Category: Musings

So they announce that they’re bringing back Robert Downey Jr. into the MCU fold that he could play not Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man a.k.a. the role he made famous, but rather Doctor Doom – the arch nemesis of the Fantastic Four… a casting choice that was made shortly after their originally intended villain – Kang The Whoever – was dropped because the guy who played him in some Ant-Man movie was dealing with some legal issues.

And then they put out a live stream that had people waiting for a trailer that showed a bunch of chairs with people’s names on it. Apparently, this was enough to get the MCU diehards excited while anyone with a functioning brain would sit back and go… “huh?”

And then as the weeks pass, they announce other possible names added to this already bloated production that apparently doesn’t even have a finished script. Exactly how many people do really need to tell a good story that’s worth telling? What the fuck are we doing here?

The more I hear about this production, the more weary I become over the whole deal. It’s clear that Disney and Marvel wants to lure back some of the folks who dropped on the MCU train after Endgame by bringing back some of these old faces. This implies a severe lack of confidence in this new wave of characters to carry the franchise on their own. It’s also pretty clear that they want this to be the biggest and bestest Marvel movie of all time and… I say “good luck with that, pal. You’re gonna need it.”

It’s been no secret that my feelings towards the current MCU product has been largely ambivalent. I haven’t cared enough about what they’ve been putting out to actually sit down and give these things a watch. However, I can’t help but feel a bit of a perverse interest in the behind the scenes stuff that’s been going on. Sure, there’s some negative noise being bandied about here and there… but it is an Avengers movie. It’s usually a big deal and I’m sure that thing will make some bank and people will praise it to the high heavens.

With that in mind… I actually, sincerely hope that this movie bombs. Like absolutely totally fail at the box office to recoup its massively overblown budget to bring back all these talents that I’m pretty sure didn’t come cheap. I just want to see this thing fail miserably… if only because I’m interested in seeing what the aftermath of that whole deal is going to be. Having a couple smaller things crap out here and there – it’ll be business as usual and there’ll be some words about things changing when nothing actually did… but if an Avengers movie were to bomb – an Avengers movie with a massively bloated budget to account for all those overpriced actors, mind you – what would happen afterwards? Would we see a change in leadership? Would we scrap the whole deal and start anew? Do we give this thing a rest and let absence make the heart grow fonder?

And look, if it ends up being a success – which I’m sure it will be – then you know what? Cool, whatever. We all move on with our lives. But if it ends up being a failure… I don’t know. What happens afterwards? Where do we go from there? That feels like a more intriguing scenario than anything the monkeys writing these things could come up with.

That’s the strange mindset I have with this movie. I don’t care enough to watch it when it comes out in theaters, but I’m fascinated by any potential fallout that would come as a result of the massive failure of a major Avengers event film. That would be the more interesting story and potentially a better narrative than any scripted piece of MCU entertainment scripted in the past decade or so.

Anyway, I’m done. I’m going to get some shawarma.

Later.

I feel the need to mention that.

I also feel the need to mention that I had a good time in the movie theater for the first time in a long time.

Is the humor and quip machine getting tiresome? Sure… seems like every movie has it. Sometimes, however, you can almost forgive that if the more wholesome parts of the film are done well… and I feel that’s the case here.

Maybe I’ll revisit the movie at home whenever I can get the chance to see if it holds up… but so far, I want to hold on to the happy memory of Krypto saving the whole movie… not that it really needed saving.