The MCU is not a blight, it's a tragedy

The eternal frustration of liking something that should be better than it is

There’s a scene in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon where, following the reciept of some bad news, Brad Pitt’s character explodes into a monologue about the war between high and low art. He passionately argues for the value and meaning of his own craft as something that brings light to the world of so many, that it is not to be sneered at on account of a lack of grace or intellect.

And to a certain degree this is a sentiment I also share. I love a wide spectrum of filmmaking. I love subtlety and audacity in equal measure. I think there is tremendous value in utilising pop culture as a stepping stone for those less adventurous audience members to branch out and explore the medium; but in equal measure I also understand that sometimes all you want to do is sit down and switch your brain off.

I get it. I’ve struggled with the pursuit of meaning in cinema in recent years because my job and my exposure to society leave me constantly mentally drained. But even still in this more fragile version of the man I once was, I find myself conflicted about one particular thing.

I’m extremely fond of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but I also get that they’re kind of bad.

At the crescendo of a week off where I watched Babylon, Ammonite, Decision to Leave, Something in the Dirt and many, many Die Hards I caught up with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the latest from Disney’s oxygen hog of a mega franchise. It’s a film absolutely loaded to the brim with volatile context, questions of how they were going to handle the story following the tragic death of the first film’s lead, and where they would go with this fragment of the overarching fable next.

The answer is, unfortunately, not particularly positive. It’s a bit of a damp squib of a film. Not necessarily because of the loss of Chadwick Boseman, although his absence is certainly felt throughout, but rather because it really doesn’t seem interested in its own identity. The first Black Panther had this same issue: A proposed celebration of African culture except shot through a clearly western lens.

The director of the two films, Ryan Coogler, is no stranger to cinema, he’s the man behind the incredibly well regarded Creed films. This isn’t a Russo brothers joint, all technical skill and little soul, there’s pedigree coming into this. This should have been a sure thing. Except, instead of a bright and distinct execution of a particular idea, what we got was another morsel of compromise, another artistic vision brought to heel by big money that doesn’t want to rock the boat.

In this regard, the anthology of films that make up the MCU are a bad product, I’m not going to argue otherwise, but I don’t think they are awful in the totality you would expect from popcorn shilling shovelware that normally plasters our screens. There was something present that made that audience care about these films in a way not really seen before, something that has proven nigh on impossible to replicate. Remember the Dark Universe? You probably don’t remember the other dozen pretenders to the throne around that same era, do you?

It’s easy to forget now that we’re 30 odd entries into this mega-construct, but that original Avengers film was actually a really exciting moment in cinema. It worked because you didn’t need to see everything that came before it, but if you had, there was a little something extra for you there. It was a milestone event, the start of something bigger and arguably uglier for the franchise but in itself it was just a solid blockbuster that tied together a number of well known characters from other films. That’s just not what’s happening anymore. 

Infinity War was a film that had a required reading list. You had to do your homework, even rattling down to the bare essentials you were looking at the very least five other films as a prerequisite and now every single film that comes out references something else. Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness expected you to have watched a 9 part mini series for context on why Wanda Maximoff was suddenly the villain.

Thor Love and Thunder for some reason decided to have the Guardians of the Galaxy front and centre in its opening scenes. Wakanda Forever itself features prominently a character played by Julie Louis-Dreyfuss who is being set up as one of the leads for a film that won’t be coming out for another year and a half. Who really, honestly gives a shit about Valentina Allegra de Fontaine? What’s the point of her being there?

While I lament the fact that so many recent entries in this franchise absolutely beat you over the head with advertising for ‘the next thing’, I can’t help but admire the commitment to narrative continuity as a concept. The end result might not be particularly inspiring, but there is something very cool about the idea of hiding narrative threads across different mediums, sometimes not even calling on them for years. 

(An example of this that comes to mind is The Witcher 3’s introduction of it’s Hearts of Stone antagonist Gaunter O’Dimm, right at the beginning of the base game as a random stranger you play cards with)

But, again, the end result has always been disappointingly safe. I’m certainly extremely annoyed at how Dr Strange’s wild adventures in the multiverse concluded in ‘what if Patrick Stewart ran the Illuminati’ rather than some truly adventurous creativity. Sam Raimi directed that bloody film!

And that’s the crux of my conflicted feelings towards this franchise. I’ve seen the previous and current work of a lot of its directors, it’s not like they’re grabbing up Steven Seagal’s leftovers here.

Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland was a wonderfully contemplative rumination on love, loss and finding hope in the wastelands of America. Eternals could have been that kind of film, were it not hogtied to 29 other films and 8 TV miniseries. 

What if Raimi’s brilliant legacy of stomach churning horror had actually been allowed to be let loose upon the world? If not the level of gore, at the very least the level of scenery chewing?

Shane Black made a goddamn Iron Man film! I thought it was really good, but it’s not The Long Kiss Goodnight levels of good. What if he had been allowed to bring that level of kinetic borderline comedic energy to his work there? Would it have intimidated the audience? Would it have been deemed divisive?

I don’t think so.

There’s a wildly over coddled hesitance in Disney’s recent output to slack the leash even a little. They’re worried that even a touch of identity will ruin the cohesion of their beautiful gilded house of cards. The folks running the show now are determined to dig their claws further to ensure this, putting bullshit nothing characters in cameo roles as a way of strangling your attention without even really saying anything. 

And that’s how you end up with a film like Black Panther 2. One that is all but happy to use the language of progressives, to celebrate a most basic and boilerplate understanding of African culture all the while doing its damndest to protect the western hegemony that built it.

Why was Martin Freeman even in this film? What was his role, other than playing the little golden goose to keep the American empire propaganda machine rolling onto the next film?

It’s a tragedy. Their audience deserves better than this. I know they want better than this considering how many folk I know have been clamouring for RRR, S.S. Rajamouli’s brilliant action epic that is all built around the powerful energy of hating the English. We can handle a little bite. A little critical eye aimed at ourselves, the status quo we don’t always realise we’re protecting. At the very least are we not deserving of a level of earnestness in the storytelling we are audience to?

At the risk of coming across as a Marvel defender, the most embarrassing thing a man of my age and stock can be, I think it’s truly difficult for me to write off the franchise in totality, even as they continue to post red flag after red flag right up my backside with each new film that gets farted out.

I’m not even particularly interested in the source material, but I always seem to find something to like even in their most rotten entries. Whether a visual effect, a musical theme or in the case of Wakanda Forever, a really solid set of performances, there is still some semblence of artistry involved in making these things, the people behind them still give a shit even if those clutching the purse strings probably don’t.

The frustration is there only because I know they could be better than this.

Noone gives a shit about the truly awful.