Why MCU Phase 4 Sucked | Video Essay

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It’s ironic how this phase should’ve been entirely about dealing with the consequences and aftermath of Endgame, and yet only 3 projects (if that) out of the entire phase actually took it seriously. There was a lot of potential wasted by having the 5 year void in the world’s lives just go over peoples’ heads and replacing that with jokes and banter..

Anyone noticed that the actual good projects have directors who actually LIKE the source material and respect the character's arcs and development? Who would have thought... 🙄

I've heard that Wanda was actually supposed to become evil AT THE END of Multiverse of Madness so that she would be the full antagonist for a future avengers film, but then disney came in and told the writers to change it and speed up her arc. This actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it because it did feel like a lot about the film was rewritten haphazardly, espcially considering that it expected viewers to have seen Wandavision in order to understand it. Her whole arc just feels wasted now, because she's now buried under a pile of rubble with no real closure.

I’m starting to realize Black Widow isn’t really supposed to be a movie about Natasha but more of an origin story for Yelena considering she stole the whole show and was basically set up to be the new Black Widow

You remember when we used to be excited for the next MCU related project? Simpler times…

Something I feel people don’t really talk about with regards to phase 4 is how truly atrocious the pacing was. Almost every film had really bad pacing and I couldn’t figure out why. They generally had an introduction that moved at breakneck speed to get to the inciting incident, a snail-speed slow middle with little to no rising action that just casually stepped into the climax and a resolution that was not given the time it needed to breathe. Thor: Love and Thunder had the worst pacing imo, but Dr. Strange and Spider-Man both suffered from it as well.

When I started watching the MCU, it was one film a year. Then two a year. Then three a year. Then four films and half a dozen Disney Plus series at 6 hours each… The phrase ‘quality over quantity’ needs to become part of Marvel’s thinking going forward.

I feel so bad for Hawkeye, I enjoyed his show, but it just underwhelmed me by the fact it's just an excuse to introduce Kate. They made a lot of mistakes with this show, they filmed and deleted a scene of Clint calling the police on his OWN MOTHER as a child

I’m honestly scared for future projects. Daredevil on Netflix is one of the best TV shows I have ever watched. Even the other shows like Jessica Jones, Punisher and Luke Cage were pretty brilliant, but now I’m scared and worried to see what Disney will do to their characters.

Disney Plus was a mistake, instead of trying to make their own service which is so limited in it's variety of content they should've just supplied content to other streaming services to the highest bidders.

I love how No way home not only developed Tom Holland's Spider-Man but others as well. Let's not forget villains' character arcs which were awesome.

You’re one of the fairer reviewers of the objectively flawed phase 4. You don’t mind saying when something is pretty good. I like that.

I speak for everyone when I say “We do not have a problem with woke things in films and TV. We have a problem with poorly developed characters and storylines, which are often the result of jamming in woke characters and themes that do not work in that specific setting.” Edit two months later - I realised very quickly that although I speak for a lot of people, I do not speak for everyone. However, I didn’t change the comment earlier because I didn’t want people to stop having conversations in the replies.

I feel like of all the phase 4 stuff, the things I liked the most were strongly character driven. Spider-Man didn't have a particularly strong screenwriting, but it examined the character of Peter Parker by asking what makes him Spider-Man. Wakanda Forever dove deeply into T'Challa's legacy and how everyone his life touched fits into that now that he's gone. WandaVision was an exploration of Wanda's complex morality and Vision's identity. Loki was a self-reflection of the god of mischief by giving us a variant (or 2) of him that actually escape the TVA's destiny for them. She-Hulk has no overarching narrative or character study. Black Widow is the same character we've already gotten to know, so she doesn't have much of a journey to undergo. None of the Eternals were given nearly enough time to prove why they matter individually. The greatest power that fiction has is the ability to let us examine the human condition during unrealistic or absurd conflicts. If the story or setting itself is not interesting enough to earn the audience's engagement, then it should at least try to use character to drive interest.

I'll always remember the ending for Loki having me excited for the next few projects thinking that Kang might turn up to randomly screw up someones solo movies but since then we've had nothing till Ant-Man coming up in March. Same again with Dr Strange and Spider-man. We were led to believe we were getting some intertwined multiverse arc in phase 4 but they've done nothing with it. Think how much more sense the incident between Peter and Dr Strange would make if halfway through his spell to make people forget Peters identity that he had some vision of Kang and the future and that's what made him break his concentration. It just feels like Kangs imminent threat should influence any Multiverse project going forward.

What Marvel is going through right now is an identity crisis. After the perfect ending of Endgame, it’s been hard for these writers to decide what to do with these characters next. Stars Wars has this exact same problem, and I also think that Pokémon will once Ash leaves the anime. After having a definitive ending, it’s hard for franchises to continue on without some setbacks.

The line "you have to stop calling them terrorists" when the entire show depicted textbook examples of terrorism, really makes you question what kind of people are in Disney's writing rooms these days.

One of my issues with Phase 4 is the lack of narrative direction. Phase 1 was all about establishing the world of the MCU and building to the forming of the Avengers, Phase 2 was about setting up the Infinity Stones and delving further into the Avengers personal stories, Phase 3 was about the buildup to Thanos and the Infinity War. In each phase, there was a clear event being established and worked towards. Phase 4 has done a lot of filling in the map of the expanded universe and adding more characters, but there hasn’t been any discernible purpose for this beyond “make more money”.

I still see many flaws with Spiderman, but it was the best project of phase 4