Why I'm Sick to Death of the MCU
This is going to be a long rant. Buckle up.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, which began as a handful of nice superhero movies, is now a snarl of dozens of films and several TV shows. But to understand what I’ve liked and disliked about the MCU over the years, you need to know what sort of things I like and dislike about comic books.
What I like about comic books:- The joy of a world with superheroes in it
- While there’s always an overarching story arc, there’s also usually a self-contained story that resolves itself in one issue
- Different series have different tones; one is light and funny, while another is dark and somber
- The sheer level of ethnic and religious diversity in today’s comics, ensuring that there is a hero for every fan to relate to
- Superheroes in the same universe have opinions about each other that fit with their characters and personalities
- Most local comic-book shops are friendly, clean, wonderful spaces
- Some series have really good Annual Special Issues
- They quickly start to take up a lot of space unless you’re buying them as ebooks
- Convoluted, lengthy crossovers that require you to keep up with 5 different series just to know what’s going on
- Tone whiplash when a light comic goes dark or a serious comic suddenly gets silly
- Because comics tend to run for decades, it can be hard for a newbie to know where to start
When the MCU first came along, the films that would introduce the Avengers could also stand alone. You didn’t have to know anything about any comic-book character in order to enjoy Captain America. You didn’t have to have watched any other movies in order to understand the sibling rivalry between Thor and Loki. And when the first Avengers movie came out, it too could stand alone. You didn’t have to have seen any of the characters’ film debuts in order to understand them as people or to understand the plot of the film. (For Joss Whedon’s many, many faults, he at least is capable of making a character feel like a believable person, and the first Avengers movie definitely benefited from this.) At this point, 2012, I liked the MCU because while the movies fit together nicely, they could also stand alone. That was one of the specific reasons I liked it.
And then, the MCU introduced other characters whose stories didn’t appear to relate to the Avengers. A Spider-Man reboot. Guardians of the Galaxy. Ant-Man. Doctor Strange. Characters who didn’t show up in the main, Avengers-driven plot. “This is great,” I thought. “Stand-alone characters who are fun to watch! The exact kind of thing I like about comic books!”
You already know where this is going, because every single one of those characters got wound up into the Avengers plotline during Infinity Wars, a 3-hour film which did not do viewers the minimal courtesy of including “Part 1” in its title, thus leading me and probably other theater-goers to believe that the film wouldn’t end on a fucking cliffhanger.
Again, in order to know in advance that Infinity Wars was part 1 of a two-parter, one would have to have read the Infinity Wars comics when they came out, a thing that I had not done because I did not read comics in the 1990s, aside from the occasional copy of Archie’s Sonic at the local drugstore. (That series is deserving of its own rant, but I’m trying to focus on the MCU right now.)
And then they butchered my boy Spider-Man.
See, in the comics, Spider-Man, as a working-class superhero, doesn’t trust Iron Man. At all. Not only because he’s super-rich, but because he is an arms dealer. Spider-Man’s suspicion of Iron Man is a long-standing part of his character, as is his working-class background. We're talking 60 years' worth of comics that have cemented these two parts of Peter Parker's character into the lore.
In the MCU, Iron Man is a sort of father-figure to Spider-Man, to the point that his death at the end of the Infinity Wars dualogy is treated like a second Uncle Ben incident. He gives Peter new costumes, a scholarship to an exclusive private school, all sort of gadgets, to the point that Peter Parker, in the MCU, just doesn’t feel like Spider-Man. Sure, some of the important plot points are still there. “With great power comes great responsibility.” Uncle Ben dies. But so much of who Spider-Man is is wound up in Peter Parker being working-class, and the MCU ignores that entirely.
And it just keeps going. We can’t have stand-alone anything anymore; everything that’s come out since the Infinity Wars films has required viewers to have kept up with the entire MCU up to that point, just to know what’s going on. The MCU has, effectively, taken the worst aspect of American comic books—the need to keep up with multiple different series in order to enjoy just ONE story—and made it worse. If I want to know about a complicated story arc in a comic book, we’re looking at maybe 5 issues of other comic books to read first. You can read that in a couple hours. To keep up with the MCU takes maybe a week or more of screentime. It’s ridiculous and I hate it.
Then there’s the churn and the over-reliance on “plot twists.” We can’t have just 1-2 Marvel movies per year, no. There have to be a half-dozen. Oh, Chadwick Boseman is dead? No problem, just have the Black Panther die offscreen so we can milk his death for a few million more dollars. Green-screen 90% of every movie so we never have to film anything on location or even have half-decent sets. Work CGI artists half to death, so we never even have to use live animals or anything else real. Keep the actors from knowing what happens in the films they’re starring in, because the plot is so fragile that “spoilers” will ruin it.
There was a time, not so long ago, that you could expect to see 3-4 summer blockbusters a year, all from different studios, and going to the movies was fun. Expensive, sure, but fun. The MCU killed that. Now, you get 4-5 Marvel movies, and nothing else, in theaters in the summer. I am not exaggerating when I say that Disney killed the blockbuster.
Please, Disney, I am begging you. Put the MCU out of its misery already.