Marvel Studios used to make a good film FIRST and have the bigger story arc of the MCU be a nice-add-on. That's why their movies have always been stellar. But lately they seem to be chasing another big Avengers Infinity War/End Game arc first, putting characters and story second, and it's ruining everything. Make the movie you're making now the best it can be. Then drop a few things that aren't distracting, but pushing what you're building up to. It's formula, but it works.

Today the teaser trailer was released for their second big movie of 2025 (after Captain America: New World Order), and it looks very promising...

And the movie poster is glorious...

Now, readers of Marvel comic books have a lot to take in here. The concept of the MCU version of Thunderbolts is very different from what we've seen in the source material. But... there's things in the trailer which are familiar too. The biggest of which is the debut of Sentry, likely the most powerful character in the entire Marvel Universe. How they decided to put such a character in Thunderbolts I have no idea. But it's very cool. They could have saved it for an Avengers film (heaven only knows the guy is powerful enough to take on the entire team!), but they must have had a good idea for Thunderbolts and decided to put the movie first and go that route.

Bravo.

I really, really hope that Marvel Studios is back to their former ideals and not coasting with movies that have no purpose for the characters, but exist solely to push a bigger narrative (Like Ant Man: Quantumania which, ironically, is now completely irrelevant since Kang has exited the MCU and may never be mentioned again despite the cliffhanger post-credits ending).

One can hope.

"Madame Web is spectacular. A triumph of the human spirit and a film which redeems super-hero movies for all eternity. No greater achievement in artistic expression will ever come to pass, and I’m rendered awestruck that such a cinematic masterpiece exists within my lifetime. Oscar glory awaits. Now streaming, only on Netflix!" —David Simmer II, Blogography

Look, I'm not here to pile on the absolute fucking disaster that is Madame Web because plenty of professional movie reviewers have taken care of that.

Except I am, because when you release utter shit in the comic book genre, then you oversaturate the market and fuck up people's confidence in comic book movies which might actually be worth a shit (see: every shitty Zack Snyder DC Comics movie ever).

But anyway... Madame Web...

From what I can tell, this is loosely based on the Spider-Man comic book saga The Grim Hunt where Kraven the Hunter's family starts hunting the various spider-characters of the Marvel Universe because their blood will resurrect Kraven (who had died earlier in the series. Or something like that. It's been over a decade since I read them.

Except instead of Kraven's family it's a different Marvel character, Ezekiel, who's hunting spider-people. And instead of wanting to resurrect Kraven, he wants to kill the spider-people because he's convinced they will kill him. The changes make sense because the Kraven movie hasn't come out yet and the film doesn't have Spider-Man in it. The comic book story is also where Madame Web dies (spoiler alert), but whatever.

But anyway... Madame Web...

In the comic books she's an old lady who's blind and paralyzed from a disease, but can see the future. She's kept alive by a network of tubes that resembles a spider's web...

Arguably one of the stupidest fucking heroes ever, she was shoe-horned into the Spider-Man Universe with a sledgehammer. Which is apt because Sony Pictures intended to shoe-horn this stupid fucking movie into the Marvel Cinematic Universe for no other reason that they own the motion picture rights to the Spider-Man characters. And they want to cash in on the fact that their deal with Marvel to put Spider-Man in the MCU has been incredibly lucrative. How they thought they would make money with a character that absolutely nobody gives a shit about is beyond me. And this film comes after the hilarious flop that was Morbius, which makes Sony look even more idiotic. And just you wait... Kraven is coming on December 13th!

But anyway... Madame Web...

The film is about a woman named Cassie Webb whose mother was shot by the evil Ezekiel in Costa Rica as she looked for a magical spider. He wanted the magic spider she found, and killed her for it. In an attempt to save her life, a mysterious group of spider-people let one of these magical spiders bite her to give her super-powers. But it's too late. She dies, Cassie is born, and she grows up to find out the magical spider that bit her mom gives her the ability to see the future. Meanwhile, Ezekiel and his precognitive abilities foresees that three girls will eventually get spider-powers and be responsible for his death. So he sets out to kill them first. Cassie sets out to same them. Totally unoriginal and boring super-hero antics ensue.

This movie is horrendous. Nothing makes sense. Major plot points could have easily been circumnavigated with even ten seconds of thought. And you could tell that they were jerking the story around from start to finish because there's a lot of inserted dialogue which is painfully fucking obvious. Whether this is studio interference or incompetence is anybody's guess. All I do know is that, with the exception of a few action sequences that aren't half bad, the movie is an ungodly mess that should have never been made.

It's just more garbage being inserted into the comic book movie genre that nobody wants or asks for.

And it so happened that the sequel to Captain Marvel, titled The Marvels, is not doing well at the box office. It likely cost $250 million to make. Another $200 million to market. And is slowly approaching $120 million at the box office after five days in theaters. That's a lot of money, but when compared to previous Marvel Studios movies... it's a massive disappointment. It might very well break even after streaming/video revenue arrives... but there's likely not a third Captain Marvel movie happening because movies have to earn a billion at the box office to make studios happy. Which is a shame, because actual people who have seen the movie say it's a fun ride and terrific entertainment...

The fanboys are cackling over it all, of course, saying that "This is what happens when you're a woke company making woke films with an all-female cast!" Which is 100% bullshit, of course. But facts don't matter any more, so this is what we have to keep listening to.

What's happening here is not a big mystery. This is a trend that has nothing to do with Disney being "woke" or that the film features a "female cast" (remember that the original Captain Marvel made over a billion dollars). There's a lot of factors at play...

• People just aren't going to the theaters as much. It takes a truly breakout film to draw people to theaters and achieve massive box office success. That could be something entirely new (such as Barbie), or a no-brainer beloved IP (such as Super Mario Brothers), or a masterpiece with a compelling story (such as Oppenheimer). I would love to see The Marvels right now. But not enough to go to the theater to do it. I absolutely fucking hate going to movies where people are talking, lighting up their phone screens, and (ugh) chewing loudly. I have a far, far better experience at home. And that's where I will be watching The Marvels. If Disney wanted to make money off of non-theater goers like me, they might consider offering a $50 dollar, 24 hour at-home rental a week after the movie hits theaters. Which includes a free copy of the movie once it is released to home video months later. Not a great thing to do to theaters who are supporting your project, but this film ain't going to be in theaters for long if nobody is going to see it.
• Super-hero fatigue is a real thing. There's just so much damn super-hero content inundating people, and rarely is it something new and fresh. Comic book films have degenerated to Hallmark movies... the same stories over and over with different actors. Now, don't get me wrong, I watch every Hallmark movie that gets released... and am thrilled to consume as much of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as they want to feed me... but I am abnormal that way. Most people aren't like that. They're bored. They've moved on. And buzz isn't building over these genre films as it used to be. Especially when you have DC muddying the waters with shit like Wonder Woman 1984 and The Batman and Black Adam and Shazam!: Fury of the Gods and The Flash and Blue Beetle... and really everything after he brilliant Christopher Nolan Batman Trilogy (excepting the first Wonder Woman and Suicide Squad). The average movie-goer cannot distinguish between DC and Marvel, so everything is lumped together in their head... and there's a lot of not-great films happening there. Next up is... Madame Web?... crapped out by Sony? WTF? Didn't they learn their lesson with Mobius?
• Quality is declining, badly. The lead up to Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame was filled with incredible movies that were all carefully planned to be both stand-alone stories and build to something incredible. But Marvel Studios has made several missteps to sow disinterest in even the most diehard MCU fans. The "Multiverse Saga" has been a complete bust... forcing movies into a plot thread that's not fun or entertaining. With the exception of Hawkeye and Werewolf By Night, which I loved (and had nothing to do with the "multiverse"), all the Disney+ shows have been painfully average or outright bad. The movies have shown flashes of what I love (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Spider-Man: No Way Home) and movie I enjoyed quite a lot (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) and even a movie that was good but could have been so much better (Eternals). But everything else in Phases Four and Five that I've seen... five out of nine movies... haven't lived up to expectations (the idea of seeing Clea in a Doctor Strange movie is thrilling... but that happened only in a two-minute post-credits scene... that should have been the entire movie, but they were forced into this "multiverse" crap, so that's what we got).
• The MCU momentum is slowing to a crawl. Everything keeps getting delayed. People are forgetting what's getting us to where we're going. Marvel Studios has one movie in 2024. When you aren't keeping the Marvel Cinematic Universe in people's heads, it's silly to expect these random movies are getting any benefit from what's come before. Three awesome movies a year with blockbuster characters that people want to see is what needs to happen, and they're not doing that. Yes, I understand that the actors are wanting to retire from these characters, but they're the characters that people know and love, so recasting them should be the priority over dragging out D-list characters that people don't know or care about. This has been a serious, serious misstep by Disney management. I don't get it at all. They're supposedly building a team of "Young Avengers" which could be awesome because the comics are awesome... but is anybody outside of comic book nerds like me going to give a shit? How are these films going to make any money? Introducing new characters is good, but saying "We've got Ms. Maravel, Patriot, Stature, Wiccan, Speed, and America Chavez... plus kid versions of Hawkeye and Falcon!" is a far cry from saying "We've got Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Spider-Man, Black Widow, The Hulk, Hawkeye, Falcon, Vision, and Scarlet Witch!" or whatever. I'm sure the hope is that the Young Avengers will be the next Guardians of the Galaxy... but the fact that you don't have box office names like Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, and Karen Gillan... means that the odds of achieving the same success are practically zero.
• The future is anything but bright. The lead-up to a confrontation with Kang should have been phenomenal. The lead-up to an adaptation of Secret Wars should have been incredible. But there are no anchor films to get us there. Deadpool 3 will be great because Deadpool is great, but it's very much it's own thing. Which means the films we get before the next two Avengers movies are Captain America: Brave New World, Fantastic Four, Thunderbolts, and Blade?!?? WHAT THE FUCK? I mean, it's not that these films can't be great entertainment and a lot of fun... I love these characters... but this is the lead-up to two of the biggest events in comic book history? I dunno. Maybe Matt Shakman has an idea of how to make his Fantastic Four film catapult us int something that makes sense... but this is so weak. Compare the films leading up to Infinity War to this and it just seems absurd.
• I hate to say "reboot"... but, yeah, reboot this shit. The one thing I have loved about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that everything is interconnected like the comics. I love it when characters pop up in each other's movies. But when it's a bunch of D-listers, the current trend is not sustainable because you're going to have a rough time making a profit. A fresh reboot may be the only way out. And by "fresh" I mean not recycling the same stories we've already seen.

And there you have it. I don't think that anything I've said is going to be news to anybody paying attention. But since Marvel doesn't seem to be paying attention, I guess it needed to be said.

Here's hoping that the streaming release for The Marvels won't keep me waiting too long.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is unraveling, and it started with their Phase Four slate.

I liked Black Widow quite a bit. It wasn't a perfect film, but it was good entertainment. I loved Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. It added a new layer to super-heroics and made things feel fresh. Eternals was a big convoluted mess of a film, but I grew to appreciate it after a couple more viewings. Had they just focused on a smaller set of the more interesting characters (and killed off Sprite in the opening five minutes) it could have been a really good flick. Spider-Man: No Way Home was fan service from start to finish, but it was darn good fan service and a step up from the previous Spider film. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was just okay. It did Wanda dirty and kinda spun its wheels in ways that were tedious, but Doctor Strange is one of my favorite Marvel characters, so I made allowances. Thor: Love and Thunder got panned, but I actually liked it well enough. Yes, it went off-the-rails silly and Taika should have been reigned in, but it was still fun to watch. Then we get to the only movie in Phase Four that completely knocked it out of the park: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. As impossible as it was to imagine a Black Panther movie without Black Panther, Ryan Coogler just completely nailed why we are invested in Wakanda and the characters who inhabit it.

And then we got to Phase Five.

Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania was a barely good movie that squandered the characters in a way that I don't understand at all. What made the first two so great is the fact that Ant-Man is a tiny hero in a big world is exploited for fantastic action, cool scenarios, and genuine laughs. By shoving him to "The Quantum Realm," every bit of that is lost. There's no scale for anything. Laughs are driven by just being weird instead of being funny. The action went wider in scope, which actually felt more confined. It was C+ entertainment that had me mad at the missed opportunity of a much, much better film.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3 was a complete 180° (mostly in a good way, though it definitely had some major problems) and, when paired with Shang-Chi and Wakanda Forever, was what Phase Four should have been. Films which were orchestrated with, intent, purpose, and quality that made Phases One through Three the benchmark for comic book movies. But instead Marvel did was Marvel used to never do... make films which are only good because of their context within a bigger universe. They don't really stand on their own and aren't really all that entertaining on their own. Quantumania was a vehicle to introduce Kang, and they didn't care how they had to force the movie to go to do that.

And don't get me started on the Marvel Shows for Disney+. With the sole exception of Hawkeye, which was better than many Marvel movies as of late, everything had its problems and is pretty forgettable to me. Secret Invasion starts Wednesday and looks promising. After that it's Loki 2 and, heaven help us, Echo. From there it's more static until Daredevil: Born Again arrives next year.

I understand what Marvel/Disney was trying to do with their Disney+ shows... extend the franchise with stories which need more room than a movie or wouldn't work as a movie... provide content for the streaming service... and give people something Marvel to watch in-between the films. But most importantly, it introduced us to characters like Moon Knight, She-Hulk, and (soon to be) Wonder Man who can pop up in the next Big Thing: Secret Wars (now delayed until... 2026?!?).

Industry pundits are saying that the decline in attention to Marvel's films is due to "super-hero fatigue." And while that's certainly a part of it... the simple fact is that Marvel isn't churning out as good as content as they used to. Which is a shame, because these are among my favorite films of all time.

Fortunately I can always go back and revisit those incredible early flicks any time I want.

GAAAAAAAAAAAH!

We have to wait until NOVEMBER to get to see The Marvels, which is many months too long.

Especially when you look at this incredible new trailer that just dropped...

They came up with a great way to make this crossover happen, and Kamala Khan is adorable.

But it's seven+ months away.

Bummer.

An even bigger bummer is that Disney is dictating that Marvel slow down its output. "Quality over Quantity." And yet... in my mind it's not the movies that are suffering. Granted, I haven't seen Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania yet, but there hasn't been many missteps (only Eternals comes to mind, because it was a bit of a mess... but it's also a fun watch). No, for me it's the television shows that aren't up to the quality they should be.

But I haven't hated any of them.

I thought WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier were okay. Loki was good. Hawkeye was fantastic. Moon Knight was a disappointment. Ms. Marvel didn't live up to its potential. And I thought She-Hulk was good, but the ending leaned too hard into the whole fourth-wall-breaking stuff and short-changed the emotional stakes of the show.

Of the upcoming shows... Secret Invasion looks fantastic. Loki will likely be good. Ironheart could be great... if the story is worth watching. Echo I don't care about... unless it is guest-star heavy. Agatha: Coven of Chaos will likely not be my cup of tea (although I will absolutely watch it). And then there's Daredevil: Born Again... holy crap am I excited for this series. Charlie Cox's Netflix show was amazing, and his guest spot in She-Hulk was as good as it gets. I love the idea that he might be a little more upbeat and fun rather than the never-ending gloom of the Netflix show. She-Hulk shows that he can be serious... but also fun and exciting to watch. I hope they give him an overwhelming villain to really show off his abilities.

Marvel has done a great job bringing their comic book characters to live action. I seriously hope that their "stepping back" doesn't kill the momentum they've been building. Because we've got Secret Wars coming up, and that has such exciting possibilities that the potential for success is extremely high (assuming they really take advantage of what Secret Wars was and could be).

Now that I've been cutting streaming services left and right to save money for fixing all the stuff going wrong in my home, I'm confining myself to the few streaming services that I still have left. Which is Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Discovery+, and YouTube. Some of these were pre-paid for a year... but Netflix will be rotated with with Hulu and Paramount+ and Peacock so I can keep up with all the shows I watch.

Since I missed a week blogging, I thought I'd list out some of the stuff that I've been watching.

I've watched the Season Finale of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law three times, but have held off talking about it because I wanted to make sure that everybody had a chance to see it. There's a lot to love about this series (starting with Tatiana Maslany), but if I had to pick one thing that absolutely thrilled me... it would be seeing Matt Murdock happy. Unlike the dark, dour, depressing Daredevil in the Netflix Universe, which was amazing... the MCU version is the complete opposite and amazing too. Hats off to Charlie Cox... only an actor with some real talent has the chops to pull off both versions of the character. What's so hilarious to me are all the people going on and on about how She-Hulk RUINED THE CHARACTER! No... they didn't. That version is still available to watch if that's what you want. If nothing else, the action was on-point...

In all honesty, I think that the reason people are pouring so much hate on She-Hulk is because it confronts toxic masculinity head-on. Oh well. Stay mad about it, I guess. I thought the series was entertaining as hell and really want a second season.

I'm not done raving about Andor yet. That show is remarkably well thought-out and realized. And the acting is just beyond. Diego Luna is incredible (as expected) but there's nobody falling short of his example, and it's amazing to watch. The eighth episode is fantastic in that you can see they are actually building towards something, and nothing that's come before was by accident. Four more episodes of the first season to go, and I am betting they will just keep amping up as we hurl towards the finish line. Must watch television.

I've been heavily invested in the Netflix series From Scratch with Zoe Saldana. I am fully aware how the show ends (it's based on a true story), but I didn't realize just how heartbreaking they would make it out to be. It's one thing to know something... it's quite another to see it play out with such nuance. After the fourth episode, I only have the heart to watch them one at a time. The problem is that I thought there were six episodes... there are actually eight, and I still have the last two to go. Well worth your time if you're in the mindset for it...

Just have a box of Kleenex ready.

And speaking of knowing how the show ends... I finished the first season of House of the Dragon. Since I've read the book on which it's based, I know exactly what it's all leading to, but that hasn't dampened my appreciation for the show. It reminds me of the early seasons of Game of Thrones. But since the showrunners won't have to make up their own ending, I think Dragon has a much better chance of having a good ending (unlike Thrones which was a complete shit-show)...

Apparently they have the book broken down into four seasons. So three more to go to find out if it actually lived up to its potential, I suppose.

And I'm going to end with this YouTube video of Wayne Brady talking about one of the most hilarious sketches ever to appear on television. This is a deep dive that peels back the curtain in a very interesting and important way...