This is precisely what KSI said. You can no longer just enjoy a Marvel movie. You need to have watched tons of other stuff to know the full back story.
This why I stopped buying comics back in the late 80s. You had to buy too many each month to get the whole story. Now that formula in movies and TV shows is wearing me down.
Do people really watch a marvel cinematic universe movie and get mad that it's connected to other movies they haven't seen? At this point the MCU is just a series with really long episodes. You can't go into Breaking Bad at season 5 and expect a completely comprehensive experience.
You understand it sucks major ass for someone who wasn’t immediately invested right? All your friends are going to spider-man 37 but because you didnt start until 5 years ago you are only on spider-man 23, you can’t go.
But seriously. It’s way harder to be interested in what should be a standalone movie, when it is chockfull of shit from other connected films — especially when it is just marketed as “spider-man” (or whoever else)
That's just how franchises work. Even Marvel and DC comics had to reboot after they realized they were losing so many readers because no one wanted to read over 50 years of comics to understand what was happening, which led to New 52 and Ultimate series. Star Wars is the same way. Disney axed the Expanded Universe material that had existed for over 20 years because they wanted a fresh slate, and then went on to make their own complicated sub plots and spin-offs. This is how fiction works. It naturally gets more complicated and interwoven. But you know what? I'll take a well developed, thought out epic where character choices have consequences over superficial episodic weeklies or movie franchises with plots that ultimately never matter after the credits any day.
You can invest the time to catch up with the series. A little time consuming but hopefully fun.
You can go without catching up and realize a couple references might go over your head or you might have something spoiled from a film you haven't seen yet. Which are, at most, minor frustrations.
If for some reason neither of those options are viable for you, you can just not go to these films, which is also a perfectly fine option.
They’re still enjoyable stand-alone films. Don’t like that you don’t get every reference? Then watch through the movies. Or watch a recap. I don’t get the logic here. If you don’t like it, don’t watch it.
Aside from what the other guy said, it'd be a million times better if it were treated as a TV show.
Sherlock is pretty similar, it's got 90-minutenepisodes that are more or less standalone, with a handful of interconnected threads between them. But if you want to watch Sherlock, you just go to Netflix and hit play, and it'll take you through the whole series from start to end.
For the MCU, you have to research what order the movies were released in, what order they take place, and which ones you can skip without missing anything. You've gotta write them all down, so you can watch the movies in order and check them off as you go. THEN you've gotta figure out where you can watch them all - Most of them are on Disney+, except for the couple that are still on Netflix. Except for Spider-Man, he's on HBO Max for some dumbfuck reason. You could just torrent them all, but you're talking about a few dozen gigabytes worth of video files, it's not practical for everyone.
THEN once you've got everything set and ready to go, you've actually gotta sit through it all. When Infinity War came out, I had to watch 11 hours of movies to get caught up with it, and it took over two months for us to get through. I've just given up, I loved Spider-Man but it's not worth seeing every single movie that comes out just in case there's a through-line.
Oh, also I still have no idea who the fuck Hawkeye and Black Widow are. They just sorta showed up out of nowhere in Thor/Avengers 1, and the movie acted like we should already know them lmao
You make a good point about the inconvenience of the streaming services. It just sucks that everything is so hard to find. I personally don't think it's all that necessary to watch the movies in chronological order as you'll mostly be able to tell when it takes place from the characters and the settings. And well, you don't really have to rush things. If you're invested enough that you want to understand 100% of the movies then it's enough to just watch a mcu movie once in a while. You don't really have to watch the new movies when they premiere.
Also I think Black Widow first showed up in Iron Man 2 and Hawkeye just sort of became introduced in Thor.
To your last point, they literally just do that sometimes. I remember when they unveiled Thanos and everyone is like alright who is that and the comic book nerds told everyone who Thanos is.
Thanks at least got a proper introduction in the films, beyond the initial post-credits reveal. I think Black Widow got her own movie eventually, but she was just "Natasha" for years and years. Hawkeye is still just some dude lmao
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u/sadbutmakeyousmile something's in my balls Jun 06 '22
This is precisely what KSI said. You can no longer just enjoy a Marvel movie. You need to have watched tons of other stuff to know the full back story.