Bluntly put, Marvel has been putting out crap since Endgame -- clearly Infinity War was a high water mark. They've managed to retire, or in some cases degrade, the characters we loved. They've neutered the Hulk, turned Loki into a tool, and turned Hawkeye into a retiree. They've produced new characters that have zero resonance. I mean, who the hell is Ms. Marvel? Who are The Eternals? Where are The Fantastic Four, The Silver Surfer -- the household names? The scripts are dreary and lame and filled with exposition. The casting pales in comparison to the brilliant use of RDJ, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Holland, Scarlet Johannson. I used to joke about how bad DC was in comparison to Marvel, but none of the Marvel series could hold a candle to Peacemaker.
Then along comes No Way Home and it's really good. Through some unusual circumstances I actually saw this twice in a movie theater. At least once there was a great deal of cheering and demonstrative behavior. If you've ever seen YouTubes of theaters during scenes from the big battle in Endgame, where everyone is cheering and shouting -- it was like that. In fact, see it here. I won't recap it as I'm sure you have heard about the gist of the plot, but I'll note that the cinematic dark arts of Pacing and Tone rang true throughout. If you get those right you're more than 60% of the way to a great film. If you nail the casting, you begin to push 90% and, of course, when you have nothing but established characters and the iconic actors that made them famous, greatness becomes a lock.
So yeah, go see it and enjoy it. You can think of it as a throwback to when Marvel was hitting non-stop home runs instead of grounding out to second every time.
Now I will extend my rant. Feel free to move on.
One of the most gratifying scenes in No Way Home was the now famous Matt Murdoch scene with Charlie Cox. The acknowledgment of the Netflix Daredevil series from 5 years past raised hope for a restart of that character. In fact, Disney+ even created a special class of "adult" content so they could stream it without offending their child-oriented demographic. I'm a fan of that DD series and a few years ago I would have loved to see what Marvel could have done with it. Now that they seem to have confirmed their intention to do just that, my prior is that they will screw it up somehow. The Netflix show, despite its flaws, was vastly superior to any TV series Marvel has put out.
And I've heard little good about the latest Dr. Strange.
I know it's silly for a grown-ass man to go on about this but as I have stated before, I do have a deep nostalgic affinity for Marvel from my tween years of buying comics off the spinning rack for 15¢. And perhaps I should temper my negativity a bit because the new Thor trailer looks pretty cool. That's Taika Waititi at it again.
Ah well. As a grown-ass man I know nothing good lasts forever. Like the heroic age of pantheon TV before it, the heroic age of action movie craftsmanship appears to be coming to an end. I guess we'll see what's next. I hope it's not the heroic age of TikTok.
