re: Guys, the reason Marvel is failing...it's too dense

My belief is that people have lost interest in the content because the quality of the content is bad. One reason the quality is bad is because there exists a set of unwritten “woke” rules that have largely taken over screenwriting. These rules severely restrict what can be shown happening to female characters. By not allowing female protagonists to lose an argument or a physical fight to a male character, it severely limits the ability of screen writers to depict struggle. By making these characters essentially avatars for the entire gender or racial movement, they are not allowed to give them any personality flaws or else they will be ridiculed for continuing negative stereotypes of women and/or people of color or non cis gender identity. Carol Danvers and Rey Skywalker are perfect examples of this concept. The audience cannot root for them because they always win. It’s okay for the heroes to win in the end, in fact, it’s best if they do, but they need to take some hits along the way to make that victory mean something. Rey never loses to Kylo Ren in Star Wars like Luke does to Vader. Rey is already an expert mechanic and pilot without the need for Poe or Han Solo. She masters the force without Luke teaching her, in fact, she teaches him. She’s the best, smartest, wisest, skilled person and her only flaw is not being everywhere at once. How is that interesting? Even Napoleon lost a few battles and got outsmarted.

When you take a character and remove their flaws, you don’t get a better character, you get a statue. When I played The Sims as a child, I thought it would be fun to maximize all of my sims needs and skills so that I wouldn’t have to waste time grinding just to keep them alive and progressing in their careers. The problem is that a sim with their needs completely met is boring. It doesn’t do anything because it doesn’t have to. Why socialize when its social meter is full? Why study when its skills are maxed? It’s not going to cook, clean, sleep, or use the restroom because it doesn’t have to. It’s just going to stand there like a statue idling because it has nothing to accomplish. There is no struggle to overcome, no activity needed to survive, and nothing to motivate it because its basic motives are all met.

When you remove the struggle from a hero’s journey, you remove any reason for the audience to invest in their story beyond a shallow power fantasy. People enjoy a power fantasy in video games because they get to control the character and step into the shoes of that power fantasy. Movies don’t work that way. They’re not interactive. What gets you invested is watching someone with flaws overcome adversity and grow to be a better person.

Marvel movies have lost the ability to do that because the “rules” of woke stories do not allow for non-cis white male protagonist characters to have flaws, nor are they allowed to lose physical confrontations to male characters (if female or LGBT) and white characters (if a POC). Hollywood writers simply aren’t good enough to consistently write compelling stories around these rules, so their products suffer. Marvel is not in decline just because of over saturation in a poor economy. The main problem is that the overwhelming majority of their output since Endgame has been of poor quality, and that deficit in quality is almost wholly the result of screen writers trying to abide by these insane “woke” rules for female, LGBT, and POC protagonist characters.

I think they’ve also ventured way too deep into the overly comicy story lines for general audiences…so not only do they need all of this pre requisite viewing but they have to have knowledge of these multiple earths and what not.

And it’s probably too simple to say it was just too much content. Netflix had it right when it came to the TV series, do lower level heroes with smaller storylines. The Disney + wanted to use main level characters but on tight budgets and the stakes couldn’t be too high because obviously they want to save that for theaters, so people got wise to it and checked out. The Fury series could have/should have been great…but it felt cheap and pointless

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despite overwhelming evidence that they are wrong

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That's not evidence, it's an opinion. I didn't downvote him and I don't believe he's 100% wrong, but he's giving his opinion, not presenting evidence.

For example, he believes that these characters "always win". They may be Mary Sues and have a ridiculously easy road to heroism, but they have losses and setbacks along the way. The level of difficulty may vary, but every story has a lost battle, being captured, or some device that keeps them from immediately achieving their goal.

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kingbob

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You could have saved yourself a lot of typing by just saying that Disney Mary Sue-d the frick out of their female leads.

Every black or brown character has to carry the burden of social justice on their backs. They're basically just muling Disney's agenda instead of being actual people. It's cardboard caricature nonsense and insulting to black actors and fans alike.

Every straight, white male audience member is a target for the "you're a piece of shite, the source of all evil" harangue that masquerades as dialogue and plot.

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Rey

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I can't remember which marvel film Rey appears in.

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Carol Danvers

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Got bitch slapped 1v1 by Thanos, forcing a man to save the day.

shite every Netflix Marvel series was better than any MCU series on Disney+ outside of Loki.

ETA

Yes even Iron Fist!

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shows if they werent a bunch of woke garbage. They knew Capt Marvel was terrible. She Hulk was cringey bullshite.

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She Hulk isn't inherently terrible as a concept. We've had Batgirl, Wonder Woman, Sarah Conner, Sidney Bristow, Ziva David, and Charlie's Angels in the past.

Problem with She Hulk or the female Ghostbusters is terrible writers. Writers with even minimal talent can turn out a good (or at least watchable) female superhero movie.

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Yes even Iron Fist!

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Marvel told a whole massive story with the Infinity Gauntlet. They ended it, well, with Infinity War. They undid all of that with Endgame.

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People usually disagree with me, but I felt Infinity War was the perfect ending to the Avengers saga. Even with Thanos winning, it completed character arcs, a grandiose plot line, and exposed that no matter how “super” the good guys get, evil can prevail.

Endgame was a great movie, but it was largely unnecessary and seemed more like a Captain America daydream than a realistic conclusion to the multi-phased story.

Between a complex and convoluted universe (multi universe actually) and the Disney intention to put message over story, Marvel was always doomed to fail. Anyone with a brain could see it coming.

Just reset with a new big bad guy with a magnanimous plan to conquer the universe and new good guys discovering their powers to stop him. I bet we’d all still like it even if it wasn’t wholly original like the first run.