Marvel Musings #1: A New Year Brings New Unknowns
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As absurd as this sounds, I’ve always felt that years are a strange unit of measurement — no other time period makes me feel this way more than awards show season. Critics gather to vote on and rank pieces of art that have nothing in common except for the time in which they were released.
I’m well aware that the year is not some sort of social construct and is an approximate measurement of the Earth traveling around the Sun, but I still contemplate on why Birdman has to go against Boyhood, and why La La Land was destined to face off opposite Moonlight other than coincidence in time.
But I suppose that everything has to go into its own bucket eventually. I even had this philosophical and existential musing as a child, where I wondered why we were separated into grades solely based on when we were born. It’s a designation that makes sense of chance, coincidence, and everything related in life.
Movie release dates are a bit more calculated than birth dates and such. The fiscal year is more of an artificial construct, a gospel that businesses have made up and depend on. The cycle here makes more sense to me, and as I stare at the MCU calendar for 2019, I must admit that things seem familiar.
As I mentioned on our Christmas podcast episode, 2019 looks a lot like “2018, part 2.” If you sat through that entire episode, you’ll know that we personally did not have a great 2018. As MCU fans, however, we thrived. We had a culturally-impactful film in Black Panther, a quotable, memorable, meme-able blockbuster event in Avengers: Infinity War, and a moment of respite with Ant-Man and the Wasp.
To that end, doesn’t the 2019 trio of Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Far From Home sound like the same cycle?
Don’t take that as a point of criticism — I am just as excited for this cycle as I am with the last, especially given the momentum that those three previous films started. But the more I think about these three future films, the more I think of what will come in between.
I’m willing to bet that my favorite movie, my favorite video game, and maybe my favorite television show of 2019 will be ones that I have yet to hear of.
January 2018-me would never guess that an independent game called Wandersong would steal my heart away from your God of War, Spider-Man, or Red Dead. At no point did I ever predict that Sorry to Bother You would beat out Mission: Impossible — Fallout as my movie of the summer. And man, have you seen Barry yet?
I often compile lists in my Notes app of pieces of media to look forward to in the year, and something always ends shaking it up. I would not be surprised if I really liked any of the MCU films to come this year, but I am more excited about the prospect of being surprised by something that I accidentally find.
It’s just a shame to me that these pieces of media will only be judged amongst what comes out around it — imagine Wandersong escaping the end of 2018 and its many triple-A titles, or a world in which Sorry to Bother You rocked everyone’s world in a hypothetical summer season where no big movie stuck with anyone.
One day, it will be easier to critique and champion our favorite pieces of media, regardless of when they released. Sure, they’re worth comparing to their peers because they say something about the time they were released, but I think there’s more to be said by approaching lists and rankings and awards in a much more comprehensive manner.
I suppose I’ll be the only one who feels this way — after all, when we sit around the metaphorical water cooler, we talk about the Game of Thrones episode that went up last night, not necessarily all of them altogether. And if I were to make my top ten list of video games of all time, Wandersong probably wouldn’t make the cut like it did in my 2018 list.
Perhaps I’ve undone my entire argument, but my feeling remains the same: years are weird, and I can’t wait for the unpredictable. It’s the last go for this portion of the MCU, and knowing that a year from now, I’ll be excited about movies I currently do not know to exist excites me alone.
-Chris Compendio (@Compenderizer)
Originally published at www.patreon.com.
