The MCU is terrible and you should demand better
This piece was written to accompany the latest episode of PodCulture [Oz], which I make along with my co-hosts Philippa and Dave. You can find part one of the superhero episode here. Check it out!
I loathe the MCU movies. The characters are one-dimensional and bland, the villains worse. They don’t have any depth because the only motivations they have are dictated by the plots. There’s nothing wrong with a plot-driven story, but the plots in MCU films are terrible too. They are not so much stories as exercises in logistics; the writers seem more concerned about making sure all the various bits and pieces are in the right place than they are in providing motivations or setting stakes. One film can see the main characters fighting to secure some magical tchotchke or other, only to have it instantly regained by the villain in ten seconds in the next film, because that film’s plot demanded it. This, of course, means there are no stakes, no consequences. Anything can be reversed, nullified, undone, even death. And there’s always a macguffin. It’s always introduced in the least interesting way possible, via exposition, and it’s always a shiny glowing object, lest the audience lose sight of how important it is. It’s not so much that these movies think of their audiences as children, it’s that the stories themselves are childlike. They are about as complex as the…
