I often feel like I’m dancing in circles over The MCU, as if it’s a personal lifeblood. It’s irksome because, despite my constant defence of the franchise, I’m not its biggest fanboy. I enjoy what it has to offer, but, save Iron Man, none of the movies have transcended a 4/5 on my personal enjoyment scale. So frequently seeing people argue how it’s “destroying film” or “mediocre entertainment”, only to present weak or easily-rebuffed arguments in favour of their positions, is tiring. And, to be frank, I’m tired of responding.
However, for the sake of trying to extrapolate writing ideas, and because The Whitly-Verse hasn’t seen an entry for a month, I’ll do it again:
… (Courtesy of The Unintentional Fallacy.)
I’d like to apologize for getting to this video 5 months late. I subconsciously mark video essays calling Marvel movies a “problem” with red flags, so I usually avoid them like a plague unless I’m desperate. But there can be no holding back how pretentious I think the video is. I think it’s pretentious because it assumes, like most detractors, that MCU movies are solely created with the intent to pander for money, completely ignoring that they almost all function as films, and I think it’s pretentious because it assumes that said films don’t inspire individuals to be creative. I also think it’s pretentious because it assumes that Star Wars, a franchise the essayist holds in high-regard, wasn’t made for intertextuality, even though George Lucas acknowledged inspiration from Akira Kurosawa and the Flash Gordon serials of the early-20th Century.
However, the one area this video missed the mark in is in its insistence, perhaps indirectly, that Marvel’s responsible for the corporate, franchise-based model that modern-Hollywood’s vapidly abusing. Because it’s not. It’s not Marvel’s fault that Hollywood’s mimicking its formula without understanding why it worked. It’s also not Marvel’s fault that The MCU’s successful enough to warrant shameless copycats. And it’s not even close to Marvel’s fault that the films are adored by moviegoers, yet their imitators aren’t. How do I know this?
Because I’m a moviegoer.
I’m not much of a comic reader. I’ve read the odd issue here-and-there, and there are definitely stand-outs that I own, but for the most part it’s never been a medium I’d spend hundreds of dollars on a regular basis. Comics, despite being interesting, don’t fancy my interest. And Marvel Comics, a brand that’s been around for over 50 years, is guilty of constant interlocking and continuity nods spanning so far back that knowing where to start would give me a headache.
I am, however, a film fan. I enjoy some genres less than others, but I’m open to anything so long as it looks good. And The MCU, for all of its continuity nods and winks, captures my fancy because it deals with superheroes, whom I happen to really like and admire. Plus, the franchise can draw-and-pull from the best of the archives while ignoring the garbage. Captain America: Civil War, for example, drew from a largely-maligned event series, yet it was praised because it knew which ideas to keep and which to discard. That’s a luxury that film’s entitled as a medium.
This is why I respect Marvel despite not loving them. I also mention this to springboard from the above video on how Marvel’s opened the door for low-strung imitators that miss why they’ve been so successful. Not that some of them aren’t entertaining, I enjoyed Star Trek into Darkness and Spectre despite both being completely ludicrous, but when they mimic The MCU without knowing why it works-its commitment to characters and story-then whose fault is that? If the smartest kid in class inspires lazy copycats, would you criticize the kid for being smart, or the copycats for being lazy?
This is why the video bugs me so much: it claims the franchise is responsible for a corporate attitude toward filmmaking, all-the-while not recognizing the bigger issue of laziness. Is it a problem that so many franchises are attempting half-baked MCU replicas? Absolutely. Will it kill the film industry? Maybe. But is it solely The MCU’s responsibility? Absolutely not. Because Hollywood has always run after trends in an attempt to make quick money, not realizing until it’s too late.
Also, digging into the essayist’s reverence for Star Wars, keep in mind that there was resistance to that franchise in its early days too. The older crowd of critics doomed it as the “death of filmmaking”, and the franchise’s most-beloved entry, Star Wars Ep. V: The Empire Strikes Back, was met with lukewarm responses from many respected tabloids of the time. We look fondly on it now, but hindsight’s 20/20. Not to mention, Star Wars inspired its share of knock-offs too, such that Castle in the Sky, which I adore, wouldn’t exist without it.
I know it’s easy to point fingers at the flavour of the day for “ruining ice cream forever”, but it’s not fair to shirk the blame on populist tastes. Because The MCU isn’t an exercise in vapid entertainment. Could it be better-executed? Yes, but it could also be worse-executed. And until that level of self-awareness is understood by its detractors, then the real issue, a lack of effort from Hollywood, will continue to be ignored. And I think that that’s most harmful.
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