What's up with Marvel?

tl;dr at the end.

To me, the main character was just...so blah. Canonically, Shang-Chi is supposed to be this kung fu master who, despite being human, can go toe to toe with superhuman opponents just on the basis of martial arts. Let's say all you know about him, was from a couple of lines of text on Shang-Chi's wikipedia page. All those descriptors + the fact that it's a Marvel movie?? Super excited to go see it, right?

So what happens? In the movie, he was portrayed as some random millenial with daddy issues. The actor's personality was so wooden and vanilla. And the Ten Rings were portrayed as some sort of all-powerful weapon, of which its powers / abilities were never really explained. And then the millenial basically just used the rings to defeat the final boss. Not his supposed knowledge of martial arts, not him overcoming perceived obstacles, nothing.

You could have plugged in any random 25-34 year old Asian male with some fighting experience and you wouldn't be able to tell him apart from Shang-Chi. All that training as a kid? Doesn't matter, had rings. All the emotions that should have come from reconciling with your father after so many years? Doesn't matter, had rings. All of which does the character a complete disservice.

And don't even get me started on Katy / Awkwafina's character. Plucky sidekick who inserts herself into the main character's trip for no reason? Sidekick then proceeds to suddenly be extremely skilled with a bow after like, 2 days of training? And then proceeds to not die against supernatural evil forces, even though you're the most green out of literally every single person there?

It was just an unbelievable movie throughout. As in, I can't believe how meh it was. And the pre-hype for the movie was warranted (finally legit Asian representation in superhero universe, hopefully tons of kung fu action, Tony Leung) but for me, it just did not deliver.

tl;dr - I think the main character was miscast, Shang-Chi should have been more martial arts focused, Awkwafina's character didn't need that much screentime and the Rings should have been explained better and shouldn't have been so relied on. Oh, and they shouldn't have killed Tony Leung's character. Dude was the best part of the movie.

 

They all feel the same. A CGI fest with quips, one-liners, and the good guy wins. A low-stakes and brainless watch.

Especially since every film is tied together somehow, and the studio knows the fans love things that referential and nostalgic.

Nothing I'm interested in going to the theater or paying for, but I'll watch them on a flight.

 

I read Phase 4 so far has ALREADY surpassed the entire runtime of phases 1-3 combined.

Again. That much content... gonna be some holes.

 

I thought it was ok. They tried a couple things with the movie that fit their formula,..made the character a likable everyman role. The spoiled milennial with daddy issues came from his conflicts with American culture and Asian culture, something they wanted to address for Asian Americans, but kinda fumbled around since a lot of his trauma happened before he arrived in the states.

Its not like we haven't seen all around martial arts badass movies before, so I gave them some credit for trying new things, even if their attempt to make good on some borderline racist source content ruined the original meaning.

The bad....trying to appease China when they dont gaf about the Asian American experience.Movie itself feels out of place with the rest of the MCU. Mandarin died off too quickly. The ten rings dont resemble anything like the original anymore...more hidden secrets that Mandarin and his one thousand years never bothered to unlock. No named dragon for whatever reason.

Seems like they had a bunch of cultural landmines they decided to avoid by scrubbing characters (Fu Manchu) and ended up with a setting they're likely not going to go back with more detail.

 

-_-

Of course the run time surpasses them when you count TV SHOWS.

 

Hopefully we get a character that is straight this time around, not enough representation for straight people in Hollywood these days..

 

DC is just the superior comic universe.

 

I was entertained by the movie but generally agree with this assesment.

I don't really know much about original comics history of Shang Chi or the Mandarin but this movie seemed to me to be based on the HK / Chinese Wu Xia tradition with the look and many of the characters in the hidden village coming from that background.

Tony Leung is such a good actor and one with a lot of charisma. Sima Liu isn't close to that level of acting so it was hard for him to compete.

 

Every movie and show has a character like this. Not sure if the writers think it's an easy way to add "fun" but my goodness it's so annoying.
Stranger things season 4 was almost unbearable because of one.

Latest spider-man did a bunch of stuff I think to get his friends into college...i think. not sure. i fell asleep.

 

I know you're not serious, but 99.9997% of USA-originated romantic content all-time is straight. I know some of yall on here are gay. It's coo. Rooting for yall.

 

DC stands for "Doomed Comics"

 

I would say phase 4 actually has some of the best Marvel content but also some of the worst. It’s because of a few reasons:

-Some characters are new and untested in live action and weren’t even that successful as comic runs
-They are operating more like a true comic universe where stories don’t have to be directly connected, and you’ll have to wait years not a year to get follow ups to the stories you like.
-the Disney + forum is new and virtually all the shows were shot at the same time so they couldn’t learn from show to show and make changes. It’s shot like a 6 hour film but the editing to break up in 6 episodes is killing the momentum of the finale action.
-Heavy reliance on deep sci fi comic content that isn’t for everyone
-Right wing media trying to use Disney’s viral nature on social media to drive their culture war narratives and Disney worrying to much and not just making what the story needs. You almost don’t want to see something like Lightyear just because you know if you say you saw it to half of America they’ll launch into a talking point diatribe.
-The Covid Pandemic really threw a wrench in the production and scheduling
-The nature of MCU writing flexibility to write and rewrite on the fly and starting shooting without a finished script. Often continuity errors found and massive reshoots, delays, and pressure to still stay close to deadlines.

I would say SpiderMan NWH and Loki are two of the best reviewed MCU properties to date. And then you have some bigger swings like Eternals and Moon Knight that are generally scoffed at. However even those poorly reviewed films or shows still have great actors and high level of potential to be beloved characters in future movies. I mean Oscar Issacs as Moon Knight… even if the show was bad (I thought it was still decent) there’s just no way he couldn’t still be a very fun addition to a future movie where he’s teaming up with another great actor and character.

So I think even the folks that are poo pooing phase 4 will agree that they are glad that virtually all of the characters in the MCU continuing on are now in the MCU. That’s a big plus.

But as we learned with Game of Thrones and Star Wars, the fanboy culture is never EVER going to be satisfied because the best version of the stories to them are the fantasies of the versions of the stories they made in their mind.

The biggest reason why you hear about how bad phase 4 is though is because honestly… you get more views on social media if you are sh$tposting and tapping into toxic fanboy narratives. Some of the criticisms are real and fair, but most are there simply because it gets you clicks.

 

Check the around the front.

 

Taped up and squished together. Not much there, either front or back.

 

Nah, the biggest reason(s) as to why P4 is bad, is because 1) Marvel has spread itself too thin, asking the audience to watch everything to understand anything, 2) most of the content is irrelevant and there's still no super clear direction / no buildup.

1. MCU has spread itself too thin. Among all the movies and TV shows, there are only a couple that truly matter for the overarching Kang plot. This means that you didn't need to watch anything (so far) except Loki. Didn't need to watch Eternals, Black Widow, Shang-Chi, most of the TV shows, etc. But that also means that, if you didn't watch Loki, you wouldn't know about Kang.

Whereas before, all you needed to watch was the Marvel movies to know the Thanos direction. Didn't need to watch Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist nor Luke Cage.

2. Irrelevancy. The aforementioned movies + TV shows are all unnecessary filler. And, if Kang is the main bad guy or even a precursor to something bigger, Loki has been the only medium in which he's shown. Supposedly, the next Kang sighting is going to be in the next Ant-Man movie, which comes out in more than half a year.

Before then, you have She-Hulk, Black Panther 2 and some Disney+ filler. Highly doubt any of those are going to have anything to do with Kang.

 

The reason phase 4 sucks is primarily due to abysmally poor writing and pushing weak characters no one will ever care about at the expense of popular characters.

Too much content isn't a problem when it's actually good content.

 

That's def not accurate. Plenty up front.