What don't you like about the Marvel Cinematic Universe? (Spoilers)

XtremelyBaneful

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I decided to make this thread because while I love the fact that the mcu exists, I don't like all of the things they've established in its respective universe, and all the liberties they're taking in changing from the source material. I realize that obviously comic book adaptations can never be a panel for panel adaptation, but I'll get into my specific complaints.

I'll start from the beginning. Iron Man, is a great film. Great, great film. I'll go so far as saying it still seems like one of the best MCU films. No major complaints here.

tih is also a good film. I didn't love it, but I liked it. No major complaints here either, however, I don't like how they've downplayed (what becomes of) the secondary villain. I heard there is a marvel one shot, or something of the sort that explains and deals with the evil dr. samuel sterns? Honestly, I'd rather they just make a sequel and feature him there somehow. but overall, this was a good installment to the mcu.

iron man 2 - the fact that this film came when it did is my main issue. people try to argue that tony stark isn't the main character in the mcu, when...he had the biggest role in avengers, and he's the only superhero to have two films in a single phase. the film didn't even do much to advance the mcu narrative imo. as for the film itself, i did not like it that much - i don't like how justin hammer's actor didn't find the necessity to do the british accent. i don't like how terrence howard was recast - i know it was done because he badmouthed marvel about not being paid as much as rdj. if i were marvel, i would've just gone to howard and told him to watch what he says if he wants to keep his job, instead of recasting him. i didn't much like the plot or the final act - i think finishing off whiplash would've been cooler in a combat duel between him and natasha romanov instead of the hand to hand beam between the iron superheroes.

OK, next up is thor. I think this film was really good too, but it came with some miscasting, but the first is a bit personal. i don't think stellan skarsgard is a good actor, I wish they'd've cast someone else as the professor. the other thing is heimdall. i hate how they skipped over the whole sibling thing with sif, just to racebend the character for no goddamn reason. now since the asgardians aren't exactly human, so it's not exactly the same as fant4stic, I would've been fine with it if they just included one line from heimdall calling sif "sister" or vice versa with sif calling heimdall "brother," or her showing more concern than everyone else when they got back to asgard at the end, but they didn't. it was changing a character's race and neglecting to incorporate other things about the character.

now the film was great, but here's another hting with that - it very largely felt like this film was there to set up and build up for the avengers. the reason being, the fact that the end credits had a line saying "thor will return in the avengers." what was the purpose of this message? wouldn't people just find out the following year? iron man 2 didn't end with "iron man will return in avengers"

captain america was pretty good. i'm not crazy about it but I think it was a good movie, overall. my only complaint is the same as thor. the ending very much felt like an indication that this film was just buildup for the avengers. correct me if i'm wrong but the post credit scene was pretty much just a teaser for the avengers.

avengers is one of the greatest comic book movies of all time. and it was great. admittedly I didn't pay much attention when phase 1 was still happening because my favorite superhero (spiderman) was being kept separate from it all. so during the previews, I expected the villain to be one that was so powerful, it would take several superheroes to fight against it. but it ended up being an overwhelming army instead. but, that's that. the most important thing was that it was the first piece of massive fruition that marvel studios showed us. i'm also not fond of how they faked coulson's death. makes it meaningless in this movie. i liked the character, but if this movie gets the viewer and the avengers to believe him dead, he should've been.

after av1, I heard that it was said that cap2 was gonna be the phase 2 film that had most to do/most affect from av1. why the hell did iron man 3 come first then? now I think the final act of this film was kickass, but I certainly was not a fan of the mandarin twist. people are just saying things like "people are just whining the mandarin twist was fine/okay/nothing to complain about" to me, that comes off as people feeling like the mcu can do no wrong. well, hell no. i was not fond of it, and that's that. yes, it grossed $1.2 billion, but I think it was hot coming off of av1. I wonder how much higher cap2 would've grossed if it was released in IM3's slot.

cap2 was amazing, I loved it. what I didn't like is how they were making cap look so perfect though. he had the upperhand in his battles with the winter soldier pretty much every time they fought. I'd have rather seen the winter soldier get the upper hand more of the time. he was intimidating, and that would make it even more intimidating. i also don't like how falcon didn't have all the aspects he did in the comics - such as the connections with actual birds. i'm hoping they'll touch upon that in the future, but I don't see it.

for thor 2, i thought it was okay, my main gripe was how they're handling loki. similar to coulson. like, I don't like what they're doing with his character. i could write more about it but here's a blog that explains it pretty well
https://ponderingsofacinephile.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/my-fury-over-thor-the-dark-world-ending/

guardians of the galaxy was fantastic as well, but as I mentioned in the beginning of this post - what I most dislike about changes from the adaptations, are the characters' origins. as I understand it, peter quill does not have quite the same origin as he does in the comics because his father isn't the same.

i have several complaints about av2, first being the romance between black widow and bruce, and writing hawkeye to have a wife and kids. smh. i wanted black widow and hawkeye to continue being a thing, and i HATE how they're pretty much letting betty ross go. i also don't like how they killed off quicksilver. for once, i hope that was a fake death though. his actor did sign a multifilm contract, so yeah. the only other thing is: i heard that originally, the plan was for av2 to be the infinity war, and av3 to be the civil war. but because of issues, they just wrote av2 to be another film against an army. this time of robots.

from my understanding, ant man was supposed to be the first phase 3 film but because of certain issues that are unclear, it became the final chapter of phase 2.

and cap3 is next up - I really don't like how the title is captain america and the subtitle is civil war. it's becoming so clear how this should've been titled as an avengers film or marvel's civil war - because if there are several main characters here, it really does not do justice calling this a captain america film.
 
I don't like how they handle any romantic aspects.
Thor/Jane, Natasha/Bruce...all embarrassing as hell. Only Tony/Pepper work. I also dislike how the women are treated in some of these movies. Gamora and Natasha had the best showing, but Natasha was completely OCC in AoU.

Marvel's executives also have an annoying habit of poking their noses in - it's why Patti Jenkins left Thor 2, and I suspect the Clint/Natasha relationship was deliberately scuppered in AoU to annoy fans who liked it. There are too many people with the attitude of college frat boys running the studios.
 
I would say the two main flaws of the MCU are poor villains and lack of death and/or consequences for characters.

To the first point, this is primarily a problem of phase 2. I think phase 1 had decent villains: Loki obviously is Marvel's best villain, Obadiah Stane and Red Skull where good one time villains. Blonsky was okay. But nothing spectacular. The IM2 villains were pretty bad. It's really phase 2 which has the problem, with Killian, Malekith and Ronan all being fairly generic, lacking in characterisation and good motivations.

Hopefully Marvel is picking up the slack here as we've just recently got two very good villains in Ultron and Wilson Fisk. I would be tempted to call Fisk the MCU's best villain period.

And then there's this trend of fake out deaths which completely takes away suspense. Seems like it happens nearly every movie. I'd say Coulson and Fury are the most egregious examples. There's even rumours that:

Quicksilver is still alive.
 
I don't like how they handle any romantic aspects.
Thor/Jane, Natasha/Bruce...all embarrassing as hell. Only Tony/Pepper work. I also dislike how the women are treated in some of these movies. Gamora and Natasha had the best showing, but Natasha was completely OCC in AoU.

Marvel's executives also have an annoying habit of poking their noses in - it's why Patti Jenkins left Thor 2, and I suspect the Clint/Natasha relationship was deliberately scuppered in AoU to annoy fans who liked it. There are too many people with the attitude of college frat boys running the studios.

Thor and Jane's relationship worked wonderfully in Thor 1. I still haven't seen AOU so I can't comment about "Brutasha". Also, it's not " poking your nose in" when its your property. Marvel didn't "give" Avengers to Joss Whedon, nor were they going to "give" Thor 2 to Patty Jenkins. They have a right to involve themselves in the production of films about their characters.
 
The fact that it only comes twice a year. Unless you count TV shows. And Netflix.

*ahem*
 
My one gripe is that the fakeout deaths are getting more than a little tiring.

Bucky, Thor, Loki (twice), Coulson, Pepper, Nick Fury, Groot....and I'm sure there will be at least a few more throughout Phase 3.

Without going into spoiler territory, I wouldn't be surprised if they were to resurrect at least one of the characters that was killed in AOU.
 
My one gripe is that the fakeout deaths are getting more than a little tiring.

Bucky, Thor, Loki (twice), Coulson, Pepper, Nick Fury, Groot....and I'm sure there will be at least a few more throughout Phase 3.

Without going into spoiler territory, I wouldn't be surprised if they were to resurrect at least one of the characters that was killed in AOU.

Yeah. It's old tiresome and basically tells us it doesn't matter if you grow of a character or not they won't truly die.
 
The villains.

The way it's very..."safe"
 
The fake deaths,weak villians and poor romance
 
Weak jokes, deaths and really a lack of good females. They are always the love interest. Other than Natasha and finally Scarlet Witch they haven't done much with the ladies. We have Maria who is never in the action. Peggy always pops up but doesn't do all that much. They gave Pepper some cool powers in IM3 but took it away. Jane just stands around. Sif is probably the best but even she gets pushed aside. I hope Captain Marvel is done well.

EDIT: I forgot GotG. Gamora and Nebula were great female characters too.
 
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Weak Villains - With the exception of Loki, and Alexander Pierce in The Winter Soldier, none of the baddies in the MCU have been particularly memorable. I'd wish Marvel would let some of these villains really give hell to their heroes. I though Ultron, who's portrayed well by James Spader btw, would be that one. But no, even Whedon dropped the ball on that too.

Lame humor - I'd have to agree on the puns and wisecracks getting to be wearing a bit thin now. Back then it was a breath fresh air to see comic book movies not taking themselves so seriously, but now it's getting to the point where we just wish they skip the humor entirely and fill a movie with more meaningful content, like drama and actual character development.

The Avengers films are particularly guilty of this. To be honest, I've never gotten the hype regarding Joss Whedon. Sure the humor is his trademark and he can direct spectacle, but actually directing some good drama, he falls he kind of short. Thor The Dark World was also kind of ruined by the rampant humor, something Kenneth Branagh actually handled well in the first film. Surprisingly though, Guardians of the Galaxy maintained a good balance between the humor and drama, despite the having some really funny scenes and lines.
 
Villains are pretty lame. Loki was good, so was Obidiah Stane. After that either they were too jokey or were one note rage villains with mediocre motivations

Humor is kinda 50/50. I do think there are some very funny jokes in every movie, but sometimes during really serious tense situations they dont need to add a joke. It worked for the most part in Guardians because I think they set the tone very early on, but even then it is a bit weird to go from the villain seens to the team joking around. Still love that movie though. Winter Soldier I think is a perfect tone for Marvel
 
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Iron Man, whom should be a global hero, always ending up fighting evil business men is a my major complaint of his films. It never really had the guts to embrace the Iron Man vs terrorism concept. The first half of Iron Man, before Obadiah is revealed as the villain is the only bit of the three Iron Man movies I can stand in retrospect. The movies could be so much more than generic beat-em ups. Too safe, too conventional.

Iron Man 1-3 is a clunky narrative, and a bunch of dramatic change is rapped up with a voice over from Tony at the end of 3 that didn't seemed earned. I have an easier time tracking Batman to Batman Forever quite honestly.

I always felt DC had better villains than Marvel, but Marvel had better heroes. Ronan is just an example of a placeholder villain that poses no threat.
 
I hate the fact that FOX and Sony continue to stick around like ticks halting MCU greatness. But that's not really Disney or Marvel fault at this point.
 
Weak villains, too many take deaths and them basically forgetting TIH.
 
I hate the fact that FOX and Sony continue to stick around like ticks halting MCU greatness. But that's not really Disney or Marvel fault at this point.
did you forget what happened on february 9th this year that changed the superhero world forever?
 
What people have said above, weak villains.

Red Skull and Ronan were underdeveloped and Malekith and Whiplash were In Name Only.

There's thankfully a back door where the former two can come back. Red Skull was launched into space somehow and we don't know where he is. For all we know, he's already returned to Earth and has been living underground for decades. Ronan is a Kree who are all about genetic engineering. Odds are, the Kree have a backup clone. These two are such major players in the Marvel U with Ronan also being an enemy of Captain Marvel and Red Skull being Captain America's #1 enemy.

Whiplash was fixed by a more comic accurate version showing up in Agents of SHIELD. Same with a "real" Mandarin somewhere out there who may very well appear in Iron Fist. I'm calling that Mandarin is Shang Chi's father in the MCU.

Malekith... that's unfixable since he's very clearly dead, there is no way for a different Malekith to be out there and his personality was all wrong. That was a missed opportunity.

Thankfully Marvel got the message. We got a great Kingpin and Ultron. Hopefully Purple Man, Zemo, Dormammu, Surtur and Thanos won't suck, along with the other Phase 3 villains.
 
Underdeveloped villains, Loki is the only fully developed villain! Ultron was close only a bit more developed than Ronan and Ronan was a bit more developed than Malekeith. And Malekeith who is Thor's greatest enemy besides Loki was way too underdevloped! Other than the villains, everything is great! Thanos is slowly being developed, we know he is like the kingpin (wilson fisk) but on a much bigger scale! Hopefully they dont just throw Thanos into Infinity Wars expecting the post credit scenes and GOTG scene to develop him enough as an interesting villain! I think, in my opinon, top 5 most developed villains are (in no particular order)
1. Loki
2. Kingping (Daredevil Netflix still counts)
3. Aldrich Killian
4. Obidiah Staine
5. Ultron
 
The only thing so far is I think they can do better with more diverse leads. Whites only casts with only one woman is not really good enough for the level marvel is at now.

Or ever really
 

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