On the End of the MCU

A bit of a #TBT post.

(For reasons, I’m breaking out this old post from my old declanfinn.com blog. If you can find your way to read the old post, good luck to you. I may have to create a whole Throwback Thursday portion of this substack to make things work. Why repost this? Because I’m apparently prescienct)

Originally posted on 5/28/2019. And damn, did I call some of this

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So, I saw Endgame the other day. My review pretty much matches that of John C. Wright. The strength was the acting. There was one massive plothole that comes with time travel, but it's the plothole I have with Terminator 2, and who doesn't like that movie?

All in all, that was a very nice little wrap up to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

What's that you say? There are still Marvel movies to come? Including another Spider-Man film?

No. This wrapped things up nicely. We can all go home now. If they insist on making more films, I've got no problem getting them used, if I even feel the need to see them.

Take a look for a moment around "phase 4" of the MCU. See if you notice anything.

• Spider Man: Far From Home

• Black Widow

• Black Panther 2

• Doctor Strange 2

• Eternals

• Shang-Chi

• Guardians 3

And before you ask, no, it's not about Captain Marvel. Even the directors of Endgame hated her so much, they had Thanos punch her right out of the movie. I'm told she was on screen for 15 minutes. I think most of that time she was not speaking, or she was so covered in CGI, she looked like Tinkerbell. There is no way you can jam her into more than two of these seven films, and that's assuming anyone allows her in.

Despite all of Kevin Feige's woke spinning, every time he spins politics, he never delivers it, which is a point in his favor. So I'm not going to guess which films he wants to jam in "body positive" or L.G.B.T.Q.Q.I.A.A.P.M.O.U.S.E. "role models" in.  (If you see a “hero” called “America” expect heads to roll after the movie bombs like Hiroshima.)

I'm only concerned with those bullet points.

If you don't see the point, don't worry, I have you covered.

Spider Man: Far From Home. If you remember, Homecoming was so full of woke secondary casting it was painful. Really painful. They were so unnecessary to the plot that we really only needed three actors — Michael Keaton, Robert Downey Jr, and Tom Holland. Almost everyone else could be replaced by a cardboard cutout. In the case of “Zendaya,” I'm relatively certain she is a cardboard cutout.  I suspect Far From Home will only need Tom Holland, Sam Jackson, Jake what's-his-name, and CGI monsters. Which means that I can wait for it to be remaindered in Edward R. Hamilton, or used on Amazon.

Black Widow -- if you've seen Endgame, you know why this is a problem. If you haven’t seen it yet (oh come on, even I’ve seen it by now) let's say that one of their selling points is WE HAVE A FEMALE DIRECTOR.  Um, that’s nice. What's this FEMALE DIRECTOR done? Um ... well, that sucks. Pity that when they finally get around to making the Black Widow movie fans wanted since Avengers (if not Iron Man 2) is made by someone with fewer credentials than the creature who made the Wrinkle in Time movie.

Black Panther 2 — I hold out no hope for this one. I suspect that one day people will realize that BP was a disjointed, tone-deaf mess that couldn't figure out what it wanted to be when it grew up. Did it want to be Game of Thrones in Africa (As in the first 30 minutes)? Did it want to be James Bond (as it was in that bit in Korea)? Did it want to focus on Wakanda versus black urban America? They should have stuck with one tone and ran with it. (And for a movie with the two "Tolkien White guys," did anyone else realize that while everyone was having a civil war, Martin Freeman was saving the world?)  And while everyone else squee-ed over battle rhinos … yikes, that CGI was bad.

Doctor Strange 2 — Cumberbatch might make this worth renting or buying used. The CGI might tempt me to watch it on a big screen, but they're going to have to have a trailer that blows my socks off and turns my hair white to tempt me that much. And I don't think they have the chops do to that.

Guardians 3 — James Gunn, the director, thinks pedo jokes are funny. They're not. Check please.

• Eternals

• Shang-Chi

At which point, I get to break out a GIF.

Don't worry, you're not the only one. I had to look them up, too.

I had no problem going to Endgame because the House of Mouse is going to burn itself down, courtesy of Dickhead in Chief, Bob Iger, who is so beset by scandals and criminal investigations, and downright mishandling of properties that I actually think that Endgame's success will only fuel their certitude of their own invulnerability, and thus fuel their own demise.

They killed Star Wars with The Last Jedi. And yet they're going to burn nearly... what? Half a billion dollars per movie over the next few years? (I'm guess-timating based on previous, conflicting numbers). While they got burned with Solo — an okay film caught in the backlash from The Last Jedi —Disney didn't learn their lesson. They're going to spend about three billion dollars on six Star Wars films over the next few years, hoping to make at least six billion dollars. However, the people behind these films (at last report) are Rian Johnson of Last Jedi and the people who dropped the ball on Game of Thrones. Say goodbye to three billion dollars, Disney.

They want to try an Avatar franchise, which will take forever to make and mountains of cash to finish. But they have so doubled down on it, they've put in an Avatar section to their theme park .... no, seriously, Disney, Avatar came out a decade ago. The prime audience for Disneyland wasn't even born at the time, and are currently spoiled with better graphics in casual video games, which are largely better written (unless they're Assassin's Creed).

Next up, the Aliens franchise!  (Guys, just stick with Aliens. The series is dead already)

The Disney model used to be reinvest profits into the company, expand, and make more money. They're still doing that, but they're doing it in such a way that is just going to screw them over. Investing in Star Wars land (yes, I know) after The Last Jedi? Investing in Avatar at the parks before there's really a market for it?

Next up: the "MCU" will get the same treatment. But the MCU is over, fellas. They got a decent sendoff. It was a miracle that it got this far anyway — normally, conflicting personalities would destroy a franchise like this in three movies, if not sooner. It was probably a minor miracle. Robert Downey Jr. is a good guy who stood up for Mel Gibson. Most of the main actors had never been big names before they were cast. Sure, there were some attempts. Before the MCU started, I think the biggest names they had were Scarlett Johanssen and Sam Jackson.

Endgame wrapped up the MCU.

• Everyone got a happily ever after. (After a fashion)

• All of the main characters without a sequel series are done with the franchise. 

• All of the good secondary characters are going to yet ANOTHER streaming service... and we saw how well that worked with NetFlix (Three good seasons of television out of eleven). 

So, the movies are done. But Marvel will pour in the money. Disney bought Marvel Comics, and allowed the comics to go to woke crap while the movies made money. Now that Disney is going to streaming, expect the films to go to woke crap while they focus on streaming -- and like with Star Trek Discovery, Disney won't care if it's all crap, since the membership fees will be money up front.

There is a Graham Greene story called A Hint of an Explanation, where a man tells the story of how his atheist next door neighbor wanted to run tests on a consecrated host. The narrator, who had been an altar boy, palmed the host, and nearly handed over the host for desecration, when the neighbor pushed just a little too hard, was a little too eager, and let slip his darker nature. The point of the story is that evil overreaches and screws itself over.

Now that Disney is secure in the sensation that it can do no wrong, and they have money to burn, get ready to spend the next ten years watching the money go up in flames.

Disney is overreaching.

If you want a superhero that will never go woke, I suggest you check out my stuff.