MCU fatigue & I swear I don't hate fun

I was originally just going to ask if I should watch WandaVision, Falcon & the Winter Soldier, and Loki, but I ended up going stream of consciousness on my issues with the MCU

I've seen all the MCU movie to date other than Black Widow. Generally speaking I think they have a pretty high floor in quality. Very few are outright bad in my estimation (Thor 2, Iron Man 2, Incredible Hulk) and even those have moments. That said, and I know some people will disagree with this, I think the ceiling for these movies is pretty low. I don't think - for my taste - I'd call a single entry in the entire MCU "great." Mostly, I think they range from good (Thor Ragnarok, Iron Man, Winter Soldier, Guardians 1, Infinity War/Endgame, Black Panther, Spider-Man: Homecoming) to solid (Capt America, Civil War, Iron Man 3, Avengers, Dr. Strange) to aggressively mediocre (Capt Marvel, Ant Man 1-2, Ultron, Guardians 2, Thor, Spidey: Far From Home).

What Disney and Marvel have done is still impressive. Stringing together this many movies into one extended series that builds on itself this much is unprecedented. However, I do find that a lot of the movies bleed together, and that the formula has made many of them virtually indistinguishable from one another in pure storytelling (again, a point I'm sure will be disputed). And perhaps more than the narrative formula, the action setpieces leave me feeling cold. I find them aesthetically ugly, repetitive, and dull.

Nevertheless, I am still generally positive in my feelings about the series even if I'm also somewhat apathetic. These are never among my favourite movies in a given year but neither are they among my least. They're perfectly fine, forgettable entertainment. Damning with faint praise, I suppose.

Obviously, like what you like and never apologize for it. I wouldn't tell a Marvel fan they're wrong for loving this series. That would be obnoxious as hell. But I've been watching a lot of neonoir crime movies from the 80s-90s (Cutter's Way, Deep Cover, Cruising, Body Double) and it feels like a kind of film that has largely disappeared from the landscape, or is more likely to be told as a 6-episode HBO miniseries.

Hollywood is notoriously risk-averse. It's why it took as long as it did for the industry to buy into comic book movies as a viable commodity outside the occasional Superman or Batman movie, and one disaster was enough to put it on ice. Gradually, after the success of Spider-Man and X-Men movies this reluctance began to fade and Iron Man kicked the MCU off proper, though it was still an uncertainty at the time. But if it bombed, there was no real commitment to keep it going. It didn't bomb.

The mainstream movie industry now is just a mass of franchise IP and almost nothing else. It's not just the MCU, but you see Fast and Furious 9, DC superhero movies, Star Wars and its spinoffs, and a multitude of live-action Disney remakes dominating the landscape.

I’m aware that there are more important things going on in the grand scheme of existence right now and that this is coming from a very niche place. Regardless, cinema is something I care about deeply and I’d simply rather see greater variety at the multiplex. I have lived in Toronto for much of the last decade so it’s not really an issue for me. I was able to see Portrait of a Lady on Fire in theatres, for example. But not everywhere is Toronto and I’m not moving back there anytime soon (check the real estate listings). Were I to return to my home province of New Brunswick, options at the cinema dry up pretty significantly.

And sure, I know I’ll have access to streaming and I think it’s a great thing to open access to more eyeballs. Going to the movies, especially for a family of four or more, is expensive. But I don’t like the prospect of my only option of seeing non-big budget movies being at home. I love going to the movies and I don’t prescribe to the notion that there’s a specific type of movie that needs to be seen on the big screen over another. One of my favourite movie-going experiences in recent memory was seeing an old print of Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller at the Royal Cinema in Toronto. That’s a movie that probably doesn’t get made today and if it does it’s on the small screen or in very limited theatrical release.

I don’t want the MCU to go away. That would be selfish of me. I also am not an alarmist film fan who thinks these movies are ruining the culture, because that’s dumb. But, and this is probably going to come off as condescending and snobbish despite my best intentions, I do want more movies that skew adult in the mainstream. They still exist, obviously, and Steven Soderbergh’s recent heist movie, No Sudden Move, is a prime example. It’s a movie I liked, didn’t love, but would love to see more like it get made and have some confident backing. I love independent companies like A24 and Neon, but their reach isn’t as wide as Disney or that ilk and never will be.

I’m flying off the top of my head with all this, so apologies if it’s disjointed, but I'd like to finish by encouraging everyone who loves movies to seek titles out that don’t align with your present taste. You might not like everything, but I guarantee you’ll find some hidden gems and styles that will surprise you. That’s the gateway.

Now that I’ve gotten all that off my chest…should I watch WandaVision, The Falcon & the Winter Soldier, and Loki?