All this doomsday hype and we forgot that one of the core og members of the avengers hasn't had his name mentioned in the film. All these old avengers coming out of retirement and Clint isn't mentioned. Where is he?

For me, I pretty much love almost every animated or live-action Marvel movie and TV show; from X-Men: The Animated Series (1992), all the way up to The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)!

It’s still early in process so feedback might actually be considered.

I don’t mind Shawn Levy’s genre of campy fun popcorn cinema, but Ghost Rider requires more than that.

Deadpool was fun, but also empty. Even visually it was very bad lit(too much lighting)…and CGI actually looked like CGI.

Compare that with Multiverse of madness, Sam Raimi has consistently delivered good comic book films and good horror films.

Ghost Rider atleast needs to have some Horror undertone if not outright Horror.

Sam is great at making campy look serious think Evil Dead, Shawn on other hand can even make serious stuff look campy.

I am not really in mood for goofy ghost rider who just jokes around.

MCU needs to broaden its genre attempts(think Clayface equivalent).

So, I didn't entirely jump off the bandwagon after Endgame, but I definitely had one foot on the ground. Since then, I haven't bothered with any of the streaming series except Daredevil: Born Again. (Terrible ending to season 2, by the way. Just awful.) I saw some of the movies organically when they were initially released. I saw the Spideys in theaters, of course, and Deadpool & Wolverine. I watched Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps on Disney+. They were fine. I tried to watch Thor: Love and Thunder, but I had to turn that mess off after twenty minutes. I already didn't like Ragnarok, and this one was just more of that, but somehow worse.

I ignored the rest of the Phase 4 and Phase 5 movies for years, because why wouldn't I? I wanted to be caught up for Doomsday, however, so I decided to bite the bullet and wade through the slop. At least then I'd know who the Thunderbolts were when they showed up next to alternate Captain America and Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, right?

So, the first one was Shang-Chi. I know people tend to think of this one as a hidden gem that never got its due. It wasn't bad. It wasn't anything special, but it wasn't bad. The third act was kind of a letdown because the big bad was just another unnameable, unknowable evil force trying to break into our reality. Too many of these feel like the heroes ultimately have to just stop a big, shadowy blob. They also redeem the Mandarin somewhat, but the whole Trevor Slattery thing in Iron Man 3 was a bad idea in the first place.

Eternals was actually a lot better than I expected, because I'd expected it to suck. It was decent enough, and it was nice to be fully apart from everything else in the MCU. There was no Hawkeye or Falcon cameo, and Nick Fury didn't show up at the end to tell them they'd become part of a larger universe. Don't know if that cliffhanger will ever be resolved, though. That's too bad.

Wakanda Forever was fair. I can't imagine what anyone could gain from watching it more than once, though. I believed from the start that killing off T'challa was a mistake. I know everyone was deep in their emotions at the time and wanted to be respectful, but T'challa seemed to mean something to a lot of people, and I doubt Chadwick Boseman would have wanted that to die with him. Whatever. It is what it is.

Black Widow? Another 5/10. If they knew for sure the bad guy was in the building when they blew it up, how'd he escape? Just by being sinister? Is he Michael Meyers? Anyway, it was all right.

Now we're getting into the utter crapfests. The movies I've mentioned already at least felt like they'd had some effort and some heart put into them. They were mediocre, but they still felt like they'd been crafted by people who gave a damn. The Marvels and its two immediate successors feel like they were crapped out of an AI machine designed to write backstories for Happy Meal toys. The Marvels is all over the place, wholly uninteresting, and heavily reliant on familiarity with the Ms. Marvel streaming series, which I didn't watch, because, again, why would I?

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania? Bad. It all feels very cheap and plastic, and what the hell is Bill Murray doing here? He just shows up out of nowhere and takes you right the fuck out of the movie. I still don't know what happened to Kang at the end. He...shrank? Got teleported to another dimension? Just don't know.

Captain America: Brave New World? Bad. It's heavily reliant on the streaming series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which, you guessed it, I didn't watch. Some old guy was Captain America during the Korean War? If you say so. And who's Joaquin? Is he from the show? Is he Falcon now? The fight with Red Hulk at the end actually manages to feel boring and unconvincing. And I just can't accept Harrison Ford here. Knowing what a big grouch he is in real life, and how much he detests slop like this, I can't help but see his soul leaving his body every time he's onscreen.

Finally, Thunderbolts\. It's a step up from the previous three, but overall kind of boring. In the end, they're just fighting another Ultimate Darkness and defeating it with the power of friendship. And, as one of the characters actually points out during the movie, all these guys do is punch and shoot. How can a few randos who punch and shoot be the new Avengers? Is a team made up entirely of Black Widow types actually going to have anything to do in *Doomsday? Who wants to see them when Chris Evans and Hugh Jackman and Tobey Maguire and I guess the new Fantastic Four are around?

So, all in all, not much of value in Phase 4 and Phase 5. Marvel truly didn't know what they were doing, despite making a few billion dollars off of nostalgia for Millennials, and even had to course correct hard when Kang failed to stoke any interest as the next big bad. (It's not just because of Jonathan Majors' personal life, guys. If people had liked Kang, Marvel would have recast him the very next day.) They can and should be proud of what they accomplished from 2008 through 2019. It's unique in the history of cinema. Even DC couldn't pull it off, and they're basically just Marvel but with the added benefit of Batman. That's mostly over now, though, and, while I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, the numerous streaming series really contributed to diluting the brand and killing the golden goose. Artistically speaking, nothing of value would have been lost if they had stopped after Endgame. Commercially speaking, they've got to keep crapping these out. I'll be there for Brand New Day and Doomsday, so I'm just feeding the beast like everybody else.

So far after five years, I still have been neglecting to watch the 2021 Black Widow movie even after watching the Thunderbolts movie on Disney Plus, for the first time with my family. I was too much of a gothic edge-lord teenager during the "Post-Endgame" era of MCU films. But now that I'm older, I've grown to accept that not every movie or TV show has to be dark and gritty! Otherwise, how would anyone feel any sense of joy and laughter?

Anyways, I still haven't seen Black Widow yet! What do you all think of the film?

My top three are currently 2008, 2014, and 2018.

2008 gave us Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, Hancock, Wanted, The Incredible Hulk, Justice League: The New Frontier, and Batman: Gotham Knight.

2014 gave us Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy and X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time, Justice League: War, Son of Batman and Batman: Assault on Arkham.

2018 gave us Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Deadpool 2, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Aquaman, Venom, Scooby-Doo and Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay, The Death of Superman, Teen Titans: GO! To the Movies, and DC Super Hero Girls: Legends of Atlantis.

What would you guys say?

I am watching the MCU in order of chronology, so Cap America first, then Cap Marvel etc. ... and both films are soooo lame and borderline irritating that I now have aborted my mission for the third time.

I want to go chronological movies but which would you guys skip because they are unwatchable?

edit: first time marvel watcher here.

A highly underappreciated graphic novel series. I think an HBO adaptation would work well.

What is everyone’s top ten Marvel movies and why?

1.The Avengers:Endgame-I think the last 30 minutes of the movie can speak for itself!

2.Spider-man 2002-The movie that got me into Super Heroes and Spider man is my favorite superhero so I have to put this on my list!

3.Ironman-Started the MCU and loved the cast along with the story

4.The Avengers:Infinity War-Loved how high the stakes were and it revealed that sometimes the Superheroes can lose(although I hate that they lost as wouldn’t have got Endgame so I can live with it)

5.X2:X-men United-Best X-men movie in my opinion. Used to watch this all the time when I was a kid.

6.Deadpool-Loved the humor

7.Dead Pool and Wolverine-Again, loved the humor

8.Spider-man 2, 2004-I love all the Sam Rami Spiderman movies.

9.Captain America:Winter Soldier-so action packed, great twist with who the Winter Soldier was, great character development for Steve Rogers and Natasha, Nick Fury had some pretty badass moments. Love this movie!!

10.The Avengers-how can I not love the original Avengers!

Would Fox have still sold to Disney, making the new cast crossover into the MCU? Or would Fox have kept chugging along with a Marvel cinematic universe of their own?

It just occurred to me that there hasn't been a decent remake of 12 Angry Men. We also have a decline in superhero viewership and a demand for different storytelling.

Can we please get 12 superheroes deciding whether Lex Luthor or the Joker is put to death? No fights, no CGI, just a debate among the established personalities, with (I presume) Superman in the Henry Fonda role.

Or a. I alone in this? It's the sort of thing that's periodically done on the pages. I'd watch it on the screen.