franchise by a Virgil for better or worse. Someone who took the blender of things and made an acceptable sometimes great product.

And X-Men was relaunched in 2019 with House of X Powers of 10 which is a good starting point for newbies, and it has been mostly good, some form of B+ consistently though some Cs and As in there. This era is ending in 2024 (so 5 years) and we will see what comes next.

=====

Back to Ms Marvel, I barely know of her, she was created in 2013 and has been the breakout star of the last 10 years with Miles Morales. She was assembled in a lab, creating a new Kitty like Pryde character that people could identify with, a Buffy for a new era. Thus I learned about her via osmosis for many people have imprinted on her.

And one learns the drama backstory with Disney vs Fox IP for it made no sense for her to be an Inhuman yet they did it for good reasons, and now they are relaunching her in the X-Men which I actually know more and care about.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

So, I watched it, and it's...okay. It isn't amazing. It isn't terrible. You can sit down, watch it, and neither have your life changed nor feel as if one's life has drained away before their eyes.

As a side note, AMC does not offer the kitten-themed soda cup separately, but only offers it for purchase as part of a $40 combo with the world's ugliest and spoilery popcorn bowl. This does not include tickets. Long story short, my lovely fiance now has her kitten cup, and you have a slightly salty review that is definitely not related to this scalping. I'm not apologizing.

The Review:

Spoiler

Show

Alright, so this is a movie even tangentially related to the Marvels, and therefore the bad guys are Kree. Kree come in two flavors, faceless mooks, and generic evil overlord. This evil overlord probably has a name, but it's not really relevant to anything, and I'm not looking it up. She also has Ronan's hammer, which also has a name. You remember Ronan, right? Wielded a badass hammer that glowed purple, could detonate anything it hit, etc in Guardians of the Galaxy before we all forgot about him? Anyway, that hammer. You're telling me that this hammer was destroyed in that same movie? And that the infinity stone powering it was clearly destroyed by Thanos in Endgame?

Do not worry about such things. Continuity will get worse, far worse, and focusing on meaningless things like "names" or "motivations" or "object permanence" will only distract you from what is to come.

Anyways, Captain Marvel is to blame for being evil, and also a coward, which is a pretty sound basis for a revenge plot, even if it does sound like something written by the worst haters of her last movies. She struggles to remember the things that happened while she was mind controlled, which we see as she relives the things she did after recovering from mind control as a result of regaining her memory. This consists mainly of blowing up the AI building, and this caused the sun to go out. Kind of. It's almost out, but it can be repaired with ten seconds of work, as is normal for stars. That's what happens to stars when you don't have an AI around to...yknow, never mind, it's plot time.

In this portion of the movie, all three heroes are ensnared by the power of quantum technobabble which means that, according to the movie, they switch places whenever they use their powers at the same time. Do not believe your lying eyes, for they will tell you falsehoods like that multiple of them are clearly activating their powers and not switching, or sometimes only two will switch, and sometimes all three, and sometimes switches happen without power activation, and sometimes objects come with, and sometimes they don't. For instance, in one instance, a character that does not need a spacesuit to breath in space is wearing a spacesuit, and those clothes do not come with because the character swapping to her position would die otherwise. This having been solved, clothes are never left behind again, and the character who doesn't need a spacesuit never again uses a spacesuit. In one occasion, the swapping forgets its own rules to the point that two people take the place of one people.

Anyways, the villain has the literal power making holes to suck, and wants to steal air and...crap, this really is just the plot of Spaceballs, isn't it? Anyways, the heroes fail to stop this by virtue of spending perhaps a ten minute fight scene trying to take down a couple of unpowered mooks. Obviously, Captain Marvel cannot hit them hard enough to actually knock them out or anything, that'd be unrealistic. Obviously, there are about ten shots of some random human being threatened by them, but they are saved at the last moment, only for the same thing to happen again.

The main tension at this point is not, yknow, the world ending whatever that is happening, but instead, that Monica is harboring a grudge against Carol for leaving her, which is kind of a lot to put on your mom's friend from work from thirty years ago. Fortunately, you can pay absolutely no attention to this conflict, as it will not affect the events of this film in any way.

There is a secondary plot as well. It is tribbles, but the tribbles are cats flerkins. All the escape pods on the space station are ceasing to work for...reasons. There is only one left, then, worse, another one blows up and there are only two left. Nick Fury solves this horrible situation by feeding his crew to an alien apocalypse that he then delivers to earth. This section is played for laughs, and, frankly, I quite enjoyed it. Haters might say that this is not strictly a good idea by in-universe thinking, and that flerkins have previously been shown to actually be quite dangerous, but I suggest that these are not actually people, and are thus immune to damage. We know this because Nick Fury loads them into a ship which he drops from orbit, spinning, on fire from re-entry, and crashes it at speed into the earth. He then gets out and comments that his elbow is hurts. Clap, my friends, clap along like a barking seal as the MCU demonstrates that no consequences can ever be real.

Meanwhile, in the main plot, the three women have gone to visit Planet Music, which is a planet that is 99.63% water, and we will spend 100% of our time focused wholly upon the land. Everyone here sings and dances exclusively, and this, we are told, is Carol's home, her people, and in a case of wild hijinks, her husband. Anyways, everybody dies and if you're thinking questions like "How can a hole moderately larger than a spaceship possibly consume and entire atmosphere or ocean in fewer than several thousand years, and furthermore, how did air going up make rocks collapse down?" you are wasting your time, because physics has no place here. Anyways, everybody in Planet Music dies, I guess, but the heroes solve this by never thinking or talking about this planet again, as one usually does regarding one's home, friends and spouse after a casual genocide.

The final battle to save the Galaxy happens on Earth, because of course it does. The villain wants to steal the sun, our star, and obviously the sun is located pretty much right next to earth. This hole, however, is a bad hole. They're all bad holes, but this is a worse hole than the other holes. The hero swapping stops at this point, because reasons, and Monica woefully tells her team that she must seal the bad hole from the other side. They nod along. She starts sealing the hole from the other side. Carol suddenly observes that the other side is not this side as her sole brain cell springs into action, and slowly begins to realize that Monica will not be coming back. Monica thoughtfully explains this in exhaustive detail for the benefit of that last, struggling brain cell, and through the power of CGI, the hole is eventually closed in a hole vs glowy person chase scene. Monica is lost forever, and therefore this constitutes a victory, because it permits the Mouse to introduce Cameo Time. The End.

While it's not rock solid, I venture to guess that your novelty item woes kept you from paying attention at some parts of the movie because several parts of your review are false. No judgement here, kitten cups are serious business.

Spoiler

Show

Dar-benn is not using Ronan's hammer. The hammers aren't unique weapons. The official name for it is namedropped in the movie as "Universal Weapon" to communicate it's standard Kree technology that high ranking officers get.

Blowing up the AI didn't kill the Kree sun. Blowing up the AI created a power vacuum in the Kree Empire that led to a 30 year civil war between several factions, which drained their system of resources and left a desperate, starving, and doomed race. Ironically, The Marvels might be the most anti-woke movie on the Marvel docket because its villains are literally foreigners that screwed up their own home and are trying to steal the livelihood of other, more well-off people. I'm... half tongue-in-cheek on that analysis.

I'm not sure it makes it better, but they do mention that the swapping only takes place whenever the characters are actively projecting energy, i.e. shooting beams. It's never explained what the difference in energy manipulation between flying and shooting is, but that's the logic behind why they swap sometimes and not other times.

Aladna doesn't die, nor does the entire ocean drain. It's also not Carol's home; it's just a place she helped out politically by marrying the prince (this is actually a reference to a comic arc of hers where she gets involved in a power struggle and ends up married to Yan because she wins a fight protecting him). The hole is opened up, there's a fight, and they bounce out before dying. Then they run off to stop the Kree before it really messes up the planet. Presumably, Aladna survives just fine with their ridiculous amount of water left and probably thank the Kree for siphoning some of it off so they can have more land to live on. Or Hala gets the biggest water bill in history next month.

[Psyren]

And one learns the drama backstory with Disney vs Fox IP for it made no sense for her to be an Inhuman yet they did it for good reasons, and now they are relaunching her in the X-Men which I actually know more and care about.

Well, reasons, at any rate

*vomits in Perlmutter*

Presumably, Aladna survives just fine with their ridiculous amount of water left and probably thank the Kree for siphoning some of it off so they can have more land to live on. Or Hala gets the biggest water bill in history next month.

I lol'd hard, well played

[Kareeah_Indaga]

The Review:

Spoiler

Show

Alright, so this is a movie even tangentially related to the Marvels, and therefore the bad guys are Kree. Kree come in two flavors, faceless mooks, and generic evil overlord. This evil overlord probably has a name, but it's not really relevant to anything, and I'm not looking it up. She also has Ronan's hammer, which also has a name. You remember Ronan, right? Wielded a badass hammer that glowed purple, could detonate anything it hit, etc in Guardians of the Galaxy before we all forgot about him? Anyway, that hammer. You're telling me that this hammer was destroyed in that same movie? And that the infinity stone powering it was clearly destroyed by Thanos in Endgame?

Do not worry about such things. Continuity will get worse, far worse, and focusing on meaningless things like "names" or "motivations" or "object permanence" will only distract you from what is to come.

Anyways, Captain Marvel is to blame for being evil, and also a coward, which is a pretty sound basis for a revenge plot, even if it does sound like something written by the worst haters of her last movies. She struggles to remember the things that happened while she was mind controlled, which we see as she relives the things she did after recovering from mind control as a result of regaining her memory. This consists mainly of blowing up the AI building, and this caused the sun to go out. Kind of. It's almost out, but it can be repaired with ten seconds of work, as is normal for stars. That's what happens to stars when you don't have an AI around to...yknow, never mind, it's plot time.

In this portion of the movie, all three heroes are ensnared by the power of quantum technobabble which means that, according to the movie, they switch places whenever they use their powers at the same time. Do not believe your lying eyes, for they will tell you falsehoods like that multiple of them are clearly activating their powers and not switching, or sometimes only two will switch, and sometimes all three, and sometimes switches happen without power activation, and sometimes objects come with, and sometimes they don't. For instance, in one instance, a character that does not need a spacesuit to breath in space is wearing a spacesuit, and those clothes do not come with because the character swapping to her position would die otherwise. This having been solved, clothes are never left behind again, and the character who doesn't need a spacesuit never again uses a spacesuit. In one occasion, the swapping forgets its own rules to the point that two people take the place of one people.

Anyways, the villain has the literal power making holes to suck, and wants to steal air and...crap, this really is just the plot of Spaceballs, isn't it? Anyways, the heroes fail to stop this by virtue of spending perhaps a ten minute fight scene trying to take down a couple of unpowered mooks. Obviously, Captain Marvel cannot hit them hard enough to actually knock them out or anything, that'd be unrealistic. Obviously, there are about ten shots of some random human being threatened by them, but they are saved at the last moment, only for the same thing to happen again.

The main tension at this point is not, yknow, the world ending whatever that is happening, but instead, that Monica is harboring a grudge against Carol for leaving her, which is kind of a lot to put on your mom's friend from work from thirty years ago. Fortunately, you can pay absolutely no attention to this conflict, as it will not affect the events of this film in any way.

There is a secondary plot as well. It is tribbles, but the tribbles are cats flerkins. All the escape pods on the space station are ceasing to work for...reasons. There is only one left, then, worse, another one blows up and there are only two left. Nick Fury solves this horrible situation by feeding his crew to an alien apocalypse that he then delivers to earth. This section is played for laughs, and, frankly, I quite enjoyed it. Haters might say that this is not strictly a good idea by in-universe thinking, and that flerkins have previously been shown to actually be quite dangerous, but I suggest that these are not actually people, and are thus immune to damage. We know this because Nick Fury loads them into a ship which he drops from orbit, spinning, on fire from re-entry, and crashes it at speed into the earth. He then gets out and comments that his elbow is hurts. Clap, my friends, clap along like a barking seal as the MCU demonstrates that no consequences can ever be real.

Meanwhile, in the main plot, the three women have gone to visit Planet Music, which is a planet that is 99.63% water, and we will spend 100% of our time focused wholly upon the land. Everyone here sings and dances exclusively, and this, we are told, is Carol's home, her people, and in a case of wild hijinks, her husband. Anyways, everybody dies and if you're thinking questions like "How can a hole moderately larger than a spaceship possibly consume and entire atmosphere or ocean in fewer than several thousand years, and furthermore, how did air going up make rocks collapse down?" you are wasting your time, because physics has no place here. Anyways, everybody in Planet Music dies, I guess, but the heroes solve this by never thinking or talking about this planet again, as one usually does regarding one's home, friends and spouse after a casual genocide.

The final battle to save the Galaxy happens on Earth, because of course it does. The villain wants to steal the sun, our star, and obviously the sun is located pretty much right next to earth. This hole, however, is a bad hole. They're all bad holes, but this is a worse hole than the other holes. The hero swapping stops at this point, because reasons, and Monica woefully tells her team that she must seal the bad hole from the other side. They nod along. She starts sealing the hole from the other side. Carol suddenly observes that the other side is not this side as her sole brain cell springs into action, and slowly begins to realize that Monica will not be coming back. Monica thoughtfully explains this in exhaustive detail for the benefit of that last, struggling brain cell, and through the power of CGI, the hole is eventually closed in a hole vs glowy person chase scene. Monica is lost forever, and therefore this constitutes a victory, because it permits the Mouse to introduce Cameo Time. The End.

I still have no intention of seeing the movie, but I greatly enjoyed your review, it was hilarious!

Continuity being terrible is one of the reasons I don't follow the comics and don't care much about the MCU any more. That in mind, did they ever explain why we should care what happens to the Kree? Last I checked, in addition to brainwashing Carol to be their super weapon, they were quite gleefully wiping out planets (Torfa, Earth), and even the not-explicitly-villainous ones were useless in the first GotG movie.

The spacesuit thing is actually extra funny, because doesn't Ms. Marvel have forcefield powers in this continuity? And if people and objects in the vicinity are getting brought along for the ride, it seems to me they could have left the spacesuit off, and just say the surrounding air came with, and had her reflexively make a forcefield bubble to hold it in on arrival in space. It would be contrived, but not nearly so much as an extraneous spacesuit.

[Ramza00]

Well, reasons, at any rate

*vomits in Perlmutter*

I am not trying to let my opinion of that man be the singular villian he was recently laid off after 30 years of loyalty…


let him enjoy his 80s in peace, away from the female superheroes … The Marvels

[Psyren]

Continuity being terrible is one of the reasons I don't follow the comics and don't care much about the MCU any more. That in mind, did they ever explain why we should care what happens to the Kree? Last I checked, in addition to brainwashing Carol to be their super weapon, they were quite gleefully wiping out planets (Torfa, Earth), and even the not-explicitly-villainous ones were useless in the first GotG movie.

Well, in short, you shouldn't. This entire movie was first and foremost a vehicle for

Spoiler: Ending Spoiler

Show

Monica to end up in the X-Men universe so they can get to the fun part of those without another dull origin story.

Frankly, DC should take notes for the next time they decide to get a Justice League going.

Literally nothing about the Kree or their planet actually matters here, beyond the fact that it made Carol guilty at the low point.

The spacesuit thing is actually extra funny, because doesn't Ms. Marvel have forcefield powers in this continuity? And if people and objects in the vicinity are getting brought along for the ride, it seems to me they could have left the spacesuit off, and just say the surrounding air came with, and had her reflexively make a forcefield bubble to hold it in on arrival in space. It would be contrived, but not nearly so much as an extraneous spacesuit.

The spacesuit is clearly necessary - having her pop into space without one would have definitely killed her. Even if she'd had the presence of mind to form one around herself once she materialized there, there would still be no air in it.

I am not trying to let my opinion of that man be the singular villian he was recently laid off after 30 years of loyalty…


let him enjoy his 80s in peace, away from the female superheroes … The Marvels

He's a billionaire, my undying scorn for his awfulness is hardly going to keep him from enjoying anything.

[Ramza00]

He's a billionaire, my undying scorn for his awfulness is hardly going to keep him from enjoying anything.

I was making a joke, the man’s impacts on the industry is massive, too much to list here (also bad vibes)

But literally a female superhero team movie is something dear old Ike hates as a concept, and he blab about it in the leaked sony e-mails. So let me have a little joy perhaps schadenfreude with dear old Ike.

[Errorname]

And one learns the drama backstory with Disney vs Fox IP for it made no sense for her to be an Inhuman yet they did it for good reasons, and now they are relaunching her in the X-Men which I actually know more and care about.

I'll maintain that this is a mistake. She never would have reached the heights she did as just another X-Men character. Nobody cares about the Inhumans which means it's a much less competitive field and it was way less constraining for her.

[Eldan]

...but I will tell you why I am not going by talking about the characters:...
...
I think this is a failure of Disney's plan of introducing characters on Disney+ show's and then basing movies around them. ... It's just not worth it for me to watch a movie about characters I don't care about when the absolute best reviews say the movie is "Meh, it's not that bad".
.

Not caring about the movie is totally fair, as people have said, it's entertaining, but not great. (I would still say it's miles above Thor 4 and the various TV series I've seen, about as good as Multiverse of Madness and not much worse than Guardians 3, and Kamala Khan is the best new Marvel character in a long time.)

That said, I'd say this movie does a pretty good job of introducing the characters if you haven't seen their appearances.

Kamala is introduced and in about 30 seconds, you know what she's about. Teenage superhero, has a magical alien artefact, turns lights into objects (fists, shields, platforms to run on), has a slightly overbearing but very nice muslim family, fangirls hard for Captain Marvel. Nothing else in her backstory comes up or matters.

Monica Rambeau: knew Captain Marvel as a kid, has light based powers now and can go incorporeal. Is the movie's technobabble dispenser. Makes a joke that she got her powers as an accident when she walked into a hex cast by a witch. Fury repeatedly complains in the movie that people should stop touching glowy alien energy stuff. No further details of what happens in Scarlett Witch matters whatsoever to this movie. Works for Nick Fury.

Captain Marvel: is very powerful, flies through space and punches things, fires energy blasts, doesn't like the Kree, likes the Skrull, destroyed the Kree's government and now feels bad about it. Knows Nick Fury. Backstory from the first film adds a bit more emotional depth, but isn't vital. Nothing that happens in the Avengers movies is even brought up.

Well, in short, you shouldn't. This entire movie was first and foremost a vehicle for

Spoiler: Ending Spoiler

Show

Monica to end up in the X-Men universe so they can get to the fun part of those without another dull origin story.

Frankly, DC should take notes for the next time they decide to get a Justice League going.

Literally nothing about the Kree or their planet actually matters here, beyond the fact that it made Carol guilty at the low point. .

Yeah, the Kree are thoroughly awful and have been in every appearance. Genocidal militarists who turned on each other as soon as their government collapsed and as soon as they are slightly stabilized, they start attacking other planets again. Like, Carol turns their sun back on because she feels bad, but for the most part, it's a situation of "You are terrible, everything your civilization has ever done is terrible and you brought this on yourselves". Other than "maybe we shouldn't genocide them", they deserve no help whatsoever. And someone needs to make very sure that they don't start up conquering/genociding the galaxy again as soon as their sun is back.

[Tyndmyr]

While it's not rock solid, I venture to guess that your novelty item woes kept you from paying attention at some parts of the movie because several parts of your review are false. No judgement here, kitten cups are serious business.

Spoiler

Show

Dar-benn is not using Ronan's hammer. The hammers aren't unique weapons. The official name for it is namedropped in the movie as "Universal Weapon" to communicate it's standard Kree technology that high ranking officers get.

Blowing up the AI didn't kill the Kree sun. Blowing up the AI created a power vacuum in the Kree Empire that led to a 30 year civil war between several factions, which drained their system of resources and left a desperate, starving, and doomed race. Ironically, The Marvels might be the most anti-woke movie on the Marvel docket because its villains are literally foreigners that screwed up their own home and are trying to steal the livelihood of other, more well-off people. I'm... half tongue-in-cheek on that analysis.

I'm not sure it makes it better, but they do mention that the swapping only takes place whenever the characters are actively projecting energy, i.e. shooting beams. It's never explained what the difference in energy manipulation between flying and shooting is, but that's the logic behind why they swap sometimes and not other times.

Aladna doesn't die, nor does the entire ocean drain. It's also not Carol's home; it's just a place she helped out politically by marrying the prince (this is actually a reference to a comic arc of hers where she gets involved in a power struggle and ends up married to Yan because she wins a fight protecting him). The hole is opened up, there's a fight, and they bounce out before dying. Then they run off to stop the Kree before it really messes up the planet. Presumably, Aladna survives just fine with their ridiculous amount of water left and probably thank the Kree for siphoning some of it off so they can have more land to live on. Or Hala gets the biggest water bill in history next month.

Spoiler

Show

You don't name a weapon to convey that it is generic, but rather, that it is unique. No other officers are seen to be using one.

As for the civil war, that would actually be pretty fair if it were actually shown in any real way. However, it isn't obvious why this would lead to a sun going out. Resource depletion on the planet, sure, but....why would the sun fade? A civil war doesn't generally cause suns to go out, and this isn't even covered in the slightest.

The swapping is most definitely not just on projection. Flying sometimes causes it. Shooting beams sometimes doesn't.

It's pretty clearly shown with planet #1 that everybody is gonna die because of the hole. Not just from oxygen loss, but because the world basically starts collapsing. The physics of this do not make much sense, but if the same is true of planet #2, we can expect a similar result there. Certainly, everyone involved in the fight acts as if the draining is a very bad thing for the planet, they just stop caring about it immediately after the fight.

Continuity being terrible is one of the reasons I don't follow the comics and don't care much about the MCU any more. That in mind, did they ever explain why we should care what happens to the Kree? Last I checked, in addition to brainwashing Carol to be their super weapon, they were quite gleefully wiping out planets (Torfa, Earth), and even the not-explicitly-villainous ones were useless in the first GotG movie.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Not really. The Kree are roughly as detailed as Ronan's followers were. Lots of hoods, dark face paint, masks, not really even much in the way of names. They are the very definition of faceless mooks to punch.

They have gotten pretty cast as bad guys in the MCU or, at best, hapless victims. They definitely don't contribute a great deal to the side of good. It seems like at this point, they are mostly the punchable bad guy faction until someone remembers that theoretically, this race should have innocents too. Honestly, Carol being crushed with guilt for decades over freeing herself from literal mind control slavery to them seems...unnecessary. They murdered themselves because they couldn't be slavers? Uh, okay. As a faction, they don't end up looking very sympathetic.

The spacesuit thing is actually extra funny, because doesn't Ms. Marvel have forcefield powers in this continuity? And if people and objects in the vicinity are getting brought along for the ride, it seems to me they could have left the spacesuit off, and just say the surrounding air came with, and had her reflexively make a forcefield bubble to hold it in on arrival in space. It would be contrived, but not nearly so much as an extraneous spacesuit.

She does, yeah. Honestly, I'd have gone with "she turns blue and starts freezing as per vacuum exposure in GotG 1, but they swap back in time." Depending on how you do it, could even play it for laughs, but it'd introduce some much needed actual danger.

Apparently this had the worst opening box office for any MCU film to date. The film's rough, but it's not *that* rough, and worse MCU films have been made, so I have to assume that at least some of this is inertia from prior poor entries damaging the franchise.

[Psyren]

Apparently this had the worst opening box office for any MCU film to date. The film's rough, but it's not *that* rough, and worse MCU films have been made, so I have to assume that at least some of this is inertia from prior poor entries damaging the franchise.

That's one factor, yeah.

I agree with Errorname that Carol Danvers is better off as an Inhuman than as an X-Man. She never would have reached the heights she did as just another X-Men character.

I think you mean Kamala Khan? Carol was never Inhuman.

[Saph]

Apparently this had the worst opening box office for any MCU film to date. The film's rough, but it's not *that* rough, and worse MCU films have been made, so I have to assume that at least some of this is inertia from prior poor entries damaging the franchise.

I think that's more than an assumption, it's obvious. The number one thing that determines the sales of a piece of franchise media is how popular the last 5-ish instalments in the franchise were. Doesn't matter whether it's a movie, a book, a game, or whatever. Now, when it comes to movies, I'm not sure exactly whether 5 is the right number, but there's definitely SOME value of x where if you have that many hits, then the next thing you put out is going to sell no matter what, and if you have that many misses, then the film is going to be a flop due to inheriting all the apathy/bad feeling that's been accumulating from the previous releases.

So in the case of the MCU, the last five movies have been . . . okay, I don't actually care enough to remember this, so let's look it up.

• Dr Strange: Multiverse of Madness
• Thor: Love and Thunder
• Black Panther 2
• Ant-Man & Wasp 2
• Guardians of the Galaxy 3

Looking at that list, it's . . . not exactly inspiring, is it? Now, personally, I haven't bothered watching any of them because I lost interest in the MCU a few years back, but the general impression I've picked up is that out of those 5, four were pretty crap, and the only one that was well-liked was trading off the success of the last remaining Phase 1/2/3 characters and was directed by a guy who's now left. And it doesn't get much better if you extend the number beyond 5, since that gets you into even worse stuff like Eternals.

The MCU is just a pretty tarnished brand at this point. They still have a lot of market presence due to their earlier successes, but they've been on a downward trend for a while.

[Tyndmyr]

So in the case of the MCU, the last five movies have been . . . okay, I don't actually care enough to remember this, so let's look it up.

• Dr Strange: Multiverse of Madness
• Thor: Love and Thunder
• Black Panther 2
• Ant-Man & Wasp 2
• Guardians of the Galaxy 3

Looking at that list, it's . . . not exactly inspiring, is it? Now, personally, I haven't bothered watching any of them because I lost interest in the MCU a few years back, but the general impression I've picked up is that out of those 5, four were pretty crap, and the only one that was well-liked was trading off the success of the last remaining Phase 1/2/3 characters and was directed by a guy who's now left. And it doesn't get much better if you extend the number beyond 5, since that gets you into even worse stuff like Eternals.

The MCU is just a pretty tarnished brand at this point. They still have a lot of market presence due to their earlier successes, but they've been on a downward trend for a while.

Mmm, yeah, that's a good point. I personally enjoyed Dr. Strange, but that was probably mostly because I'd been hankering for Wanda to go villain for a good while. Reception overall seemed mixed at best.

Love and Thunder was terrible, probably in the running for worst MCU film.

Black Panther 2 was kneecapped by the loss of Chadwick. Not really the studio's fault in any way, but losing the star is kind of rough on his line of films, and this one felt kinda meh to me.

Ant Man and Wasp 2. It was, uh, middling, I guess. Some people hated it, though. I didn't hate the film, but if I wanted to rewatch an MCU film, it wouldn't be in my top dozen choices, for sure.

GotG 3. The only genuinely great film in this list. Being the last entry might have actually helped this film to some extent, but yeah, the overall trend is definitely less than amazing.

[Ramza00]

I'll maintain that this is a mistake. She never would have reached the heights she did as just another X-Men character. Nobody cares about the Inhumans which means it's a much less competitive field and it was way less constraining for her.

Disagree Sending Kamala Khan to the X-Mansion would have done what you said. I 100% agree with you here.

Having her take the path they did with Ms. Marvel I think would have worked with her being an inhuman or a mutant, either. And I think Marvel comics has figured this out by now, X-Men has too much baggage for elementary or middle school readers now. But you can make a Runaways (2003), Young Avengers (2005), Ms Marvel (2013), Miles Morales (2011) or the new Champions team (2016) and it will be successful. I think I am forgetting a few of these other trial balloons with this list, for example Avengers Academy was 2010 and there may be another thing I am not thinking of for I do not read these books, only know via Osmosis.

You have to create a self contained book even if these teenagers do crossovers and the crossover is exciting. Plus all that teenage drama, angst, and so on. Pretty much Kamala and Miles are the big success sequence the rest of the characters do have dedicated fans but it is just a different level of orbit.

[GloatingSwine]

The only thing Ms. Marvel really gets from being an Inhuman is that you can more easily include Lockjaw.

[Psyren]

So in the case of the MCU, the last five movies have been . . . okay, I don't actually care enough to remember this, so let's look it up.

• Dr Strange: Multiverse of Madness
• Thor: Love and Thunder
• Black Panther 2
• Ant-Man & Wasp 2
• Guardians of the Galaxy 3

Looking at that list, it's . . . not exactly inspiring, is it?

3/5 made bank. We're not at doomsday yet.

I don't think Marvel is in as dire straits as some do; the real litmus will be the performance of things like Deadpool and X-Men, provided there isn't another strike muddying the waters before those.

And even if they underperform, the issue seems to be the entire superhero genre if not the cinema industry in general.

[Rater202]

Kamala Khan was originally intended to be a Mutant, according to her original creators, and looking at her first ongoing series it's blatantly obvious that she's only an Inhuman due to executive meddling. All of her narratives are mutant narratives and the only reason why she wasn't Wovlerine's latest teenage protege is because he got killed off in the X-Men books mid-storyline.

Making her a mutant(or rather, an 'Inhu-Mutant' to use the term she made up for herself) is just restoring things to the original artists' intent free to as great of a degree as they can without invalidating her previous storylines.

Kamala has basically nothing in common with any other Inhuman character.

As for whether she'd have gotten as big if she'd been a mutant from the start... I mean, nothing about her self-contained books is super dependent on the origins of her powers. I don't feel that having Kamala have access to the Danger Room and fighting a Mutant supremacist faction early on would have changed things that much from having her have access to a training room in Attilan and fighting an Inhuman Supremcist faction. What made her popular is her personality, not the nature of her powers. All she gets from the Inhumans is Lockjaw and given that Lockajaw also hangs out the the Fantastic Four and the Asgardians I figure that they could have fudged something if they really wanted her to hang out with the goodest of boys.

And before anyone cites all of the minor mutant characters who get made and then disappear into crowd shots and C-list fodder after their stories end... Kamala was a solo hero from the beginning, not a supporting character created by someone who wanted to put their mark on a franchise instead of using h hundreds of characters they already had.

As for what she gets from being on the X-Men right now... Everything about being involved since she joined has been mostly just the X-Brand being used to help hype her up. I feel like Marvel's planning something big for her.

(Also her Joining the X-Men isn't framed as a permanent thing. It's framed as "**** happened and I'd be trying to help you even if I wasn't a mutant" and that's exactly the kind of character Kamala is so it scans.)

[warty goblin]

I think movies in general are in a weird place where the things that do best are novel forms of nostalgia. Barbie is the obvious example here, the brand is familiar and for many nostalgic, but the actual movie is pretty inventive, or at least had unusual reference points*. Guardians 3, Dr Strange 2 and (I'm guessing, I didn't watch it) Black Panther 2 are also doing at least kinda new stuff with old characters audiences generally liked.

(Why didn't Antman 3 work? It wasn't good, nobody really cares about Antman all that much, and the CGI looked awful. Seriously, I saw the trailer in front of Avatar 2, and the difference was stark, to the point that spending two plus hours watching that sounds just painful.)

Where this gets awkward for superhero movies is twofold. First, there's a metric ton of them, so it's harder to find genuinely new stuff to do with a superhero movie - we've sent them to space, to other dimensions, to whatever decade we're currently nostalgic for. We've done superhero but <not white guy>, also overtly political, silly, and pretty much every other genre to varying degrees of success. If you just show up with "hey, we made a superhero movie!" why should I care? There's always one of them around, it's the cinematic equivalent of a Subway sandwich at this point.

The second problem, mostly for Marvel, is that they're running out of characters people actually like all that much, and they've introduced so many new ones that they're all underdeveloped and lacking big audience affection. Superman and Batman are characters people like as concepts, make a halfass decent Superman movie and people pay attention. I don't think the general audience cares about Iron Man as a character or idea, they cared about Robert Downey playing Iron Man. Spiderman, sure, he always sells, but the rest of the stable they have are very much limited appeal.


All of which means that (gasp!) Disney might need to have an original idea again.




*Pleasantville is not exactly a thing everyone has seen.

[sktarq]

3/5 made bank. We're not at doomsday yet.

I don't think Marvel is in as dire straits as some do; the real litmus will be the performance of things like Deadpool and X-Men, provided there isn't another strike muddying the waters before those.

And even if they underperform, the issue seems to be the entire superhero genre if not the cinema industry in general.

Well remember that the studio only gets half of the box office (approx 55% domestic 40-45% international and 25% china) and there are marketing costs

so in millions

Film Cost Advert BoxOffice Take P/L
Dr Strange 295 100 678 339 -56
Thor L&T 250 100 760 380 30
Panther 2 250 100 859 430 80
A&W Quantum 200 100 476 238 -62
GoG 3 250 100 846 423 73

So a total profit of 65 million
and that is with best possible costs to Disney
they have been shown to have a history of underestimating those costs by a fair marking when people go and get the tax breaks they ask for from the UK gov. By enough that the UK tax scheme payback is less than the additional costs...but it takes a couple years to get that data.
so "make Bank" is an overstatment IMO
Especial since they have also had major problems in merch, D+ marvel etc.

[Lemmy]

As a rule of thumb, a movie has to make at least 3 to 4 times its production cost just to break even.

And let's not forget studios have a habit of understating their costs (e.g.: they often don't include reshoots when declaring production costs). I don't recall right now if it was The Marvels or some other big Disney movie that was revealed to have cost over 70 million more than initially stated.

Besides, even if you "make bank", if the margins are minimal... That isn't good.

No one spends 250 million dollars just to have a 10 to 20 million profit. That's not sustainable for companies as large as Disney or Warner.

[Ramza00]

As a rule of thumb, a movie has to make at least 3 to 4 times its production cost just to break even.

It does not really matter for we will have not access to the real numbers

but Disney is not structured like other companies like Sony or Universal, they can make more money in other domains like Merch and Theme Parks

We can not access the true numbers for Disney in the digestive and creation process, much like I can not access the true numbers of what I eat and what happens with my body.

[Carl]

Regarding the Kree, i think this movie recontextualizes them a bit, but not in a way that actually clashes with prior depictions, (i'll also agree they've suffered a bit from faceless goon syndrome). Having a genocidal AI that acts as both your political class and your administrative civil service running your entire species for a few thousand years whilst brainwashing anyone who even slightly steps out of line means they have no real experiance of how to actually run things without an AI or make their own decisions or settle their own disagreements.

Carol (as she says in the movie), was trying to set the Kree free to choose what they wanted to be without the AI brainwashing them into compliance. But of course an entire species with no experiance of ruling themselves and trained to see any problem as one to be opposed with military force was going to suffer a major civil war in the aftermath. In a way Carol there had the same problem the Kree themselves had. When all you have is a hammer you start seeing every problem as a nail. And thats what she's mad at herself over. She was trying to help them, she saw them as mostly just brainwashed people like her, but the way she went about it meant all that millenia of brainwashing to enforce conformity created a perfect scenario for a civil war. And that civil war has made the kree peoples situation worse, not better.

So of course if she was trying to help them by blowing up the AI she's going to be mad and upset at herself for the civil war that followed. In hindsight it's an obvious end result but s she puts in in the film she; 'was too blinded by self righteousness to see the consequences of her actions'. I'm going to be honest, i think this message was an important one for the movie to have. No it's not really fair on herself for her to entirely blame herself for what happened, but equally it was a direct consequence of somthing she did, responsibility for the consequences of your actions is a good thing to have and a good message to send. It's a balancing act ultimately and often incredibly nuanced.

@warty_goblin: Ant Man 3's issue wasn't the CGI, it was the pacing, 'The Marvels' whilst suffering from not letting the emotional moments breathe enough, was able to squeeze enough of them into the the action scenes enough to make them still mostly work. It could have been better but it wasn't actively bad. Ant Man 3 didn't let them breathe at all and they totally fell flat as a result. It's a movie thats just pure action scenes and exposition. Which is a shame, they had some good stuff they could have done with it if they'd just taken some more time with it. But this has been a persistent issue going back to at least Eternal's. they're trying to cram too many emotional arcs and major plots into each movies runtimes. The Marvels just gets much closer to a good balance than anything else since then has, (that i've seen).


Oh, btw, whilst i'll probably write a spoilered summary later, i'd recommend everyone watch both seasons of Loki. The ending of Season 2 is functionally the biggest thing to happen in the MCU to date. And i wouldn't trust marvel to do a good job of expositioning it when it inevitably comes up in future, (they did good in marvels with introducing Kamala and Monica, but thats been the exception IMO). But the Season 2 finale won't make any sense without watching the rest of the first 2 seasons.

p.s.s totally agree lockjaw is the goodest boi, everything i've seen of him, (not a comics person at all), has been great 11/10 would pet the big goober.

[Ramza00]

Is Lockjaw to Kamala, what Lockheed the Space Dragon is to Kate Pryde?

[sktarq]

It does not really matter for we will have not access to the real numbers

but Disney is not structured like other companies like Sony or Universal, they can make more money in other domains like Merch and Theme Parks

We can not access the true numbers for Disney in the digestive and creation process, much like I can not access the true numbers of what I eat and what happens with my body.

Actually we can get decent numbers for some of those movies. If a significant portion of the film was made in the UK then they can ask the UK gov to cover up to 25% of the cost of those part that happened within the UK. No in order to qualify they have to basically run ALL of the movie through a UK based holding corp because some minimum % has to UK based..so they need the denominator in the UK/Total ratio....Well those requests are considered public documents. Now they can and do obfuscate these things...clever holding company names, a year or more of delay is common etc. Forbes goes into a Lucas FIlm example here. Though I will say it was 75% higher than media quotes at the time. And this has been shown to be true with other films by Disney too. In my above post I was going with the overage and the cash back scheme would be a wash; I was being generous.

And Disney wouldn't be in trouble if this was the only problem...but it isn't D+ is still loosing $$ hand over fist. The big boost in subscribers comes from giving it away via the fight they had with Spectrum Cable and so the return per customer is sliding....The parks are not doing all that well and their big headline $60BB investment is weighted well into the 10 year timeframe and focused on parks in china where they get far less of the profit...it is basically "more timeshares" in the US. Cruises however are going gangbusters. And recently with the strike they have been able to freeze many of their costs (with nothing being made less $$ is going out the door) and that is about to end. Linear TV is "dying" the non Marvel studios are having issues too. Little Mermaid, Pixar, Lucas Film have all under-performed at best and mostly lost money...Top line revenues be damned their costs are too damn high.

Basically too many things are going wrong all at once.

[Psyren]

Well when Disney implodes and files Chapter 11 I'll acknowledge you were right. Any day now I'm sure.

[Ramza00]

Sorry still not going down that path Sktarq, I am an economist by training and I recognize present value becoming future value is kind of unknowable, it is all vibes, guesses, expectations (and individual factors can change everything). Just because a “property” made X amount this quarter or this year or this twenty year period is not predictive of future results. Hell one of the founders of economics William Petty picked the random date you should judge the profitability of a farm is 21 years for he thought magically (he was obessed with actuarial tables and this was 1600s mathematics) 21 years is the longest one can be sure grandpa, pa, and adult son can be alive and this assumes the family keeps the farm.

Accounting is real, but the rules of sacrifice and depreciation are kind of “vibes”, you can not truly judge a thing without knowing too much. *shrug*

=====

Note I agree with you too many things are happening at once so it will be a non ideal situation to owners and managers of Disney stock, I am just saying one can not treat this as a science much like you tried to create heuristics of 3x or 4x I say that is mental schema or put another way a SCHEME and it is still vibes and a game plan. Much like Darth Vaders plan to build a Death Star in A New Hope, including torturing his daughter to obtain the location of the rebel base, Thanos plan to gain the 5 crystals and put it into a glove and then make the Disney properties make sense like getting blood from a stone, half of the MCU shows must die 🙃

( yes what I just said is nonsense, Hope you had fun, I hope we balanced the mixture of fun and doing the work right, like Eros and Thanatos, one should not worship death [drive] like a mad Titan )

[gbaji]

My only complaint was the credit scene in Infinity War made it seem like watching Captain Marvel would be important before seeing Endgame. Which it wasn't.

Hmmm... I know a guy who watched Endgame, and the one sticking point he immediately asked me about was "Who the heck was that woman who just appeared out of nowhere and blew up Thanos' ship?". So, while you didn't need to know the plot and events in the Captain Marvel film, it was useful to see it to know who the character was, and what her powers were, especially with the whole "can power up and blast right through big honking spaceships with ease".

Marvel has a real problem, both in the comics and the movies, of having consistancy around different worlds, different dimensions, different universes, different timelines, etc etc.

In the movies, we started with different worlds. Asgard and the other nine realms where all planets, connected by a rainbow-colored transportation network.
Then we got other dimensions. Dr. Strange gave us "the dark dimension" and introduced time travel and the consequences of time travel (multiple timelines)
We also got the Quantumverse. A seeming dimension at the subatomic level in which time runs differently.

In Ms. Marvel, it seemed that the location the Clan Destine came from was another such dimension (like the dark dimension) and not a different universe/timeline (ala What If or Spider Man or EndGame)

So we learn that why Ms Marvel can use the bangle, is because of her other-dimensional mixed blood. Great. I'm fine with that.

But then we get a throwaway line at the end where they try to force her into being a mutant? I mean, is that mutation due to her otherdimensional bloodline? Or is it something different. because if its meant to be the x-factor of x-men lore, i'm not going to be happy if its contingent on otherdimensional bloodlines. And I'm not going to be happy if is separate either because now its getting convoluted.

Also, it seems like most of the creators are reaching a point where they are treating "other dimensions" and "other timelines" as interchangeable. I feel like they aren't consistent on if there is a difference and why. But they certainly treat some dimensions (Dark Dimension, Quantumverse, Clan Destine, the Egyptian land of the dead from moon knight) as something different than other timelines in some products.

Marvel tends to use the terms "dimension" and "alternate reality/timeline" pretty much the same way every other sci-fi setting does. Dimensions are different places you can go to within a universe that are maybe off to the side in terms of normal space (ie: you generally can't just walk/fly to them). So all the places you mentioned just above are dimensions within an existing reality/timeline.

Different realities/timelines are branches in time. So in one, a person did one thing, and in another they did something different. There's a fixed number of dimensions within any reality, but in theory an infinite number of different realities, since every single choice/action that has ever occurred since the beginning of time creates another branch of time in which a different choice/action occurred instead.

As a sci-fi geek/nerd, you need to get this straight!


Having said all of that, sometimes the writers for this genre themselves mess those up, or just ignore them for writing convenience though. I mean, you've got alternate reality stuff going on, and a character with an item/power that taps into energy from another dimension, so... um... why not make them connected, right? Yeah. It can be a bit of a facepalm moment. To be honest, I just learned to roll with that stuff long ago. It's great when writers are knowledgeable and consistent with this stuff and I appreciate it greatly. But I don't let it ruin my appreciation for a story when they don't.

[Tyndmyr]

3/5 made bank. We're not at doomsday yet.

I don't think Marvel is in as dire straits as some do; the real litmus will be the performance of things like Deadpool and X-Men, provided there isn't another strike muddying the waters before those.

Hollywood likes to play games with the numbers. They want to show success to the public, of course. This means some of these numbers are...dodgy.

Thor: Love and Thunder supposedly records 160m from streaming, for instance....because Disney paid itself for the ability to stream it on Disney+. Now, Disney+ is operating at a deep loss, so it is quite possible that Disney is still losing money on the affair. The streaming "gain" is certainly larger than the profit margin for the movie as a whole. In any objective sense, it's likely a loss.

Quantumania's a dead loss. It fell about $180 mil short of its projected breakeven point.

Black Panther 2 was generally reported as a profit, but you've got $170 million of padding for streaming. This again substantially exceeds the amount listed as profit, so it's possible that Disney actually had a loss on it. You've also got about a quarter billion dollars less revenue than from BP 1, so the trendline here is deeply concerning.

GotG 3 and Multiverse did fine at the box office. However, costs to make these films are rising. Multiverse ran about $350 mil to make, so it *had* to sell a fortune to make a profit. For comparison, the original Iron Man had a $140 mil budget. This means that the actual profits are getting thinner even as the amount risked grows higher.

Did those five films make a net profit in total? Perhaps. But not a great deal of it, certainly, and the net result may be an overall loss. The answers to that lie deep in Disney's accounting, and certainly they have a motive to make themselves appear successful.

In addition, the Marvels is projected to be a bad flop. This guarantees a net loss for the last six films.

And even if they underperform, the issue seems to be the entire superhero genre if not the cinema industry in general.

Cinema in general isn't doin' bad. Avatar 2 raked in a giant mound of money. I didn't care for it, but apparently plenty of people did. Mario and Barbie were both standalone films with a touch of nostalgia, but no giant cinematic universe to lean on, and they both broke a billion dollars.

There's an appetite there for good films. They don't even have to be particularly novel. Mario wasn't anything groundbreaking, but it was executed well enough, and people wanted a good family film. Result: Piles of cash. It cost them $100mil to make, and brought in over $1.3 billion dollars. That's way better than any recent MCU film.

The Superhero genre doesn't seem to be dead. Across the Spiderverse did fine, getting almost $700 million from a budget of $100 mil, several hundred million up from the prior entry.

It does not really matter for we will have not access to the real numbers

but Disney is not structured like other companies like Sony or Universal, they can make more money in other domains like Merch and Theme Parks

They're a publicly traded company, so yeah, we have some pretty good numbers. Disney+ lost 4 billion last year, so streaming is not really the holy grail for making these properties profitable, and a lot of the "earnings" pumped into these films from this source are essentially imaginary to make the films appear better.

Theme park attendance is also rough. It had a bump in the post-covid times, but attendance is dropping now, and Disney projects a continuation of this trend. They lost $120 million overall in 2022, so if theme parks are suffering, that's probably not going to be the thing that saves their other failing venture.

[GloatingSwine]

Hollywood likes to play games with the numbers. They want to show success to the public, of course. This means some of these numbers are...dodgy.

Yeah, but it's the opposite game.

They want to officially not have made a profit so they can skip out on paying residuals and/or taxes. Return of the Jedi, for instance, has not officially made a profit despite taking over 12x its budget at the box office even before they rereleased it.

[warty goblin]

I've never understood why so many companies jumped on streaming. I mean on the one hand you can make money selling movie tickets and DVDs and know how much any given release actually generates in revenue. On the other hand you can give everybody access to everything you have for $15 a month and have no idea how much of your revenue is coming from that hot new thing you just released, your back catalogue, or people forgetting that the free trial expired back in August, while you have to pay for servers and bandwidth and tech support and all that nonsense. On the third hand you can just license your catalogue out to want to people who will pay you for the rights to stream it, again making it worth an actual dollar amount you can bank on.

It's sort of like the entire movie industry watched the music industry incinerate their bottom line, went "hold my beer" and spent even more money for the gas to incinerate their bottom line.

As a customer, streaming made a lot of sense when it was just Netflix for $15 a month and buying/renting other stuff on Amazon. I'm increasingly less and less convinced that in the balkanized world of modern streaming where you need umpteen services, they keep sprouting ads, and content disappears on the regular, that I wasn't better served buying stuff on DVD.