Entertainment

If I had to guess it's not "that it takes roles away" or that it "affects the writing" like so many try to claim, but that it infringes on the power fantasy. Back in the day Charlie's Angel's was good because it plays into the mastermind behind the femme fatales,

The thing is, many of the movies that get complained about frankly get complained about for the wrong reasons. Some genuinely do have (usually minor) issues such as being written during filming with little motivation to reach an end-goal in mind, just not the rage bait that gets media attention. The reality is that it's a bunch of small decisions that make the wider movie as a whole weaker, but these idiots just hop onto the "it's bad because it's woke" train. Like, for fucks sake people. Marvel isn't bad because it has focused on female characters just like Sony isn't bad because it's woke. Morbius was a train-wreck led be a cultist and yet where is the rage for that mess? None, it got meme'd to death so hard Sony thought it did well and brought it back to theaters...

I guarantee that if 2005 Elektra were remade today and happened to be not so great it wouldn't get the Morbius treatment, it would get the Phase 5 Marvel/Sequel Star Wars treatment about how the focus on female characters is detracting from something, all too happy to ignore the production issues behind the scenes.

On an aside, I still don't understand why Sony is getting a pass with the awful villain movies. The first Venom was OK but the sequel with Carnage was abysmal and the real leaked script for Kraven didn't look much better... I'm not entirely enthused about the upcoming projects they have because I want them to do Madame Web well and.. I just hope they get it together but I personally was not a fan of TASM 1 and 2 (though 1 was far, far better by comparison). Mostly nothing to do with the cast and most of the cinematic scenes, it was just the bland changes to the story that ultimately didn't lead anywhere. So many frameworks are all set for them but instead of following it they just recreated images in live action - the side by sides are beautiful, the films are pretty terrible. That's the one thing that Sony doesn't have against DC and Marvel is at least the attempted re-imaginings of character arcs in DC and Marvel are sort of making the framework their own. Rant within rant over, thanks for reading.

P.S. for anyone else view Phase 4 Marvel as 2020's Phase 1. Endgame basically reset the universe, the actor-heroes are tired so in between the Multiverse movies they've been doing single-character focused films. Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Eternals are all pretty much stand-alone characters (with minor cosmic roles to come). The shows Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, and She-Hulk are also completely independent character-driven shows that I really liked.

WandaVision was pretty much a setup for ending the aftermath of Endgame and leads into the movie Multiverse of Madness. Falcon and Winter Soldier had a different script about a plague being used by terrorists, then Covid-19 lockdowns happened so the show was changed and suffered because of it. With that in mind, it's an OK show. Loki S1 is pretty good, S2 was a let down but the finale set up the future well. Moon Knight had no action sequences and wasn't planned so it suffered. (Surprise surprise, all Marvel shows that sucked completely unrelated to... "wokeness", whatever they mean by that).

With that in mind, Phase 5 is simply continuing this trend. It's mostly character driven movies with a few being tie in films. Ant-Man 2 was OK, I liked it more than people online did it seemed and I honestly found Kang to be the weakest part of the movie for me. Guardians 3 was very good, but it does hinge on you caring about the events of the characters from Guardians 1, 2, and Endgame. But it's the closing chapter of the gang, so it's a good sendoff. And now we have the Marvels, which I haven't seen yet but from my understanding is another semi-introduction film for Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau (from WandaVision). Deadpool 3 looks to be a tie-in Multiverse, and then we'll probably get a few more character oriented movies and shows.

So honestly, while I understand the burnout for Marvel content, as of November 2023 if you've seen Endgame then you can watch the Phase 4 and 5 marvel films and shows in basically any order so don't let that be a real excuse. I listed everything except for What If (animated but canon) and Thor: Love and Thunder (production issues, I liked it but it needed tonal consistency).