New Project: MCU Obsessed! The Parameters

Hello, is there anybody out there?

Well, okay, I don’t know how many or even if any of my readers remember this blog, but I decided to throw my hat back into the ring and get back to this. There’s no real deep reason behind it, except that I just felt like doing it again; I kind of missed having an excuse to do long-winded texts about pop culture.

I’ll probably pop over to Slacktivist and do some plugs, but that will be the extent of my shameless self-promotion. I figure, eh, I’m not getting paid for this, so there’s no real reason to go to too much trouble. I’m not sure how many people are even still into the blogging format—seems most have migrated to YouTube videos and podcasts—but blogs make it easier for me to supplement my personality with links from YouTube, so here I’ll stay.

Anyway, I decided to take on this project of chronicling and reviewing each film that makes up the collective known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe or MCU for short.It’s just an idea that has nagged at me for a while. I tried to resist, because I am a massive fangirl, and I wanted my posts to be of more substance and not just endless, “OMG! I love it so much!”

But the idea wouldn’t let me go and often, when it comes to writing, if an idea is hanging on you, there’s usually a reason for it. Whether it’s a good idea or a bad one, the only way to exorcise it, is to explore it. Maybe it’ll be trash, maybe it’ll be genius, or something in between, but it’s usually worth exploring that idea, even if it goes nowhere.

I, like many writers, have documents I call “my dead birds,” drafts for stories and novels that for whatever reason, failed to come together and fly, stalling out some pages in. However, I’ve never regretted the time I spent on my dead birds. With each project, I learned a little more about the craft and got even further, until now, I have two completed books and a partial third that’s driving me crazy. It’s meant to be the finishing book to my series, but endings are something I’ve always struggled with and the fact that the third installment of a trilogy is supposed to be the biggest, most solid ending of all, doesn’t help. Nor does the fact that the final installment is notoriously difficult, causing even good writers to fail to stick the landing. :deep breath: Still, I persevere.

But like I said, if I intended to take on this project, I want it to have value and substance beyond gushing praise. There probably will be plenty of gushing, but I will try to talk more about the nature of the craft, why it is good or bad. To better aid in this project, I thought I’d do a post listing the rules and parameters of the project as means of keeping me in check and given my few readers an idea what to expect.

First of all, we will go in the order of release date, starting with Iron Man and ending with [INSERT NAME OF WHATEVER RECENT RELEASE HERE]. We will confine ourselves solely to the films classified as part of the MCU and nothing else. I probably will bring up other Marvel adaptations outside the official MCU, but to the extent that I do, it’ll be to discuss how this film utilized this character or idea and how it compares to the MCU’s handling of it.

A bit of life advice: do not try to make sense of the chronology of the X-Men films. Therein lies the way to madness.

And while there will likely be some discussions of how this element paid off in a later film down the line, for the most part, we will treat each film as a stand-alone and talk about it as such. It’s a rule that will likely be repeatedly bent and broken, but I feel it’s important to try to treat the film as an individual unit. The film-goers at the time of the release may have had some theories about what might happen later, but they couldn’t know for certain what would happen, wouldn’t know that this would eventually be explained in this sequel. Therefore, we will bend our minds and try to approach it how the average movie-goer would have seen it, as much as we possibly can.

I will refer to the MCU wikia and other supplemental materials like tie-in comics or deleted scenes, but those will be used more as a means of further exploring the characters/world. I am a firm believer in the idea that good art should be able to stand on its own. If you have to read a bunch of tie-in materials to understand what the hell’s going on, then the project has failed. Supplemental materials should be like a spice—the dish is still good on its own, but the spice just adds a little extra, like a cherry atop your sundae. Supplemental materials should not be a rickety scaffolding that has been krazy-glued together in a desperate attempt to support a structure about as solid as wet cardboard. I will also discuss behind-the-scenes info to explore how various acting or directing choices shaped the final product.

For the ease of the project, I will leave the various TV/streaming services out of the discussion. I may touch on them a little, explore how they handled various ideas, but that will be the extent of it. Though for the record, I will give some brief reviews here below.

Agent Carter OMG! I LOVED IT SO MUCH! It totally should have gotten six seasons and a movie! I could go on and on, but long story short, Hayley Atwell's portrayal of Peggy Carter is one of the items on my "Stuff That Makes Me Question My Commitment to Heterosexuality" list.

Daredevil, Season One A solid, well-crafted product from beginning to end, easily salvaging a compelling character whose reputation had taken such a drubbing in its previous outing. Not a weak point anywhere, great performances from everyone in the cast, especially Vincent D’onofrio’s turn as Wilson Fisk, creating a great villain with an involving backstory and charisma out the yin yang, while still managing to be a terrifying villain, the kind of person who can go from discussing art with the woman he loves in one scene to making it so a Russian gangster’s neck is now enjoying a pleasant breeze in another, and having it all feel like the natural extension of his character.

That’s one praise I will give to all the Netflix series. Since they aren’t bound by the MPAA, the creators can go all out with the violence and horror, not hold back at all. Because while I hate to sound like Buckets of Blood guy from Shortpacked! but modern fight scenes are so neutered by MPAA regulations as to feel almost cartoonish. I’m not saying I want every film to drip with gore, but it feels ridiculous how the hero can mow down scores of mooks and the most ever seen, is maybe a spot of blood.

It was why Logan was such a great movie. The R-Rating meant the filmmakers didn’t have to hold back on the gore, so there’s actual meaningful bloodshed in the fight scenes, lending it a visceral feel lacking in so many other outings with this character. Yeah, it’s all choreographed since it’s, y’know, a movie, but the fights feel more real, like there are actual humans being wounded and thrown around. You cringe at the impact of the blows the characters receive. In doing so, it salvaged Wolverine, a character who had almost been rendered a cartoon by his previous outings, turning him into a sweating, striving, deeply compelling and very human character. It always felt kind of ridiculous, having a character whose most notable physical traits involve having massive knives fused to his hands, having there only be maybe a spot of blood in his fight scenes.

Once you’ve realized that PG-13 films have been proven to have even more scenes of violence than R-Rated films, it’s one more exhibit in a very long list of exhibits as to why the MPAA sucks and is terrible and sucks. For many many more, see the informative documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated.

Anyway...

Daredevil, Season Two The stuff with The Punisher is great and amazing. I had always been somewhat dismissive of the character. It's not that I don't believe that you can't tell compelling stories using Frank Castle, it's just that for me, he's a very limited character, the kind you can write a miniseries about, but there's not enough there to build a franchise on. The Punisher is Batman without the style and morality that makes Batman interesting. He's pretty one-note; he runs into a bad guy/obstacle, he blows it up and keeps going without any qualms of conscience whatsoever.

But in this adaptation, The Punisher is still a conscienceless monster, but he's also a very human, striving, hurting character. I think he works best more as a foil to other characters, than as the MC in his own right. Or in other words, he can be used as a dark mirror for other characters or as a means of studying a more straightforward heroic character in a new light.

The trouble is the vast majority of the series is taken up with all this BS regarding The Hand and Elektra, and while this is material that is rife with interesting ideas, somehow it all winds up being so punishingly dull you're like, "Will you stop with all the secret evil society of magic ninjas and get back to the courtroom drama?"

Daredevil, Season Three managed to regain much of the series's lost momentum, bringing back Vincent D'onofrio who remains fan-fucking-tastic, but at this point, the various Netflix series had experienced their Waterloo and were spiraling down the drain, and it shows.

Jessica Jones was good, nay, great, but it was so viscerally uncomfortable on such an unbelievably disturbing scale that I couldn't make it past a few episodes, because it made my skin crawl so much. I know it's supposed to do that--I know it is a detailed exploration of abuse and its psychological effects--but at the same time, I'm just like, "Nope, nope, nope, I can't even!" It is great art and I understand why it is great and it works, but I just couldn't handle it. Probably if I had watched more beyond a few episodes, I'd be forever unable to resist punching David Tennant if I ever saw him out in public. Since David Tennant is, from what I've heard, actually a lovely person, not an asshole, and he played my brother's favorite incarnation of The Doctor, he's probably not deserving of random face punches. Save those for Nazis and alt-Right trash.

Luke Cage, Season One, was like the first season of Daredevil, a generally solid product, even if Mariah is never as compelling as Cottonmouth. Misty Knight was fucking cool and I would have loved to have her doing her own thing in her own series.

As for season two, by now the Netflix series had hit their Waterloo and it shows. I lost interest a few episodes in, because it was just scene after scene of people talking with some shocking, hardcore violence scenes in the last few minutes. It also didn't help that, well, maybe the problem was with the TV I watched it on, but I had such a hard time hearing what anyone was saying. I kept having to crank it up and spent so much time shouting, "Oh, will you people stop whispering like teenagers in homeroom and talk at a normal volume?" Then one of those hardcore violent scenes would show up and blast me with sound, thus making me regret turning it up so I can hear the dialogue and understand what the hell was going on. Though I freely admit that my perception may also be inaccurate because I spent much of my teenage years, blasting music at top volume through my headphones for hours on end, so yeah, there's that to take into account.

Iron Fist And here we have the Waterloo I keep talking about. I only made it ten minutes into the second episode, because I just wanted so badly to punch this smirking dude right in his stupid fucking face. I thought maybe the series suffered from the equivalent of having to follow Susan Boyle on Karaoke Night, aka the old "tough act to follow" bit. No matter how talented you may be at singing, if you're following Susan Boyle and aren't fucking extraordinary, you're going to seem piddling in comparison. So I felt like I should give the series a chance.

But Good God, it just sucked so much. I completely understand all the hate. All the other Netflix series were delving into some pretty heavy material related to power, race, and abuse, and meanwhile, here we've got Danny the Poor Little Rich Boy. Still, it does fascinate me, how that one series managed to sink the entire Netflix series roll-out. Until Iron Fist, the Netflix series were freakin' unstoppable, delivering hit after hit, but one bad series sank the whole franchise.

I couldn't really get too far into The Punisher--just got bored in the first episode--and I never checked out The Defenders because I heard all the bad buzz and decided, "Y'know what, maybe this time I should listen," and I did. I regret nothing. My watchlist is superlong as is.

As for Agents of SHIELD, well my feelings have shifted. I dropped out after the first season, because good god, Skye was such a godawful Mary Sue. Skye was the sun around which all the series's characters and events orbited, Skye's judgment was rock-solid and unshakeable. It pissed me off, because I was promised an ensemble show, dammit, not the All Skye Spectacular! It's a pity because I've always loved Coulson, even before he put Loki through a wall, May was a badass, and Fitz and Simmons were freaking adorable. It may be one of the unifying factors of the MCU fandom: everyone ships Fitz and Simmons. Probably even Hydra ships Fitz and Simmons because even though they’re a quasi-fascist organization serving a malevolent alien intelligence, they're not stupid.

Since season two of AoS was premiering at the same time as another show I really liked, I was just kind of like, "Nah…" and dropped out. Then I saw some clips from season four where they introduce Ghost Rider and they were just so fucking metal that I was like, "I have to get into this series!" He's nowhere near as hammy as the Nicholas Cage version* but goddangit! it was so cool to see that character in all its true grandeur. Every time Ghost Rider was onscreen, I fought the urge to shout "FUCK YEAH!" and do the Ronnie James Dio Devil Horns Sign, because that's what you do in the face of something so damn metal.

I don't know who or what intervened in the subsequent seasons, but at some point, Skye not only got a name change and became Daisy Johnson, she also became much less of a Sue. She probably still ranks pretty high on Mary Sue Litmus Tests, but not as high, since the people on the show basically backed off and decided to let the other characters be awesome and do stuff. I've been watching the series since season four and it's been a pretty solid, decent product. I keep wondering if I should go back and view seasons two and three, but I can mostly follow along even with just my surface knowledge of the seasons and as said before, my watchlist is superlong as is.

Then again, I've come to really loathe the term "Mary Sue" and believe me, that is a rant we are going to get into at some point in this project, so brace yourselves.

I will strive to produce quality content for each and every one of you. For the record, there will be spoilers aplenty in all this. Since this franchise is ten years old, trying to avoid revealing spoilers feels pretty pointless, like trying to avoid revealing that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father. If you haven't seen the films and you don't want spoilers, don't read the reviews/comments until you have, simple as that. If it bothers you so much, go find some far corner to whine in.

I don't know how often these posts will come out, but I will try to produce them on a regular basis, even if it might be closer to once every two weeks or once a month. Again, I want to do these posts justice, so I will not only rewatch the movies, but I will watch the director's commentaries, deleted scenes, and track down other behind-the-scenes info on them.

My posts will contain most of the things my brave readers have come to expect from me: repeated, longwinded diatribes over stuff I care about that's only tangentially connected to the main discussion, gratuitous profanity, links to YouTube and other content (because the beauty of the Internet is being able to supplement your arguments with random links to other stuff), stuff revealing my scarily obsessive nature, and, in all likelihood, dick jokes because dick jokes improve everything.

In the interest of disclosing any biases that may affect the project, I admit that I am a pretty hardcore Steve/Bucky shipper and have myself a nice little collection of fanfics and fanart related to it. I will try to be fair, and judge the films on their own merits, but again, wanted to disclose my inherent bias. Have to say even before Civil War forever cemented it for me, I could never really get behind Steve/Tony. It always felt kind of one-sided; never got the idea that Steve was anywhere near as obsessed with Tony as Tony was with him. And the obsession reeked mostly of daddy issues, something which is going to come up a lot in these films.

And no, I will not use pairing names, because even though Stucky and Stony aren't too bad, given what some other ship names are like. I am opposed to ship names. I will not bend on this issue. I will die on this hill, dammit! Is it so much work to type Character A/Character B even despite wordcount limits on summaries? I want to be able to read a summary, figure out who is getting paired up with who, without too much trouble. Too often some of these names have me going, "Okay is this a ship name, a typo, or did the person writing this have some kind of stroke?" If we had this stupid trend when Star Trek basically helped create modern fandom, we wouldn't even have the term "slash" to begin with. Even if, utilizing the ship name trend, Kirk/Spock would be rendered as Kock, which is both amusing and appropriate.

In keeping with my obsessive nature, I craft headcanons and fan theories like no one's business and will feel free to share them with everyone. The beauty of the Internet is I get to rant incoherently without anyone stopping me. Unless you click away, you all are my prisoners! :maniacal laughter: And as said before, I freely pick and chose from a wide variety of canons, weaving together bits and pieces as I see fit, to create my own personal canon regarding the characters. It seems like something comic book fans do either consciously or unconsciously as a result of the multiple canons. Outsiders may find the many canons in comic books daunting, but to me, the beauty of the genre is its multiplicity. You can hold onto what works, throw out what doesn't, and still be able to more or less follow along with the stories without too much trouble.

Though for beginning comic book readers, I recommend series based of animated series adaptations. The DCAU remains home to the greatest superhero adaptations ever and their spinoff comics are equally as amazing. Since the various series that made up the DCAU were, ostensibly meant for kids, despite the sheer tonnage of How Did They Get This Crap Passed the Radar? moments, the writers and artists were forced to work within the limitations in the interest of being kid-friendly and couldn't just coast by on over-the-top shocking violence or sex to grab the readers' attention. As a result, some of the most well-crafted stories are told in this little subgenre.

I know this somewhat goes against all my rants about how violence in films is so neutered to the point of being cartoonish, but my views are complicated and this is a longwinded discussion for another day. tl;dr version, there's a difference between being gory and violent for the sake of being these things and there's a difference in being gory and violent in service to the story and message you're trying to convey. Adding gratuitous sex and violence to a stupid story, doesn't make it deep. It's still a stupid story, just a lot more unpleasant to enjoy and lacking the wide-eyed WTFery of Silver Age comics, where there's something almost beautiful about the wild, crack-addled swing-for-the-fences insanity.

As always, I remain a big believer in discontinuity. The beauty of fiction is you can reject reality and substitute it with your own, without too many of the bad consequences that come with doing it in the real-world. If you liked this plot point, but not that one, hold onto what works, throw out what doesn't, and create your own canon, even if it exists solely as a shadow canon in the back of your head. Channel your inner Samuel L. Jackson and be all, "I recognize that canon has made its decision, but given that it is a stupid-ass decision, I've elected to ignore it!" and go from there. In fiction, the world is in your hands.

Anyway those are the parameters for the new project. If any of you have suggestions regarding it, feel free to share. As said before, I’m not sure how frequently the posting schedule will be, given that life’s complicated and the nature of the project, but I will try to be as regular as possible for the sake of my readers. Take care until then.

*Once again, I reiterate my theory that none of the people in that scene were acting. Because Cage really is that weird, and it’s very hard to fake that kind of genuine terror.

But I placed the asterisk for another reason: once again, I have crackpot idea to promote on the off-chance that someone reading this has any actual money or power.

We all know that both Nicolas Cage and Johnny Depp are hemorrhaging money, because they’ve decided to have EVERY expensive habit, not just one. It’s why Cage sleepwalks through so many obvious stupid movies and Depp will be Jack Sparrow until he dies.

Both of these men are known for their over-the-top acting and since both are in need of money, my proposal is a Freddy vs. Jason-style film that will serve as a showdown once and for all who is the bigger, better scenery-chewer.

Me, if I had to chose, I’d go with Cage, because he’s got that brand of old-school gonzo crazy seldom seen outside of questionably-run state asylums. When he decides to go all out and not just sleepwalk, he makes even absolutely terrible movies worth watching. For the record, regarding all those videos showing clips from Wicker Man, the clips are just as hilarious in context as they are out of it.

Whereas Depp just constantly prances around, poking you in the eye with his crazy, being all, “Look at me, I’m so delightfully quirky, isn’t it amazing and whimsical how quirky I am?” managing to make you hate an already terrible movie even more than you thought was possible. He’s all Manic Pixie Dream Girl with his crazy.

Plus Cage went broke buying comic book memorabilia, castles, and T. Rex skulls, and there’s no denying the inherent coolness of those things. Whereas Depp went broke by being a wife-beater who spends the salary equivalent of some nation’s gross domestic product in a month on wine, and leading a life of such Dionysian Excess that even Dionysus is saying, “Dude, you need to cut back." The last part may have been cool when he was an up and coming twentysomething getting his first taste of fame, but as a grown-ass fiftysomething adult with a couple of marriages under his belt and a couple of kids, it just seems kind of sad and pathetic. Though the first part, the one about the wife-beating, that is and always will remain completely uncool at any age.

Though if we can get John Woo in on this thing, that would just be great. He gave us Face/Off a movie of such coked-up stupid insanity that it manages to cross the line separating genius and madness to become genius. The whole movie centers around the concept of “What if we hired two of Hollywood’s biggest hams and put them in a movie where they are forced to act like each other?” In this case, we got Nicolas Cage and John Travolta trading faces. It is grand and glorious in its insanity and I love it for that. It’s what served as the seed for my proposed Cage vs. Depp movie. Because even if my proposed film is terrible, it will at least be bad in a way that’s interesting, unlike the majority of films the other two actors are involved in.