A few weeks ago, “The Marvels” had the lowest opening weekend of any movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) so far and then had the biggest second weekend drop (approx. 77%) of any MCU movie so far. Some news reports started to talk about what they’re calling “Marvel Movie Fatigue”. I admit that the recent MCU movie releases aren’t always on my rush to see list. Of the last 10 movies (which doesn’t include Sony/Marvel releases except for the “Spider-Man” movies) I’ve skipped more than I’ve seen. However, I don’t have “Marvel Movie Fatigue”. There are a variety of different reasons that I didn’t see some of the MCU movies including CGI, characters, and bad storylines.
COMPUTER GENERATED IMAGES (CGI): One of the comments that directors like John Woo and Martin Scorsese have recently mentioned is there is too much CGI in those movies. To quote John Woo: “I’ve never liked watching movies with big special effects…”. There have been visual effects in movies for a very long time but they used to be REAL effects. They created the effects using camera tricks, paintings (for backgrounds), mechanics, robotics, animatronics, stop-motion filming, makeup effects, and things shot in miniature. Now, all those types of effects can be made with CGI. They can do things with CGI that they could never do with real effects. In the original “Jaws”, the shark was mechanical (there are a lot of “the shark isn’t working” stories) and in the original “King Kong” and the original “Godzilla”, the creatures were miniatures. For the most recent ocean predator movie – this past summers “Meg 2: The Trench” – and the recent “King Kong vs Godzilla”, the creatures are bigger, more dangerous, and 100% CGI. Personally, bigger and scarier creatures don’t impress me.
CHARACTERS: Another thing that I don’t like about the recent MCU movies is the characters. Other than the main hero or group of heroes and maybe a few friends or other heroes, the characters aren’t well developed. For example, the villains. I agree with the theory that a great villain can make a movie even better. You can see that with movie villains like Hannibal Lecter, King Kong, Godzilla, Dr No, Goldfinger, The Joker, Darth Vader, Michael Myers, Jason (from the Friday the 13th movies), and Lord Voldemort.
If you look at the MCU movies, Thanos was a good villain, Loki was good enough to get his own TV series, and I remember Abomination from “The Incredible Hulk” (but only because he was also in the “She-Hulk Attorney at Law” streaming series). Other than that, the other villains in the MCU aren’t memorable. Sometimes, the actor playing the role is memorable but not the character the actor is playing. I liked Christian Bale in “Thor Love and Thunder”, but I don’t remember what his character name was. I remember a few other actors like Jeff Bridges in the first “Iron Man”, Mickey Rourke in “Iron Man 2”, Michael Keaton in some of the “Spider-Man” movies, Annette Benning in “Captain Marvel”, and Cate Blanchett in “Thor: Ragnarok” but it’s just the actors I remember. There are even some actors that you only see for a few seconds during the end credit scenes – such as Charlize Theron in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” end credits or Harry Styles in “Eternals” end credits. Unless you’re a comic book fan, you may not know the character they’re playing. For upcoming MCU movies, they sometimes announce that an actor is going to be in a movie playing an “unknown character”.
STORYLINE: The biggest problem I have with the recent MCU movies is the storyline. The more movies you watch, the more similarities you may see. Although there are completely different people, places, things, superpowers, etc, you can see the basic storylines over and over.
“Generic Storyline A”: Someone has a superpower or has something that gives a person superpowers and someone else wants it or has a similar power.
This is the basic storyline for a lot of the MCU movies which introduces a new superhero. One person who gets the power wants to do good, while another character wants the power to do bad. You may remember it from the MCU movies “The Incredible Hulk”, “Iron Man”, “Thor”, “Ant-Man”, “Black Panther”, and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”. It’s even one of the subplots of “The Marvels”. You can see the same storyline in other superhero movies including the Sony/Marvel movies “Spider-Man” (the first one starring Tobey Maguire), “Venom”, and “Morbius”, as well as the DC movies “Aquaman”, “Shazam”, and “Blue Beetle”. There are other non-superhero movies where you can see the same storyline such as the Harry Potter movies, the Lord of the Rings movies, and the Star Wars movies.
“Generic Storyline B”: A villain wants to destroy “everything the hero loves”, or wants to kill everyone on Earth, or wants to destroy the universe.
This storyline is often seen in the second movie for a superhero in an MCU movie. Most of the time, the villain wants revenge for something a hero or heroes did. This can be seen in “The Avengers”, “Iron Man 3”, “Thor: Ragnarok”, “Avengers Infinity War”, “Thor Love and Thunder”, and (again) “The Marvels”. You can also see this storyline in other superhero movies such as the DC movies “Man of Steel” and “Wonder Woman 1984” as well as non-superhero movies such as some of the Harry Potter movies, some of the James Bond movies, some of the “Fast and Furious” movies, and some of the “Star Wars” movies.
“Generic Storyline C”. Someone (or a group of people) go to a different world (or multiple worlds), or an alternate universe (or multiple alternate universes), or somewhere like “Wakanda” or the “Quantum Realm”.
This is the storyline I hate most of all and the storyline that seems to be used in MCU movies more frequently recently. In fact, EVERY MCU MOVIE for the last 3 years (going back to “Black Widow” I believe) has this as part of its storyline. The reason I hate it is because they use CGI for EVERYTHING in some scenes INCLUDING the actors (to make them younger, give them a special power, or make them look like a creature). If you watch them filming scenes for these movies, it’s just the actors standing in an empty green screen or blue screen room. Everything in the shot will be created with CGI after the filming is done.
I believe the first MCU movie to do this may have been the first “Thor” movie. It’s also in the other “Thor” movies, all the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies, “Captain Marvel”, “Avengers: Infinity War”, “Avengers: Endgame”, “Black Panther”, and the last 9 MCU movies – including “The Marvels” (yes, that movie has “Generic Storyline A, B, AND C” in it). Marvel also does that in their MCU streaming series such as “Wanda Vision”, “Loki”, “Moon Knight”, and “Secret Invasion”. It’s also seen in DC movies such as “The Flash”, “Aquaman”, and (according to the preview) the upcoming “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom”, as well as the “Star Wars” movies, the “Avatar” movies, the “Hobbit” movies, the “Lord of the Rings” movies, the “Harry Potter” movies, and the “Fantastic Beasts” movies.
I think “Generic Storyline C” is the worst one not only because it’s almost completely CGI, but it’s also because CGI IS PART OF THE STORYLINE. Entire sequences of movies are just showing you a new world, an alternate universe, or a different place created with CGI. A huge example of this is Pandora in the “Avatar” movies.
I believe the origin of all the issues above may have originated from the “Star Wars” movies.
CGI: The company “Industrial Light and Magic” was originally created to make visual effects for the “Star Wars” movies. For the first trilogy (Episode 4 – 6) they used real effects. The Death Star and the spaceships were models. Yoda and Jabba the Hutt were puppets or mechanical. Then, once the company started working with CGI, they – some blame George Lucas – changed the original movies to add more CGI effects. They even slightly changed the storyline in a couple places. Once the next 3 “prequel” movies came out (Episode 1 – 3), The spaceships were CGI, Yoda was CGI, and some whole scenes were CGI except for the actors.
Characters: There were very good characters in the first trilogy including Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Obi-Wan Kenobi, R2D2, C3P0, and Darth Vader. For the second trilogy, Darth Maul and Mace Windu were goods character. Jar Jar Binks (a CGI character) was bad. I don’t remember the name of the character Liam Neeson played. I also don’t remember other characters not seen in the original trilogy. For the third trilogy (Episode 7 – 9), some the main characters were pretty good – Rey (Daisy Ridley), Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Finn (John Boyega) – but the rest weren’t. For the main villain they just brought back someone that was supposed to be dead instead of a new villain. They also brought back another character that was supposed to be dead – Boba Fett – for a Star Wars streaming series. Other than the original trilogy, I think the best character in the Star Wars movies and streaming series is “Din Grogu” aka “Baby Yoda”. The character is much more popular than the main character in the streaming series “The Mandalorian”.
Storylines: All 3 generic storylines can be seen in the movies. There are characters that use the light side of “The Force” for good and others use the dark side for evil. There are people that want to take over the universe and destroy other people’s worlds (in the first movie – Episode 4 – the Death Star blows up the planet Alderaan). There are also several different worlds that people travel to in all the movies and the streaming series. In the later movies and streaming series, a lot of the planets are created by CGI.
However, they continue to make the movies and streaming series because they continue to make MILLIONS of dollars. Despite all the negative comments about changing the original trilogy, the bad characters (like Jar Jar) in the prequels, and the bad storylines, the movies continue to have huge opening weekends and worldwide box office numbers. Most of the movies made more money than the previous movies. “Star Wars Episode 7 – The Force Awakens” is currently #1 on all-time domestic box office chart with a little over $935 million dollars. Worldwide, that movie has made over $2 BILLION. Episode 8 and 9, and the spinoff movie “Rouge One” have all made over $1 billion worldwide. Although the most recent Star Wars spinoff movie – “Solo” – only made $392 million worldwide, they are still working on more Star Wars movies and there are quite a few new Star Wars streaming series.
It’s no wonder that other movies copied the what the Star Wars movies did in some ways. They saw the millions of dollars those movies made, and they wanted to make that much money. A prime example is the “Avatar” movies which I believe have some of the things I mentioned above. The first Avatar movie is currently the #1 movie at the worldwide box office with almost $3 billion and its sequel is currently the #3 movie at the worldwide box office with over $2.3 billion. I’m not completely sure if the movies have the things I mentioned above because I have never seen either of those movies all the way through. Most of the scenes that I have seen, seem to be 100% CGI and I’m not really interested in those types of movies. However, there are obviously THOUSANDS of people worldwide who love to watch those movies. They’re currently working on 3 more Avatar movies.
The MCU movies have also made millions or billions of dollars worldwide. 4 of the MCU movies are currently in the top 10 top of the all-time worldwide box office. “Avengers Endgame” is #2 with almost $2.8 billion and “Avengers Infinity War” is #6 with almost $2 billion. There have been some that haven’t made a lot of money. Before “The Marvels”, the MCU movie that had the lowest box office was “Eternals” which made a little over $400 million worldwide. However, just one month later there was the next MCU movie “Spider Man No Way Home” which made a little over $1.9 billion worldwide. Also, for the Sony/Marvel movies that are not part of the MCU, “Morbius” is currently the lowest at the worldwide box office with $167 million (“The Marvels” has already made more than that worldwide), but the next Sony/Marvel release – “Spider-Man Across the Spider-verse” – was one of the most successful Marvel movies not in the MCU. It’s true that “The Marvels” currently made less money than any other MCU movie so far, but there are several MCU movies in production that could do very well at the box office.
The reasons that people don’t see a movie can vary wildly. Other people have reasons I haven’t mentioned above. Some people think that men skipped “The Marvels” because the characters are mostly women. Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, recently said that he thinks there wasn’t enough Marvel or Disney executives overseeing the production of “The Marvels”. No matter what, I doubt that many people didn’t see the latest movie just because it’s a Marvel movie.
For those that say that there is “Marvel Movie Fatigue” they should consider the comic book series that the movies are based on. I read some of the Marvel comics. If there’s a comic book series that I don’t like because it has bad characters or a bad storyline, I won’t read it. I know there’ll be another comic series soon that will be more interesting. The same thing with MCU movies. Some of the upcoming MCU movies have recently been postponed due to the writers and actors strike, but the next movie currently scheduled to be released in the summer of 2024 will be one that I think I will not miss. Especially since “Deadpool 3” has great Marvel characters like Deadpool, Wolverine, and (according to rumors) other Marvel characters that haven’t been in the official MCU before (they were in Fox/Marvel movies – but now Disney owns all the former 20th Century Fox movies so they’re part of the MCU). I bet there will be tons of other people that skipped “The Marvels” that will go see that movie.
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