I watched Thunderbolts a couple of nights ago. I saw some of the discussion above about the MCU. The problem I’m having with the MCU right now is that everything is just ok. Thunderbolts was ok. Ironheart was ok. Brave New World was ok. They’re all ok. I personally think talk about superhero burnout or MCU burnout or whatever is missing the issue. When the MCU was new, they were really taking some chances. It’s easy to forget this now, but in 2008, Iron Man was NOT a household name among people who didn’t grow up reading Marvel Comics. He was not a character who had transcended his media and just become a part of the culture like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, the Hulk, or the X-Men. Making an Iron Man movie the starting point for a shared comic film universe was risky. Casting a then still kind of problematic actor trying to rehab his reputation in the lead role in that movie was risky. Making another Hulk movie just a few years after the Ang Lee directed one as the second film was also risky. And the Avengers to tie it all together? At the time, the average movie goer, if they had ever heard of the Avengers thought it was just an old British spy series. Again, it wasn’t a well known superhero team outside of Marvel Comics fans. And even among them, it was behind the X-Men and the Fantastic 4 in popularity and prestige. These were risky films. Guardians of the Galaxy? A sentient tree and a talking raccoon? What the hell was that? It was risky. Those risks mostly paid off, because the scripts were good and the casting was great.
Marvel has stopped taking risks. They also seem like they don’t have a plan. They just keep throwing shit out there hoping something sticks. The next big bad was supposed to be Kang, and then Jonathan Majors fucked that plan up. That certainly didn’t help, but even with him, I don’t know what the plan there was. And they’ve been splitting their efforts between streaming series and films, and it’s all been pretty random and very hit and miss.
I really think they missed an opportunity with Ironheart. I don’t know a lot about the character from the comics, to be honest, but that’s ok. As I pointed out, Iron Man wasn’t exactly a well known character in 2008. They had the freedom with Ironheart to take chances, do something risky, and swing for the fences. And . . . they just didn’t. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good, either. The Red Hood was interesting, I guess, but I don’t know if having him as the antagonist to Riri Williams really worked. I mean . . . honestly, he just wasn’t that much of a threat to her really. It felt like, I dunno, not a good matchup. And the ending straight up sucked, in my opinion. Thunderbolts had some ok moments. I kinda liked the whole depression metaphor, but I almost wish they had made this more of a cerebral film about that, and ditched all the action stuff, which was mostly boring and stuff we’ve all seen a ton of by this point. I dunno. It was ok. Florence Pugh and David Harbour were great, because of course they were. Everyone else was meh. I have no interest in seeing a New Avengers movie with this manifestation of the New Avengers. None at all.
I don’t know where Marvel goes from here. I hope the F4 movie is good. Maybe they can be the cornerstone of a new generation of films, but I’m not hopeful considering there have been 3 failed F4 movies before. 4 if you include the Roger Corman attempt. Which I kind of think you should. It was only made to keep the rights to the film alive, but that’s the same reason Fox later made the 2015 F4 reboot. Anyway, it seems to be a tough story to adapt to film. I hope this version works.
An interesting response in the comments:
