I have culture war fatigue, internet participation fatigue and just general fatigue. The marvel movies don't exhaust me nearly as much as other people do.
Yeah that's fair. It's not the existence of She Hulk, for example, that I find annoying (honestly I really just have very little interest in it one way or another). It's not even just people talking about it a lot. It's the whiney drivel from rightoid neckbeard types on the internet who just go on and on about "something something woke agenda something." Thankfully I can *mostly* tune them out, but scroll through practically any comments section even tangentially related to it and you're bound to get *someone* brainlessly parroting those talking points.
@@zackakai5173 I fell victim to it this week with the rings of power. As a long time Tolkien fan I honestly loved it way more than I thought i would. After being burned by the hobbit and being anti amazon overall I thought it was a huge W for the show runners and cast....but the internet just doubled down? Like maybe it didn't connect with some people but I've seen the dumbest takes about the show entirely from the culture warriors and I'm just tired man.
"Oh hey, he's scripting again!" 5 minutes in, we go to direct-to-camera: "Oh no, not this again..." 90 seconds later: "Oh hey, this isn't off-the-cuff random thoughts, but a well considered reflection on the concept of 'fatigue,' this is really good!" As one of Those Guys that was knocking you to write these down first, this 75/25 split is excellent, and looks like it might be less stressful than writing a 15 minute script, but more interesting than 15 minutes of more-or-less 'random' thoughts. This is great, your analysis is great, and I'm looking forward to Part 2.
That's a take I needed to hear- at this point nothing Marvel can do would turn the "Fatigue" discourse around because... Well, they've been around 15 years. They've definitely hit the "post Renaissance era" that Disney had in the 00s. Trying new things that don't quite work for audiences and especially critics, but will probably get re-evaluated by future generations the same way Atlantis, Hercules, Tarzan and Treasure Planet has.
In that vein, I fully expect things like the Antman movies and Eternals to get that second look. And they've been screaming about Marvel fatigue since the first Avengers film.
@@johnathonhaney8291 oh absolutely- I've seen people defend the Pirates sequels so in about a decade (maybe less since the internet speeds things up) people (especially the current youngsters) will be re-evaluating phase 4.
While I don't think the MCU will be forgotten, to be honest I got the feeling that it will not hold up all that well for future generations. It's mechanics will show (even) more clearly, the humor will feel dated and the visual effects will look quite dated as well (it often doesn't even look that good today) and not in a charming way.
I also like the on-camera tearaways to Mr. Chipman, symbolizing rawer thoughts with its rawer audio. Was a little wobble in that when it switched back to off-camera at one point here but it's a nice change in style.
My “fatigue” with the MCU starts and ends at “there’s very little that excites me nowadays, I’m gonna spend money seeing other good movies that need the support”. If there’s something that looks interesting from Marvel I’ll go watch it, until then I feel no obligation to go see them, they’ll be fine without me
There was never anyone forcing me to watch Marvel stuff. I watch the stuff I want to and ignore the rest. I didn’t like She-Hulk, but I will absolutely watch Loki Season 2. It’s pretty simple. Also, all Marvel has to do to erase the complaints is release one good X-Men movie and the anti-Phase 4 people will probably be quiet again
That's what I love about being an MCU fan. It'll be FINE without you watching absolutely every last She-Hulk-twerking frame. You don't need to worry about them taking bad lessons from things, BECAUSE they're such an immovable cultural juggernaut.
I do exactly the same thing. It's just not worth being so unhealthily preoccupied with. A lot of people forget that entertainment is supposed to... Well entertain you. If it fails just move on. There is an abundance of entertainment today so you'll definitely find whatever appeals to you.
I have something to add to the discussion of, “What will Marvel do when everyone gets tired of it?” As an elementary teacher who has kids born after 2017 in their class wearing GotG shirts, to me the answer is simple: they’ll get new fans.
Just like pro-wrestling. And the same people will get pissed about the PG/PC era, and demand things return to how it was when _they_ were young. I’ve tried explaining this to my brother as we’ve hit our 30s: everything in entertainment has basically been catered to us for most of our lives (young, straight, white males) and now things are shifting to the next generation and garnering a more diverse appeal, and he really does not like it.
What annoys me about the fatigue thing is that they always bring up westerns, which ignores why the western genre stopped being popular, which wasn't fatigue but a huge cultural shift where people stopped romanticing the wild west, which isn't going to happen with superhero films due to them already doing meta commentaries on their own genre and change with the culture. Marvel fatigue is like James bond fatigue or star wars fatigue, it doesn't matter.
Yeah, that's always been the wrong analogy. Kurt Busiek in his introduction to his first Astro City TPB made the cogent argument that superheroes have such flexibility as a metaphor, there's really nothing they CAN'T explore.
I disagree with that sentiment. I hope to do so respectfully. Audiences move on. If superheroes were so flexible Marvel would have had to make a garage sale of its IP in the late 90s. And WB wouldn't have been passed around from AT&T to Discovery. Just as the early superhero wave got overshadowed by LotR and Harry Potter, this wave will get overshadowed eventually. But unlike Westerns, Musicals and a dozen other genres, being overshadowed won't mean the end. Just the end of the break neck pace. 1 or 2 movies a year instead of a bakers dozen. I'm remember while Spider-man and Batman could still fill seats. Ghostrider, Daredevil and Electra were nearly empty. I don't think fatigue will equal death this time either.
I disagree that with Star Wars fatigue, it doesn't matter. Disney made this whole plan where they were going to release (at least) one Star Wars movie a year, somewhat like a second MCU, that was supposed to make them billions... but that abrubtly grinded to a halt when Solo bombed and they realised fatigue was gonna set in very quickly. Though I do not think you're all incorrect, one could argue the Western genre changed a lot through the late 60 and especially 70s by *not* romanticising the wild west, it revitalised itself then by going in the opposite direction, one way was indeed doing meta commentaries on their own genre and change with the culture.
@@Loremastrful I'll admit you're not being an asshole about it. You are however STILL very wrong. That MCU continues to survive puts the lie to your terrible examples, which have zero cultural context to back your arguments. The 1990s are no more the 2020s than Zack Snyder is Kevin Feige. In the end, it's all about execution, current zeitgeist and the two coming together. MCU did better with that than any superhero enterprise since the original Superman movie.
Very true, although I'll counter with it's very difficult to get away from Marvel, or DC, or Star Wars, or a sequel to a movie from the 80s, or an in-some-way-based-on-a-recognizable-IP movie nowadays, if you want to stay within the realm of big budget cinema. For more original ideas, you've got to venture out into streaming series, indie movies, etc.
Actually no, you kind of can't because of how big-budget superhero films have pushed pretty much all other kinds of movies out of mainstream cinema, and how Disney basically has an almost-monopoly on big-budget superhero films.
@@johnathonhaney8291 - "end of discussion" Hardly! The notion that other media exists - yet those who complain of homogeneity choose to not watch it - has always been bizarre to me. And those same people seem to shut down when asked about it. For example, throughout YT history and moreso as society has become more reactionary and polarized, I often encounter people grousing about popular media, or Hollywood generally being "not as good as in X era", or "lowest common denominator trash". And when I ask "Why TF don't you watch something else?" they generally deflect that they think I am asking them to be LESS critical. Insisting upon their right to criticize while being unwilling to examine why they choose those media instead of something else. Speaking of RUclips, I see the same problem here of creators and viewers alike acknowledging how hostile the platform is, while simultaneously avoiding hosting or watching elsewhere. It's as if somebody has Stockholm syndrome and literally _cannot change the channel_ "because reasons". Yet, as weird and pervasive as that is, it's as if I am not supposed to notice nor ask about it. Just because people avoid discussing it, does not mean that there isn't a discussion to be had.
Speaking completely anecdotally (about myself) I don'tfeel fatigeu - but I also don't feel a need to stay upto date on every new show. I will start watching Ms Marvel and She Hulk in a week or so, but I was busy with stuff over the summer, had some other shows I prioritised. I thought I had Star Wars fatigue after to sub-par series, but then the Andor trailer blew me away. So keep giving me that sweet content Dark Lord Mouse, and I'll get to it - eventually.
Hey, I was wondering, its been a while since you did a "Comics Are Weird" episode, or other type of retrospective, with all the sourness going on IRL I could really use some nostalgia escapism.
Same but I have a problem when the grifters and their zombie legions come to stomp on my grass. You're ACTUALLY fatigued, you just leave...no drama, no whining. You're not important enough to matter much in that calculus by yourself anyway.
The thing I like about the MCU as whole is that even though none of them were great masterpieces, they have maintained a general, consistent level of quality that hasn’t really dipped. After 15 years, they have been reliable in churning out reliable entertainment product, if not great art.
@@pr0fess0rbadass nah mate, it used to dip. They're all pretty solid b rates now, and you'll generally remember they exist. The early movies were a lot worse sometimes. Remember Thor 2? Avengers 2? Even Iron Man 3, though I personally like it? Those were mediocre to bad instead of generally OK to good.
Actually that statement is false, and even the industry disagrees with it when you have the actual VFX houses stating publically that the schedule (with dates mind you) that Marvel has announced is not viable without cutting some corners.
@@BleachFan2588 Yeah, I do, and I can honestly say that I disliked none of the early movies as much as I disliked Multiverse of Madness or Love and Thunder.
This video is pretty ironic when you consider Bob’s own internet status. A decade ago he was probably considered one of the edgier internet critics not doing AVGN/Channel Awesome routines. Now he’s actively breaking down why the real insane critics are so… well nuts. Contrarian. Reactionary af. Doing annoying Critical Drinker/Filmmento headlines. Take your pick.
@@johnathonhaney8291 "He chose to be a grumpy old fart" FTFY 😆 seriously tho, his last couple videos are a tad annoying. He whines about people whining about nerd entertainment and tries to tell people how that nerd entertainment doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things... yet he constantly is talking about it. Yeah, there are big man children whining on the internet... but Bob achieves little by becoming one.
@@sathrielsatanson666 Yeah, I much prefer positivity from Bob and negativity about other peoples negativity is not positivity. Its arguably even worse than the regular negativity because at least thats about the original media.
Just a sidenote: AVGN was never really edgie though, it was always a character and parody. In his other videos where James appears as himself, he's a calm, warm guy spreading his love for games and movies.
Another thing that matters in the context of this conversation is how quickly people forgot the time not so long ago when the idea of a studio prioritizing superhero movies was laughable. Comic book nerds have forgotten how good they have it. Meanwhile, the people who pride themselves on liking "real cinema" and hating superhero movies are still acting like these franchises are just a trend.
There's also the fact that every group that is or was a niche interest has a chunk of folks who are - for any of a bunch of reasons - just really invested in it being niche or otherwise not changing... and they're the ones we mostly hear from because they just Will Not Shut Up About It.
In the 30s through to the 50s, Hollywood churned out hundreds of Film Noir films. Not all were bad, most were decent, a handful were legendary. In the 50s through to the 60s, it was westerns. Then it was SciFi, then it was Erotic Thrillers. Then it was middling, low budget horror, then it was young adult films, now it’s superheroes. I’m generalising greatly, as many westerns and film noirs are still made just as superhero movies will continue to be made. I’m also neglecting the love of German Expresisonism in the 30s, the clamour for creature features in the 70s and monster movies in the 40s and 50s but at the end of it all, it’s just a trend. It doesn’t matter if it lasts one year or thirty, it’s a trend and one day it will end. Then it will get a resurgence in 27 years from then due to nostalgic kids who had grown up with it.
@@OFED I don't think that works as a perfect comparison, to be honest. Eyebrow Cinema had a pretty good analysis, I think (nothing to worry about in this video, it's not a bunch of Marvel bashing or anything) - ruclips.net/video/SiV-bOulZl8/видео.html
Absolutely Spot On...!!! Sick of people whining & moaning about Superhero Movie Fatigue, its ridiculous .... theres literally virtually an infinite amount non-ComicBook related content if they actually looked!!!
The mention about ever-increasing pop-culture familiarity between "lay people" reminds me the really weird conversation I had with my mother in early '20, right before all the covid bullshit started. She's already retired now, and I'm not getting any younger myself. When visiting home, I was still in a middle of doing a hack job for a local arthouse cinema, and had a laptop with spreads for their incoming selection of sci-fi classics open (the festival was their last screening for a year straight) while helping around in the kitchen. Since the recipe we were doing was also on said laptop, she kept looking at it, and eventually asked me if this was some "art design" for the "Ghost in the Shell" poster, pointing at the poster of the original anime. Because she doesn't speak English, I was perplexed as to how she even knew how to read it, and it turns out she saw the Hollywood version on TV, because hey, it's a movie. So we struck a conversation about it, because why the hell not - after all, how often do you get a chance to discuss this sort of stuff with your parent? And especially when taking into account a radically different perspective of someone from a completely different "bubble" of references and even ability to process visual media (not to mention the obvious fact she didn't saw the anime, further affecting her take on it all). On the negative side, I've accidentally sent my mother into light weebdom then - ever since she regularly asks for feature-length drama anime, and I have to sieve for something suitable (and that isn't just about teenagers having teen problems).
Honestly I think the thing that kills me are the people who will complain about the MCU, that they're tired of it, that it's too woke, etc. But you know dang well they are the same people that will keep watching anyway just so that they can keep complaining about it. Because if you don't like something, then don't watch it. And if they don't give something a chance and watch it they can't really complain because it didn't waste their time it's not like they went into a theater paid money and sat for two hours in a bad movie and if they didn't then their opinion really isn't that academic. And if anyone needs to hear this, it's ok not to watch something if it doesn't interest you. I have zero interest in Avatar 2 and when it comes around my opinion is going to be "It wasn't for me" and that's ok. Not everything is made for or with me in mind. But you better believe I do not care if you hated She-Hulk twerking. It was a mid credit scene you CHOSE to watch that.
"it's ok not to watch something if it doesn't interest you" - That's how their feeling of entitlement makes them insufferable. "But, but - I've based my own personal identity and brand upon this product! I'm deeply invested, so I have a right, it's supposed to all be tailored for my tastes and enjoyment!" It's as if the concept of a menu is foreign to them. Some place can be my favorite restaurant for whatever reasons, but I don't feel personally betrayed by them offering some things that I won't ever like or eat. Not everything they offer needs to be for me, other offerings don't need to impact what I enjoy at all.
Reminds me a conversation I had with a guy who was literally making up reasons to rant about the last star wars movie. Like, plenty of actual issues with that film, but he hated it so much he had couldn't restrain himself to start going off about things that, essentially, didn't work the way he thinks they should have, regardless of what was established in either previous films, current-canon tv series/books, recognizing what space opera is, or really basic logic.
Okay please correct me if I misunderstand... you can't complain if you watch it and you can't complain if you don't watch it? So you can't complain about the MCU period? 🤔
@@mabusestestament With the kind of dishonest whining I keep having to hear? If you know for a fact something is REALLY working for you deep into the movie or show, then bailing out before the end is the smart option. But then, what would you say about it that anyone would want to hear?
A far as Star Wars goes, putting the franchise in a holding pattern for years, while using extended materials to fill in details, would just be par for the course. It worked for the 90s EU and the 2000s Clone Wars era, so *why not* keep that trend going? Star Wars doesn't need to be the MCU, and trying to turn it into that would probably fail. Let the trilogies be true Events, not just tentpole schedule-fillers.
People can't handle anything being mid or mediocre anymore. It's always it's either the best or worst thing ever. The whole "marvel is dead" is a funny trend
@@johnathonhaney8291 Yep. I don't want or need every movie to change my life for better or worse. Plus they can never win anyway, if it's huge then it's too huge and overwhelming, and if it's inconsequential they whine about why they wasted their time watching it.
Agreed 100% Dang they have made 30+ different movies and shows, how insane that not every one will be a 10/10 Sometimes they wanna try new things and see how it does as well as attempt to reach out to new audiences to get them involved. Even the ones that I personally think are average are still more than solid. (I liked Dr Strange 2, Black Widow and Eternals)
When people complain about hollywood "agendas", try to remind them what the definition of "Agenda" really IS, to clue them in on the fact that those opposing said agenda (real or imaginary) *themselves* have an agenda! Anybody who regularly promotes a POV or stance on an issue--or its opposite!-- has an agenda...
Do recall that these are often the same powerless morons who think the world is more orderly (if under evil management) than it actually is with their dopey conspiracy theories. For them, I defer to Anthony Keir in Dracula: Prince Of Darkness: "You are a superstitious, frightened idiot!"
@@MrMRMONKEY232 They couldn’t though. Presumably Ike Perlmutter was the biggest obstacle in pushing black or female characters like T’Challa or Carol Danvers into the spotlight. Wasn’t until Kevin Feige broke free from reporting to him that Disney/Marvsl could do stuff like that in Phase 3.
I think the term fatigue is starting to be used incorrectly in reference to the MCU. Clearly people have the capacity to consume endless amounts of entertainment. It would take approximately 70 plus hours to watch the complete run of Game of Thrones (approx the same amount of time it would take to watch all the MCU films) and the complaint wasn't that there was too much of it, but that it was rushed and should have taken longer. People are using the term Marvel fatigue, when what they really mean is that they as individuals simply aren't as invested as they once were, and there's nothing wrong with that, the problem is trying to make as if that is the general state of the audience. All genres go in and out of style, regardless of the quality of the content being produced in those genres, the thing is no one can predict when that's going to happen.
I like that someone can sit and discuss something with his friends and guests for hours and hours and other people find that horrendous xD go find some friends and discuss something with passion.
I know, right? It's like they're doing what they like altogether because they're passionate about the subject down to its nuances. And you see others popping a nerve that it's taking place. What unhealthy mindset to not let others have a say. If there's a bad take, address and counter the argument, not attack the person.
for me what cured the idea of "marvel fatigue" was realizing that...i don't need to watch them all. seriously, no one is under obligation to watch every single marvel property, and if something is important enough, you'll probably find out about it through cultural osmosis, if it's not brought up as a relevant point whenever it's affects are felt later.
A genre 'dying' is pretty interesting. Of course, it always comes back, but Musicals and Westerns aren't as prevalent as they used to be. Thing is, those were produced by multiple studios, and often ended after a few big stinkers scared off studios. Disney's basically the only game in town, dc's barely limping along and besides them there's only stuff like Morbius. This allows them to keep the genre quality higher, meaning audiences still expect a good or okay movie every time. With Westerns and musicals, it was a crap shoot whether you got something worth watching, which makes it a lot easier to jump to something new and exciting.
God damn, thanks for articulating this in the way that I couldn't, Bob. Everybody has to be loudly contrarian these days and it just makes me wish someone would invent a way to slap people through the internet. This video is as close to sending a slap to those people as it gets.
I give out the verbal slaps to those fools where I can, pal. The newbies coming in for the first time to our little subculture deserves that, don't you think?
Yeah... you either have to be contrarian on the side of "Oh, one of THOSE, how droll" or on the side of "WHY ISN'T ANYONE PAYING ATTENTION TO WHITE GUYS AND WHAT *THEY* LIKE ANYMORE?" Kinda sad, when both sides are involved in a grift. "I'm smarter and prettier than the OTHER nerds, join me on CuriosityStream!" or "THE WOKE MOB WILL NOT SILENCE US! SUPPORT MY INDIEGOGO CAMPAIGN TO MAKE COMICS NO ONE WOULD BUY IF I WEREN'T MAKING HUMAN-SOUNDING HONKING NOISES IN THE VAGUE DIRECTION OF CHALLENGING MAINSTREAM ENTERTAINMENT!"
@JesusKrispies true. But to be fair I have noticed the contrarians are just grifters who only want to cater to an audience for money, while rejecting any responsibility to building toxic cultures around them. An opinion doesn’t require dozens of videos over the same topic, nor does it rely on misinformation, or bringing political ideology into your “criticisms.” A product is either good or bad for several craft reasons, wokism and general messages aren’t. For example I enjoyed Top Gun Mav, despite it’s portrayal of the military as better or more noble than it actually is, the film itself was as perfect as it can get. The message I disagree with doesn’t make the film itself bad, just something I don’t think had enough nuance. Opinions are like assholes, every has them
I heard in a podcast that in previous years, people would use 'communist' in place of 'woke,' with something of the same intent for dismissing social improvement.
I'm not that old, 34. But when I was in high school with my friends we'd bring comics to school and talk all the time about what we thought it would be like if they did an Iron Man film or movies on all these characters we loved. We got made fun of a bit but we didn't care. Lucky for us we live in an age now where they are cranking these films out at record pace and for the most part they're really good. We love it, and I'm not tired one bit. I'm still waiting for Fantastic Four and X-Men to be done right. Maybe I'll get tired after that but I doubt it in all honesty.
Zombies have been a constant fixture in films, TV, comics, and video games for far longer than superheroes and Star Wars, and yet nobody calls it "Zombie Fatigue".
Oh poor babies. Getting a steady stream of superhero movies. Back in my day, we went a decade between getting a decent superhero movie and we were thankful for it. Be happy with what you have and read a damn book if you are bored
Amen. You'd think getting a steady stream of cool content that used to be both intermittent and inconsistent would be welcomed. Did people whine about Star Trek fatigue like this in the 90s?
@@jordansweet8054 Kind of...during the overlapping era of TNG, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and the TNG films, there was plenty of whiners then too. Some of them have clung to that even now, which is...not good.
The only time in my life I noticed a genre fatigue for movies was after 9/11 with disaster films. And I felt like we could not bring ourselves to analyze why at the time. But I noticed and I'm not sure how many others did. But once again that was not about the movies themselves but about Americans dealing with trauma. I lived in New York City at the time so it was a very understandable reaction.
Funnily enough, processing trauma as a theme was REAL big in video games, starting from the mid-2000s up till now. It's all over Silent Hill 2, both the Suffering games, Alice Madness Return and Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice, to name prominent examples. They, in turn, have counterparts in more recent MCU fare such as Wandavision and Moon Knight.
Eh...I know you have a personal apathy towards Mission Impossible that's kind of in opposition to a lot of other critics you otherwise share a lot of opinions with, and that's totally fine. But I would definitely argue there's a significant difference between MI and MCU in terms of approach: MCU movies are mainly character-driven dramas or comedies and the action is mostly a vehicle for climaxing the drama (and most of the time that action is fantastical CGI stuff) Mission Impossible movies are more like martial arts movies, the action is the point. People see Marvel movies to see their favorite characters interact, people see Mission Impossible movies not because they care about Ethan Hunt's personal drama but because their want to see what crazy stunt Tom Cruise and company will do this time.
Speaking for myself, I've had Marvel fatigue for at least 3 years, now. Same goes for a number of my friends. I think that for us it's just all become pretty boring. Doesn't mean the movies shouldn't be made anymore, just means we're kind of done watching them 🤷🏽♂️ Edit: Shit, I forgot about _Wakanda Forever_
Yeah, I'm very much on the side of "The MCU is still good, if it weren't it wouldn't be so firmly entrenched in the pop-culture canon." And I HATE that Internet discourse about the MCU would rather divide itself neatly along lines of "Aging Former Nerds Ashamed Of Being Into Nerd-Stuff Who Think The MCU Sucks Because It's Mass-Market Pabulum For The Unwashed Masses" and "Channer-Scum Sh*tposters Making A Mint Saying The MCU Sucks Because It's Soros-Funded, Pro-'Death Of The West' Mass-Market Propaganda BRAINWASHING The Masses." I mean, those are pretty much your two choices. You can either pledge "Team CuriosityStream," who make a mint by not shutting up about how much smarter and prettier they are then everyone else, or "Team ComicsGate/Geeks&Gamers/Whatever These Flywits Are Calling Themselves THIS Week," who make a mint convincing their fellow sh*tposters that it's still 2008, angry white guys in their late 20's and early 30's are still the center of the geek-entertainment universe, and anyone trying to diversify or "class up" the joint is in on a Jewish-funded plot to "dilute the bloodlines of kings and demigods" or whatever these diseased minds are on about at the moment.
Well, I choose Door Number Three myself, Trib: following what I like, telling people why and reserving the right to tell anyone to go to hell if they get on my last nerve. Not sophisticated but it's where I'm at.
@@johnathonhaney8291 You and me both, old chum. I mean, I ALSO want to make money doing reviews and commentary, but yeah... neither one of us has any interest in interacting with either the know-it-all's or the know-nothings other than to tell 'em to go pound sand if and when they piss you off. I've got ZERO spell-slots for the TheQuarterings and the Lily Orchards of the world.
I dunno, I feel like the people who don't shut up about MCU Fatigue are very much the opposite of anyone remotely proximal to anything resembling an actual film degree. Maybe small publication professional "film critics," writing for local papers or just their untrafficked blog, or even just spamming rotten tomatoes, but that's the generally same as the former.
I don't have superhero fatigue but I most definitely have "superhero discourse fatigue". I'm so tired of having to pretend to like something just because a huge corporation at least pretended to give a fuck about something they clearly don't beyond marketing research and the reactionary weirdos of the internet are pretending to hate it for bullshit reasons and I don't want anyone to think I have anything to do with them.
Well, who the hell said you had to pretend? The old nerd ethos is "like what you want and the hell if it's popular or not". The reactionary weirdos you're talking about are the weaklings who keep thinking it'll give them some clout/relevance/identity. Sounds like you're well past all that.
@@TheSkullknight12 I'm not saying "I" personally have to pretend, I was using the first person in a general sense (maybe I should have used the plural "we", I think that would have made it clearer). What I was trying to say is that it sucks Internet discourse has shifted from "Is this movie good?" to "Which side of this dumb made up argument are you going to choose". And I know it's not like that for everyone but it's definitely the most common thing now.
Great video! Personally, I still REALLY enjoy the MCU and just have fun with it. However, I'd understand if people were tired of it, given how long it is. And I'm talking about people in good faith, not the other people. Also, I just had a though; Power Rangers will be 30 years old next year. Doctor Who will be 60 years old next year! And yet I've not seen AS many people complain about Doctor Who and even less about Power Rangers. Really reinforces your thoughts about all this being manufactured outrage. Looking forward to part 2 :)
"Fatigue" also seems to also be thrown around when the entertainment being presented isn't exactly what people wanted. The loudest people are like, "Where are the X-Men? I'm tired of Marvel, unless there's gonna be X-Men. Ugh, I gotta watch a whole series to get a one limer about mutants, gross." As a Star Wars fan, I'll eat whatever they feed me. I'm too old to hate on things because it isn't necessarily what I wanted, because sometimes you never know you actually wanted what you got.
The odd thing is that I would argue that the a vast amount of same people who are talking about “fatigue” are the people who are gonna get super hyped for Kang Dynasty or Secret Wars or something…
At least personally, my arc with the Marvel movies has been accepting that they were always popcorn flicks for children/all ages. That the things I want from media aren't something that a film with that much money riding on it is allowed to be. I want stories with complex characters wrestling with difficult questions that don't have easy answers. And part of my journey has been learning that Disney won't gives that, and it's not their fault that popcorn flicks aren't really a thing I can enjoyably watch anymore. Perhaps some people are in the middle of that, feeling that Disney isn't for them anymore, feeling betrayed by that, and lashing out rather than looking in.
Roger Corman gave a very insightful observation in an interview with Leonard Maltin around 2000. He noted that if you're going big budget, you're going to be very conservative on what of a movie you're going to make, whereas with an independent film with a smaller budget, you can afford to go nuts. That's why I laugh at anybody screaming at Marvel for "not taking chances".
The only part I get is if someone feels put off by the overall lack of variety in mainstream film releases in modern times and if they attribute that to the IP-franchise thinking of modern conglomerates (I think "Marvel" is a stand-in for that general trend when most people say it)...but most of the people whining the way Bob showed here aren't even saying that, they still want IP-franchises but just want them made exactly the way *they* like them, whatever that might entail (for many of them? Usually not wanting to see women or actors of color in major roles, because "i hAtE wOkEnEsS" or whatever).
@@jmn327 Yeah, basically it's a case of "where's mine?" Something else our Mr. Chipman likes to point out: the crowd whining on and on about women, LGBTQ and the like showing up in "their" stuff don't have the economic clout to change that. Probably why they usually feel so powerless...GOOD.
@@johnathonhaney8291 Yep, so they create conspiracy theories that Disney, a global conglomerate concerned solely with making infinite amounts of money, is somehow part of a "woke cabal" or some nonsense, because they can't accept "oh, this is happening because the position I hold is unpopular, while the opposite position is widely accepted and profitable." Sounds familiar to something in modern politics, if I could only put my finger on it...
The fact that the Avengers theme playing over a bloody amusement park attraction still gives me a jolt of excitement like some sort of pop culture LSD flashback should be a pretty big signal that the MCU has ingrained itself into our culture for the foreseeable future. Also people need to start really really really accepting that if they don't want to watch a thing, it's okay not to.
Who gets tired of consistently good quality films and shows? Not me. If you need a reminder, watch morbius and let there be carnage. Thats what it was like before the MCU.
AAAAAGH! Why did you remind me they exist? /s But seriously, as someone who suffered through the pre-MCU era, I can attest that it was all that you say. Hell, I even remember an article talking about how action and sci-fi films of the time were just falling so short.
is it still nerd culture? Last time I checked "the Nerds" never cared about what can anybody say about their things. Also this may originated in nerd culture, but is mainstream for like 12 years already.
Indeed..longstanding problems that predate the Internet and which my generation failed to solve. Look no further than Harlan Ellison's essay "Xenogensis" for examples of the analog version of the ugly we've all seen.
“[____] fatigue” exists, except not really. At a personal level it exists, for those who have watched every entry as they’ve come out, and has gotten tired of them. What we lose sight of is how small a sliver that is of the general population, and how unimportant said consumers are in the big picture. What some people forget is that we don’t have to watch any of these, and not everyone sees these when they first come out. Every day one person burns out in MCU or some other franchise or genre, and every day a new fan watches these fir the first time. For their part, Marvel seems to understand all this, as they’ve had >60 years of experience in publishing, where one segment stops reading comics, and another batch of new readers discover a series and starts reading. By the time I was born some people had long since fatigued on James Bond films, and Connery was long gone from the franchise, but they kept getting made, and I didn't get into them myself until my 20s, but then I watched them all, enjoying some more than others. They also seem to understand that certain characters and franchises are more popular and enduring than others. Not every character is going to be as popular as Batman or Spider-Man, nor need be. The beauty of Marvel is, they likely have a superhero for nearly any taste. Thor, Iron Man, and Punisher were never my favorites, but they had plenty of titles, so I just picked the ones I liked. With their movies and TV shows, same business approach can apply. You don't need a majority of a population to like a property for it to succeed.
People will complain. They been complaining since the 1st Avenger. I'm still enjoying it. I just haven't gone to the movies since covid and I now have a kid. I grew up in a bad neighborhood. You would have gotten harassed and/or get your ass beat for liking fantasy or comics. I sadly pretend i didn't like it when I would step outside my home when I had all that in my room. I'm glad this stuff is mainstream and every type of class of people knows about it and could discuss it. Kid me would have loved it.
More on the main topic: anecdotally, I think I have in fact reached a point of fatigue with the MCU, in that while up until Endgame I felt the need to see everything in theaters so I'd be in the know, just because it's more MCU...I've been less inclined to take the effort of seeing projects I'm not specifically interested in. I watched Wandavision, FatWS, and Loki, but I didn't even start Loki until it was a few episodes in. I watched Moon Knight and She-Hulk but skipped Ms. Marvel and Hawkeye for now. And I saw all the 2021 Marvel movies because I had specific interest in all of them (Black Widow for the prequel element and for being the first post-Covid movie, Shang-Chi and Eternals for being new, unexplored corners of the MCU with brand new characters)...but I still haven't watched Thor 4, even on D+, because I heard from people who like MCU movies that that one's pretty meh. I still am always interested in new MCU stuff, but my interest has significantly waned from "I've gotta see every new thing and each new bit of news is another car added to the hype train" to "oh cool, that could be fun". Which is the normal person reaction, I know...but the fact that as someone who's super into comics and superhero stuff and movies, the biggest comic superhero movie thing doesn't have my rapturous attention probably indicates something. Say what you will about the DC side of things, but good or bad, I'm always very intrigued to see what they're doing, because I never know how it's gonna turn out. Whereas with Marvel...you know you're gonna get a pretty enjoyable but not mind-blowing family action flick. You're not gonna get BvS OR get The Batman.
I also think some people don’t make peace with the fact that you grow up. Your tastes change. A hit of marvel at 30 might not be as potent as it was at 15. It doesn’t mean the franchise sucks now it just means maybe you need to fill your life with more meaning then whether the next bright colors fun time picture show makes you feel like you did when you were young and hope existed
As someone who watched Iron Man in the theater in his early 30s and still loves it for what it's become since, I find that assessment true but also funny and ironic in my case.
@@johnathonhaney8291 lol yeah it’s not scientific law or anything but sometimes it’s genuinely like people forget it’s okay to just read a book. Go touch grass. I’m a filmmaker and even I think people need to give less of a shit about movies lol
For real. People don't realise/think about the fact that they change and sometimes you stop liking something. It's fine and it doesn't mean the MCU has to stop now, just accept you don't need to watch it and move tf on. I feel like that's a big thing with SW now, it's been going for so long that people aren't getting the same "hit" from it like they did when they were younger, and they don't think that maybe it's just they they've changed, and also that you can't always replicate the feeling you get watching something from so many years ago. During the pandemic I've been rewatching TV shows and movies from my youth, and I gotta say, a lot of them don't hold up for me now. It doesn't undo the fact that I enjoyed them a lot back in the day, it's just now I have different tastes that have matured, and I don't enjoy them nearly as much now (Buffy still holds tf up and puts other TV shows to shame tho). I've also stepped waaaay back from fandom since, if anything, I'm fatigued from *that*, and the repetitive cycle of pre-release/release/post-release ~discourse that now drives me insane because it's so damn same-y and the people who hate the MCU still hang around to shit on it, as though they're being held hostage and their life depends on spitting out hot takes and dunking on those who still enjoy it. And that's without getting into the hate merchants grifting all over the place and fucking up discourse even more. I'm peacing the fuck outta that and just enjoying the MCU mostly independently now.
@@jordankellyparrott7819 Ghostwriter here...still read, still always on the hunt for interesting and forgotten films. I love the MCU but I've got other venues as well. That's REALLY the antidote to burnout...seeing what else is out there. But it also takes the kind of work I rarely see the complainers put in.
I genuinely don't understand the attitude that watching Marvel movies/TV shows is some kind of chore, like cleaning the bathroom. As Bob keeps saying, these are fairly self-contained stories that use continuity as an occasional treat, and even when they use callbacks, I've never felt like I was missing something major. Blackbolt's cameo in Multiverse of Madness is probably more rewarding if you watched Inhumans, but we're told and shown enough that I didn't need to.
“It’s fine” is very much where I am with the genre now. I was the guy that saw Blade and Steel in theaters not because I was a monster fan of either but because I wanted the genre to thrive. Post Endgame I’ve used the world fatigued to describe my feelings towards the genre. In so much as (save for No Way Home) I haven’t hit the theater or paid for the premium access to see an MCU movie. All that said, I’ve actually found She-Hulk refreshing and look forward to new episodes of it. So even my fatigue knows limits. But overwhelmingly the new releases have not excites me or gotten me stoked enough to count down the days. I do feel that it’s lost a step, in that the Infinity Saga seemed somewhat focused on a “endgame” the MCU has seemed a little scatter shot since. In the end I still watch the stuff and usually enjoy it in some capacity but don’t yearn for it like I used to back in the phase 1 and 2 days.
No bulls*it, it would have been comedy gold (to me) if, after Anthony Mackie's introduction of his own character at Avengers Campus, Bob had inserted a clip of the first episode of The Legend of Korra where the titular character burst through a wall doing elemental bending as a child yelling "I'm the avatar...DEAL WITH IT!"
Having to keep up with all of the MCU stuff can be exhausting, especially if it's part of your job and it's the part of your job that brings in the most revenue. But with Phase 4 it has gotten to the point where you can pick and choose what you do or don't want to watch and for the most part it won't really effect your understanding of it. (I saw Doctor Strange 2 but not WandaVision, and although what happened in WandaVision played a pretty important part in what's going on, but I still got the gist of it mainly thanks to cultural osmosis.) What is exhausting, however, is going online and having to deal with the horde of chuds and grifters making 5-hour screeds about how it all became "woke" simply because they chose to put women and minorities in lead roles. I've been psyched about The Rings of Power but deliberately chose to avoid any articles or tweets about it simply because I knew the comments would be flooded with racist dipshits hellbent on poisoning the whole experience.
That a lot of these guys are in my age, racial and gender demographics is embarrassing. And FYI, Rings of Power is GOT with 90% less blood, swearing and other gross stuff...REAL good to me.
FWIW, getting people to avoid media is exactly why they do this. The *want* to create the impression that something is hated. They want to create the idea before something exists that it is bad. They want to create negative feelings towards things long before you experience them. And they want to pollute any discourse so that it is impossible for you to say anything about it without having to deal with their nonsense too. This is their goal: to control the conversation and make it impossible for people who like certain things to like them in peace. They either convert you to their side or run you out of the room.
To be fair, there's a fair bit of the pre-phase 4 stuff you can skip and still basically follow the plot up through Endgame. Having only actually seen most of the movies once when they came out (and a few of them I never saw), any time I didn't remember exactly what something was I just defaulted to "okay this is one of the magic rocks they got from some dude at some point," and it pretty much tracks. Totally agree about Rings of Power though. I have next to no interest in actually watching it and I'm *still* tempted to check it out just because I know it pisses off some of the worst people on the internet xD
@Graham Kristensen "What is exhausting, however, is going online and having to deal with the horde of chuds and grifters making 5-hour screeds about how it all became "woke" simply because they chose to put women and minorities in lead roles." Why are you watching it if you don't like it? I believe that's the standard response you give when people complain about "woke" movies. "I've been psyched about The Rings of Power but deliberately chose to avoid any articles or tweets about it simply because I knew the comments would be flooded with racist dipshits hellbent on poisoning the whole experience." Don't worry the series will still be terrible even if you don't read these articles because of basic problems with the plot and characters.
@@uanime1 There's a big difference between blockbuster movies and tv shows existing, and bigots screaming hatred about anyone other than straight white men being able to exist in franchises. They're feeding racism and misogyny while entertainment is at least trying to do the opposite, so don't pretend like the dehumanisation and targeting of those of us who aren't part of the "acceptable" minority to these fuckwits is something to be ignored.
I get MMO fatigue. I have one that I play all the time. I just took two weeks off it playing Jurassic Park Evolution. I then came back to the MMO for more. I cycled them regularly over the year. This means I've been playing the same game for 7 years
It's truly hilarious to me that some people think Marvel are putting out too much stuff now. I worked it out and their output is basically equivalent to ONE 22 episode network show every year. A few years ago I was watching like 10 of those a year, so the varied output of Marvel putting out content for just a single one is entirely easy to deal with. If someone is fatigued that's fine, but acting as though everyone else is because you are ain't it. Plus this is varied stuff, not the exact same thing over and over.
You probably have a lot of people like me, who only mildly care about MCU stuff, pay attention for projects that look interesting usually to be a bit let down, and otherwise only keep up out of a faint sense of obligation. From that perspective, going from 4 hours of films a year to 6 wasn’t so bad, but going from a few movies to watch whenever to multiple entire TV series a year is exhausting. Being the biggest game in town means getting to own the conversation, but owning the conversation also means people feel obliged to listen, and get tired of it. The price of being the biggest game in town is that more people will get tired of playing.
@@UnreasonableOpinions I've never understood that at all, if you usually get let down then stop watching it? If it's exhausting just don't watch any of it? Reminds me of people who still watched Supernatural until the end, or who still watch Grey's Anatomy but are only doing it because they want to finish the whole thing. I peaced out of both of those in the 5th season when I stopped liking it, but some continue to cling and hate that GA is still on because they're "not free". It's their own sense of obligation trapping them, nothing else. As someone who still loves the MCU but hates the repetitive online discourse about it and so avoids it as much as I can, it's pretty easy to not see anything about it if you don't want to. I do occasionally come across stuff about it but no more than I also do other franchises. Feels to me more like people let themselves get caught up in things instead of ignoring stuff they don't like. Like I follow someone on twitter who hated the first two Jurassic World movies yet he was there on opening weekend seeing the third and trashing it, and I'm like... but why? I didn't care for the first one so I just didn't bother going forward, I didn't go see them so I could hate on them, what a waste of time.
(before watching the piece) Saying that comic movie burnout is a thing when you only get 3 or 4 of them a year is stupid. We get a lot more action movies every year and no one says we have action movie burnout. And don't give me that crap about "well you have to see every Marvel movie" because you don't. Any major movie that ties into a previous film will have 10 minutes of exposition that gets everyone caught up to speed.
I don't get fatigue over the MCU. All the TV and films combined in a year isn't much more watching-minutes than a year's worth of an old many-episode TV show. Haven't checked but I think we're getting less MCU each year than we got Trek back in the 90s and the MCU's not spread between only 2 TV shows at a time and mostly terrible films.
For real. Three movies and three tv shows of shorter runtime = slightly more than a standard 22 episode network tv show from back in the day. I used to watch 5-10 of those a year, so anyone acting like "too much" content is their problem is being silly.
@@SuperFunkmachine Back in my day we called it marathoning, I like that word better, makes me sound like an athlete instead of a junkie. But also, might be a reflection of how we see content now, something to gobble up as fast as possible without being given the chance to absorb it properly. That's why I'm glad Disney+ drops weekly, despite the shrieking of those who like to binge claiming that it's a money grab (you know you can wait until it's aired and then sub if it means that much to you). I for one like a breather and like to watch things the way they always used to air. Not all of us have multiple hours to sit watching something just so we don't get spoiled the second we go to twitter.
I think you are underselling how dead Westerns were at one point. They were everything everywhere in Hollywood for 20 years, with movies in the 50s and then immigrating (one might say settling) on TV in the 60s. And then it died. Because people got tired of the genre, tired of the tropes, tired of the same backlot sets. It took Eastwood making Unforgiven for western movies to be possible once again, and that had to be among the best westerns ever made to get peoples attention. So I don't disagree with your eventual points, but you can tire the public out on a genre to the point where money is impossible to find to make a new movie about "x" until many decades later, and while I'm certainly not here saying Marvel needs to go away for a while, I will say they need to up their quality control because some stuff is not hitting like it used to.
Yeah, that's pretty spot on. It's not fatigue. It's just acceptance and that they're branching out and trying out new audiences but people who were always the original audience are like BUT NOT FOR ME!? THEN IT MUST BE BAD!!!! Instead of just like, yknow, accepting it.
The big change over time seems to be that it's normal now to have comic book movies. The first superman was a very new type of thing, and between then and spider man there wasn't really another one (I'm choosing to ignore Howard the Duck). So a new comic book movie or tv show (especially one with major stars and a significant effects budget) is just....normal. So it isn't as worthy of breathless excitement and hype as it was back when the first Sam Raimi Spiderman was launched, simply because back then it was seen as a huge risk and departure from the norm, and something that hadn't been done in a generation, whereas now it's done every summer.
Well, Mr. Chipman, you promised us more fun content in the near future. In my books, this counts. To expand on the age thing a bit, I'm thinking on how some of the loudmouths and/or their followers in our mutual age bracket have developed a Peter Pan complex. As you say, they used to be the young insurgents. Now...well, they're something else. It's like they want to "rebel" more than they want to be responsible. For me, I feel like I owe it to the newbies coming into the MCU to support them the way NOBODY ever supported me on what I loved.
"An artist's responsibility is to be irresponsible. As soon as you start thinking about social or political responsibility, you've amputated the best limbs you've got as an artist. You're plugging into a very restrictive system that is going to push and mold you, and make your art totally useless and ineffective." --David Cronenberg That having been said, you're not wrong about the "Peter Pan Complex" thing. It's why the contrarian discourse can be divided neatly along the lines of "Aging Nerds Being Contrarian To Prove How Smart And Grown-Up They Are Now," and "Channer-Scum Idiots Who Think It's Still 2008 And Angry White Guys Are Still The Center Of The Geek-Entertainment Universe." I could give ya a few examples of both types.
@@thetribunaloftheimaginatio5247 Please don't, Trib. I probably know both types by heart by now. And what I meant by responsibilty was just being a better elder. If the kid likes something different than you, something that causes no harm and you don't understand it, then support them. This is doubly true when new guys are coming into a fandom you've been part of a while.
@@johnathonhaney8291 As one of my favorite comics RUclipsrs would say-"Ambassadors, Not Gatekeepers." I agree 100%... old-timers like us need to be elder statesmen, not "Get Off My Lawn" old fogies constantly bitching and moaning about how the world's best days are behind it. Luckily, my mind is still flexible enough that I'm a damn quick study on what the kids are into these days. I refuse to let Abraham Simpson's words be a self-fulfilling prophecy. "I used to be With It... until they changed what It was! Now what I'm With isn't It, and what's It seems weird and scary to me! IT'LL HAPPEN TO YOU..."
@@thetribunaloftheimaginatio5247 Me, I've always been in my own weird dimension with things I love, very little of it hip. But it does give me a knowledge base to trace the roots on anything that IS popular.
Nut jobs on RUclips railing for hours about how bad or overrated a popular thing “actually “ is we shounen anime fans see quite a bit of. First it was Naruto, Bleach and One Piece (DBZ got similar treatment but that was usually on blogs prior to RUclips), nowadays it’s My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer. Actually there was an attempt at that with Spy x Family but that fizzled out because there wasn’t enough out for them to stand on.
@@johnathonhaney8291 I remember that happening before Gamergate became a thing. Though I will admit after it did you would see a rise in Gatekeepers disdaining younger/newer anime fans for starting with shows that are popular at the time.
As I scroll down the comments on this video I'm seeing the recommendations on the side, and phew, it's like a who's who of Fuck No. The "don't recommend this channel" option sure is getting a workout.
I think the problem is not fatigue. In the Infinity saga, no one was making it a priority to keep up with the MCU. Everyone watched what they wanted to watch and when the Avengers came around, some RUclips filled them in on what was important. The thing is that most people hadn't noticed that the infinity Stones where the important part to keep track of. And when they noticed, it was already clear that you never had to keep track of them in the first place. Now they made pretty clear from the start that multiverses is their next big thing and people are now want to keep up with every movie and TV show while the MCU does fuck all with the concept. People are not fatigued, they are confused.
my take on fatigue is that we have been accustomed to popular stuff going out of fashion quickly: fads. fatigue grows out of situations where a thing about x subject is suddenly surprisingly good (it doesn't have to be fantastic, just better than whatever the expectations were). then lots and lots of creators/companies/etc try to cash in on x thing by making increasingly uninspired and hackneyed stuff that contain x or are about x. then x becomes more associated with the bad shit in a way that isn't really related to whether x is a good thing or not. eventually, the bubble bursts, and x thing becomes the butt of a joke because it was a fad that didn't last. this happens all the time, but since the MCU stuff has been mostly pretty good (and almost never worse than a bit below average) the expected pattern of consumer fatigue hasn't kicked in yet. this has been true of all kinds of stuff: breakdancing in the 80s, rollerblading in the 90s, hipsterism and teen dystopian/sci-fi/fantasy franchises in the 2010s etc.
I'd actually argue that the pattern is holding, it's just people don't understand that the Internet has made it possible for the overall life cycle to be extended.
This is a bit off-topic, but does anyone know what happened to Bob's old setup? It's now been a few months since his face segments and audio has changed, and I'm worried that something important happened in his life and I missed it.
I think Jenny Nicholson said they built the avengers campus in away that it could easily be rethemed to a different IP if the mcu ever declines in popularity. Which may speak to the fact that even Disney does not have complete faith in it for this decade.
Of things that could be termed urban fantasy, superpowers have a larger umbrella than vampires or zombies. If someone talked about being tired of zombie movies ten years ago it would be understandable. 20 years ago, someone talking about being tired of vampires would have been understandable. But superhero fiction can easily include zombies (marvel's what if...?) Or vampires (blade, morbius, etc) without leaving the umbrella of it's genre. If you were watching a zombie movie and superman showed up it wouldn't feel like it was the same genre as dawn of the dead
You may not be aware of this but the old Superman series Smallville actually DID a zombiesque episode in Season 9. Indeed, given that many episodes of this series were riffs on films like Election, Saw and The Hangover, it does much to prove your point.
What exhausts folks such as myself is consistent bad writing that's been plaguing these big-budget films. No, of course, not every Marvel film would ever need to be at the level of screenplay caliber as that of Twelve Angry Men, Citizen Kane, and The Godfather. It would be nice if that is the case, but doesn't seem likely to happen in the current film-making business climate. However, it would be really, really appreciated if the writers put so much more effort on the scripts to make the payoffs stick with a great impact to the viewer and not because the spectacles alone will carry as many memorable moments as possible per the decisions of the filmmakers. Avoid going through just 1st, 2nd or 3rd drafts. Go beyond. Really iron out the inconsistencies. Consider well on how to build strong and sensible setups relative to the story being told and the characters going through the story and connect them well to the desired and appropriate payoffs. Do everything in a screenwriter's power to not sacrifice cause-and-effect; keep the rules of that fictional universe intact, bend but not break, to get to those payoffs, especially all the supernatural, fantasy, and sci-fi elements that get introduced to thicken the plot. Even worldbuilding and character choices, decisions, words, and actions should be given the same great care and consideration. You'll get more intriguing scenes back to back not built on sheer nonsense and even raise the stakes for the characters in the story, thus leading to more entertaining films built on strong scripts. They may still be far from perfect and definitely won't appease all, yes. But efforts will show and seep through for acknowledgment from the audience with so much fantastic merits in the films, thanks to good/great writing that got translated well into what things that have been put onto the screen. Do that and the fatigue for the media vanishes.
If I have any sort of fatigue with regards to movies, it's imitation fatigue--as in, studios trying to replicate Marvel's success. Nobody has done it, and it's very likely nobody will. David "The Algorithm that Walks Like a Man" Zalslav is just the latest to state that he will catch that same lightning in a bottle... and is off to a roaring start in entirely the wrong direction already.
The only thing I have Fatigue of is the folks on social media who instead of gushing about something they like, instead chime in with a bull horn "I DONT LIKE MARVEL! I AM SO SPECIAL AND UNIQUE! LOOK AT HOW COOL I AM FOR NOT LIKING CURRENT POPULAR THING!!!!" When it turns out they didn't even watch the movie but read a plot outline online.....
I think folk need to learn that if something isn't doing it for them then just stop watching. It really is that simple. I've not been that invested in Marvel since Endgame, but I'll casually check out the odd film or show if it looks interesting. However, the sheer obsessiveness of some "fans" is kind of worrying. It's getting to Star Wars levels of venom in certain areas, and there's just no point to it. Like, we're 3 episodes into She-Hulk and still the dude bros are making a point of trashing it at every opportunity when they should have just walked away after the first episode if it wasn't for them. Hot topics are good income generators for content creators, so the more they turn up the heat the more rage click and views they'll get. It's all very seedy.
I'll go you one better. Since Captain Marvel, Marvel Studios has learned to use said dude bros as free PR generators to get the word out. So they're being used twice...once by the grifters and again by the studio they oppose.
I don't have Marvel fatigue, I have Disney fatigue. Every 6 months, Disney reminds us they're a shite company, the CGI in she Hulk is bad because Disney had workers under crunch
And if they were giving you what you wanted, would you even give a damn about those workers? Or are they just props for whatever argument you want to make?
@@johnathonhaney8291 Not really. Moon Knight is probably my favroite Marvel super hero right now and I like Kamala Khan. I haven't gotten Disney plus yet.
The problem is that once you go mainstream, you lose some of that spark, and edge that made you loved by many in the first place unless you stay true to yourself, and go against the pressure to turn against your core fanbase in favor of an audience that isn't big enough to support, or appreciate you.
And that's long been the haters' biggest misunderstanding/problem. They're NOT the totality of the core fanbase and thus lack the clout to steer anything.
@@johnathonhaney8291 That's where you're wrong. If that's the case, 'The Rings Of Power', and 'She-Hulk' would've gotten a more favorable reception if they were payed more respect to their source materials.
@@Launchpad05 What, the reception from the Internet loudmouths? Bad example to cite always, as again, they are no more than a piece of the audience...and not a particularly big one.
@@Launchpad05 By "respecting the source material" you mean make everyone white and dare not offend the mens by existing. Or we could actively ignore what bigots who hate the presence of anyone who isn't a straight white man think because their pathetic asses don't matter and are not indicative of the general audience who make up the vast majority of those watching entertainment. Your assertion is simply a low-effort and transparent dog whistle, it's cute that you tried though.
Dude...how long have you been doing RUclips. Why do you have such terrible audio issues...and also..take a breath man. Your allowed to take breaks in-between your sentences.
no fatigue here, in fact i want a more broad range of characters. lets get some more street level heros, maybe some anti villains, some period piece heros, hell i would love to see one about actual Super Vilains who dont have redemption arcs
@@josephstrand3595 Coherent in this context = something I can signal boost without being ostracized by my preferred in-group/contradicting my self-image. Depending on which condition applies here, either get better friends or get therapy.
15:00 Oof, that reality-parodying-the-franchise scenario with the actor passing the torch/shield to his character played by a struggling actor was really really cringe in the 'Oh god, it's all gone corpo and I never noticed until now' kind of way.
I thought I was the only one who likes to make funny sounds in the dark for five hours. I'm glad I'm not the only one
I also thought I was the only one!
I prefer making sad noises, myself
Never give a bandicoot gum
SO THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE WHEN DOVES CRY ;_;
I have culture war fatigue, internet participation fatigue and just general fatigue. The marvel movies don't exhaust me nearly as much as other people do.
Preach!
Yeah that's fair. It's not the existence of She Hulk, for example, that I find annoying (honestly I really just have very little interest in it one way or another). It's not even just people talking about it a lot. It's the whiney drivel from rightoid neckbeard types on the internet who just go on and on about "something something woke agenda something." Thankfully I can *mostly* tune them out, but scroll through practically any comments section even tangentially related to it and you're bound to get *someone* brainlessly parroting those talking points.
@@zackakai5173 I fell victim to it this week with the rings of power. As a long time Tolkien fan I honestly loved it way more than I thought i would. After being burned by the hobbit and being anti amazon overall I thought it was a huge W for the show runners and cast....but the internet just doubled down? Like maybe it didn't connect with some people but I've seen the dumbest takes about the show entirely from the culture warriors and I'm just tired man.
@@mybiggeektherapysession As someone who likes this more tasteful version of GOT, I say keep muting those morobs.
@@johnathonhaney8291 oh I have been :)
EFAP: You could not live with your own failure, where did that bring you?
Back to me.
"Oh hey, he's scripting again!"
5 minutes in, we go to direct-to-camera: "Oh no, not this again..."
90 seconds later: "Oh hey, this isn't off-the-cuff random thoughts, but a well considered reflection on the concept of 'fatigue,' this is really good!"
As one of Those Guys that was knocking you to write these down first, this 75/25 split is excellent, and looks like it might be less stressful than writing a 15 minute script, but more interesting than 15 minutes of more-or-less 'random' thoughts. This is great, your analysis is great, and I'm looking forward to Part 2.
That's a take I needed to hear- at this point nothing Marvel can do would turn the "Fatigue" discourse around because... Well, they've been around 15 years. They've definitely hit the "post Renaissance era" that Disney had in the 00s. Trying new things that don't quite work for audiences and especially critics, but will probably get re-evaluated by future generations the same way Atlantis, Hercules, Tarzan and Treasure Planet has.
In that vein, I fully expect things like the Antman movies and Eternals to get that second look. And they've been screaming about Marvel fatigue since the first Avengers film.
@@johnathonhaney8291 oh absolutely- I've seen people defend the Pirates sequels so in about a decade (maybe less since the internet speeds things up) people (especially the current youngsters) will be re-evaluating phase 4.
While I don't think the MCU will be forgotten, to be honest I got the feeling that it will not hold up all that well for future generations. It's mechanics will show (even) more clearly, the humor will feel dated and the visual effects will look quite dated as well (it often doesn't even look that good today) and not in a charming way.
@@mabusestestament Got any stock tips while you're at it? Predicting the future on that scale is a fool's errand.
@@johnathonhaney8291 I doubt that, that Eternals movie is a mess. Antman is ok.
For what it's worth, I like the longer format. I come to hear your thoughts, and hearing more of them is only a good thing.
I also like the on-camera tearaways to Mr. Chipman, symbolizing rawer thoughts with its rawer audio. Was a little wobble in that when it switched back to off-camera at one point here but it's a nice change in style.
My “fatigue” with the MCU starts and ends at “there’s very little that excites me nowadays, I’m gonna spend money seeing other good movies that need the support”. If there’s something that looks interesting from Marvel I’ll go watch it, until then I feel no obligation to go see them, they’ll be fine without me
That's a healthy attitude,
There was never anyone forcing me to watch Marvel stuff. I watch the stuff I want to and ignore the rest. I didn’t like She-Hulk, but I will absolutely watch Loki Season 2. It’s pretty simple. Also, all Marvel has to do to erase the complaints is release one good X-Men movie and the anti-Phase 4 people will probably be quiet again
That's what I love about being an MCU fan. It'll be FINE without you watching absolutely every last She-Hulk-twerking frame. You don't need to worry about them taking bad lessons from things, BECAUSE they're such an immovable cultural juggernaut.
I do exactly the same thing. It's just not worth being so unhealthily preoccupied with. A lot of people forget that entertainment is supposed to... Well entertain you. If it fails just move on. There is an abundance of entertainment today so you'll definitely find whatever appeals to you.
I have something to add to the discussion of, “What will Marvel do when everyone gets tired of it?” As an elementary teacher who has kids born after 2017 in their class wearing GotG shirts, to me the answer is simple: they’ll get new fans.
Damn right...and it bugs me that such newcomers are indirectly being shunned by old heads of my generation for daring to like the MCU too.
Hence the focus on bringing in younger fans and female fans.
Those two groups purchase way more content than men and boys ever did.
@@breadordecide Imagine if you will the hoards of kidlets dressing as Shang-Chi or Ms. Marvel this Halloween.
@@peggyliepmann5248 I am, and it puts a smile on my face.
Just like pro-wrestling. And the same people will get pissed about the PG/PC era, and demand things return to how it was when _they_ were young. I’ve tried explaining this to my brother as we’ve hit our 30s: everything in entertainment has basically been catered to us for most of our lives (young, straight, white males) and now things are shifting to the next generation and garnering a more diverse appeal, and he really does not like it.
What annoys me about the fatigue thing is that they always bring up westerns, which ignores why the western genre stopped being popular, which wasn't fatigue but a huge cultural shift where people stopped romanticing the wild west, which isn't going to happen with superhero films due to them already doing meta commentaries on their own genre and change with the culture.
Marvel fatigue is like James bond fatigue or star wars fatigue, it doesn't matter.
Yeah, that's always been the wrong analogy. Kurt Busiek in his introduction to his first Astro City TPB made the cogent argument that superheroes have such flexibility as a metaphor, there's really nothing they CAN'T explore.
I disagree with that sentiment. I hope to do so respectfully. Audiences move on. If superheroes were so flexible Marvel would have had to make a garage sale of its IP in the late 90s. And WB wouldn't have been passed around from AT&T to Discovery. Just as the early superhero wave got overshadowed by LotR and Harry Potter, this wave will get overshadowed eventually. But unlike Westerns, Musicals and a dozen other genres, being overshadowed won't mean the end. Just the end of the break neck pace. 1 or 2 movies a year instead of a bakers dozen. I'm remember while Spider-man and Batman could still fill seats. Ghostrider, Daredevil and Electra were nearly empty. I don't think fatigue will equal death this time either.
I disagree that with Star Wars fatigue, it doesn't matter. Disney made this whole plan where they were going to release (at least) one Star Wars movie a year, somewhat like a second MCU, that was supposed to make them billions... but that abrubtly grinded to a halt when Solo bombed and they realised fatigue was gonna set in very quickly.
Though I do not think you're all incorrect, one could argue the Western genre changed a lot through the late 60 and especially 70s by *not* romanticising the wild west, it revitalised itself then by going in the opposite direction, one way was indeed doing meta commentaries on their own genre and change with the culture.
Depends. John Wayne killed westerns. Then Sergio Leone brought them back
@@Loremastrful I'll admit you're not being an asshole about it. You are however STILL very wrong. That MCU continues to survive puts the lie to your terrible examples, which have zero cultural context to back your arguments. The 1990s are no more the 2020s than Zack Snyder is Kevin Feige. In the end, it's all about execution, current zeitgeist and the two coming together. MCU did better with that than any superhero enterprise since the original Superman movie.
And of course, there's always the fact that if you're tired of the MCU, you could just go watch something else. Lots of people do.
But no one else will have heard of it and thus no one else will care. That's why the worst of the worst don't do that.
Very true, although I'll counter with it's very difficult to get away from Marvel, or DC, or Star Wars, or a sequel to a movie from the 80s, or an in-some-way-based-on-a-recognizable-IP movie nowadays, if you want to stay within the realm of big budget cinema. For more original ideas, you've got to venture out into streaming series, indie movies, etc.
Actually no, you kind of can't because of how big-budget superhero films have pushed pretty much all other kinds of movies out of mainstream cinema, and how Disney basically has an almost-monopoly on big-budget superhero films.
@@zackakai5173 Then that's where you go...end of discussion.
@@johnathonhaney8291 - "end of discussion"
Hardly! The notion that other media exists - yet those who complain of homogeneity choose to not watch it - has always been bizarre to me. And those same people seem to shut down when asked about it.
For example, throughout YT history and moreso as society has become more reactionary and polarized, I often encounter people grousing about popular media, or Hollywood generally being "not as good as in X era", or "lowest common denominator trash". And when I ask "Why TF don't you watch something else?" they generally deflect that they think I am asking them to be LESS critical. Insisting upon their right to criticize while being unwilling to examine why they choose those media instead of something else.
Speaking of RUclips, I see the same problem here of creators and viewers alike acknowledging how hostile the platform is, while simultaneously avoiding hosting or watching elsewhere. It's as if somebody has Stockholm syndrome and literally _cannot change the channel_ "because reasons". Yet, as weird and pervasive as that is, it's as if I am not supposed to notice nor ask about it.
Just because people avoid discussing it, does not mean that there isn't a discussion to be had.
your little rant starting at 2:20 made me laugh so hard.
Speaking completely anecdotally (about myself) I don'tfeel fatigeu - but I also don't feel a need to stay upto date on every new show. I will start watching Ms Marvel and She Hulk in a week or so, but I was busy with stuff over the summer, had some other shows I prioritised. I thought I had Star Wars fatigue after to sub-par series, but then the Andor trailer blew me away. So keep giving me that sweet content Dark Lord Mouse, and I'll get to it - eventually.
Hey, I was wondering, its been a while since you did a "Comics Are Weird" episode, or other type of retrospective, with all the sourness going on IRL I could really use some nostalgia escapism.
Seconded...everybody needs relief, yeah?
I personally don't feel fatigue, but I get why others would.
Honestly, I just pace myself and go 'I actually don't need to see this, but do I want to see this?'
I think some of it is mindset going in. I watch them to relax and enjoy myself, but if you're going in ready to fight, that'll color your perception.
Most just trying to find something to say that they think is meaningful
@@ClericOfPholtus Which is kind of pathetic, right? There's better ways.
Same but I have a problem when the grifters and their zombie legions come to stomp on my grass. You're ACTUALLY fatigued, you just leave...no drama, no whining. You're not important enough to matter much in that calculus by yourself anyway.
The thing I like about the MCU as whole is that even though none of them were great masterpieces, they have maintained a general, consistent level of quality that hasn’t really dipped. After 15 years, they have been reliable in churning out reliable entertainment product, if not great art.
I agree. It feels wierd that isn't enough.
It has definitely dipped now.
@@pr0fess0rbadass nah mate, it used to dip. They're all pretty solid b rates now, and you'll generally remember they exist. The early movies were a lot worse sometimes.
Remember Thor 2? Avengers 2? Even Iron Man 3, though I personally like it? Those were mediocre to bad instead of generally OK to good.
Actually that statement is false, and even the industry disagrees with it when you have the actual VFX houses stating publically that the schedule (with dates mind you) that Marvel has announced is not viable without cutting some corners.
@@BleachFan2588 Yeah, I do, and I can honestly say that I disliked none of the early movies as much as I disliked Multiverse of Madness or Love and Thunder.
This video is pretty ironic when you consider Bob’s own internet status. A decade ago he was probably considered one of the edgier internet critics not doing AVGN/Channel Awesome routines. Now he’s actively breaking down why the real insane critics are so… well nuts. Contrarian. Reactionary af. Doing annoying Critical Drinker/Filmmento headlines. Take your pick.
In other words, he chose to be a grownup. I applaud his choice.
@@johnathonhaney8291 "He chose to be a grumpy old fart" FTFY 😆 seriously tho, his last couple videos are a tad annoying. He whines about people whining about nerd entertainment and tries to tell people how that nerd entertainment doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things... yet he constantly is talking about it. Yeah, there are big man children whining on the internet... but Bob achieves little by becoming one.
@@sathrielsatanson666 Yeah, I much prefer positivity from Bob and negativity about other peoples negativity is not positivity. Its arguably even worse than the regular negativity because at least thats about the original media.
@@johnathonhaney8291 if you call being a massive MCU Fanboy grown up sure .....
Just a sidenote: AVGN was never really edgie though, it was always a character and parody.
In his other videos where James appears as himself, he's a calm, warm guy spreading his love for games and movies.
Another thing that matters in the context of this conversation is how quickly people forgot the time not so long ago when the idea of a studio prioritizing superhero movies was laughable. Comic book nerds have forgotten how good they have it. Meanwhile, the people who pride themselves on liking "real cinema" and hating superhero movies are still acting like these franchises are just a trend.
There's also the fact that every group that is or was a niche interest has a chunk of folks who are - for any of a bunch of reasons - just really invested in it being niche or otherwise not changing... and they're the ones we mostly hear from because they just Will Not Shut Up About It.
In the 30s through to the 50s, Hollywood churned out hundreds of Film Noir films. Not all were bad, most were decent, a handful were legendary. In the 50s through to the 60s, it was westerns. Then it was SciFi, then it was Erotic Thrillers. Then it was middling, low budget horror, then it was young adult films, now it’s superheroes. I’m generalising greatly, as many westerns and film noirs are still made just as superhero movies will continue to be made. I’m also neglecting the love of German Expresisonism in the 30s, the clamour for creature features in the 70s and monster movies in the 40s and 50s but at the end of it all, it’s just a trend. It doesn’t matter if it lasts one year or thirty, it’s a trend and one day it will end. Then it will get a resurgence in 27 years from then due to nostalgic kids who had grown up with it.
@@OFED I don't think that works as a perfect comparison, to be honest. Eyebrow Cinema had a pretty good analysis, I think (nothing to worry about in this video, it's not a bunch of Marvel bashing or anything) - ruclips.net/video/SiV-bOulZl8/видео.html
@@OFED I would say currently superheroes have had a lot more staying power. 22 years since the first x-men film
Absolutely Spot On...!!! Sick of people whining & moaning about Superhero Movie Fatigue, its ridiculous .... theres literally virtually an infinite amount non-ComicBook related content if they actually looked!!!
The mention about ever-increasing pop-culture familiarity between "lay people" reminds me the really weird conversation I had with my mother in early '20, right before all the covid bullshit started. She's already retired now, and I'm not getting any younger myself. When visiting home, I was still in a middle of doing a hack job for a local arthouse cinema, and had a laptop with spreads for their incoming selection of sci-fi classics open (the festival was their last screening for a year straight) while helping around in the kitchen. Since the recipe we were doing was also on said laptop, she kept looking at it, and eventually asked me if this was some "art design" for the "Ghost in the Shell" poster, pointing at the poster of the original anime. Because she doesn't speak English, I was perplexed as to how she even knew how to read it, and it turns out she saw the Hollywood version on TV, because hey, it's a movie. So we struck a conversation about it, because why the hell not - after all, how often do you get a chance to discuss this sort of stuff with your parent? And especially when taking into account a radically different perspective of someone from a completely different "bubble" of references and even ability to process visual media (not to mention the obvious fact she didn't saw the anime, further affecting her take on it all).
On the negative side, I've accidentally sent my mother into light weebdom then - ever since she regularly asks for feature-length drama anime, and I have to sieve for something suitable (and that isn't just about teenagers having teen problems).
Honestly I think the thing that kills me are the people who will complain about the MCU, that they're tired of it, that it's too woke, etc. But you know dang well they are the same people that will keep watching anyway just so that they can keep complaining about it. Because if you don't like something, then don't watch it. And if they don't give something a chance and watch it they can't really complain because it didn't waste their time it's not like they went into a theater paid money and sat for two hours in a bad movie and if they didn't then their opinion really isn't that academic. And if anyone needs to hear this, it's ok not to watch something if it doesn't interest you. I have zero interest in Avatar 2 and when it comes around my opinion is going to be "It wasn't for me" and that's ok. Not everything is made for or with me in mind. But you better believe I do not care if you hated She-Hulk twerking. It was a mid credit scene you CHOSE to watch that.
"it's ok not to watch something if it doesn't interest you" - That's how their feeling of entitlement makes them insufferable. "But, but - I've based my own personal identity and brand upon this product! I'm deeply invested, so I have a right, it's supposed to all be tailored for my tastes and enjoyment!" It's as if the concept of a menu is foreign to them. Some place can be my favorite restaurant for whatever reasons, but I don't feel personally betrayed by them offering some things that I won't ever like or eat. Not everything they offer needs to be for me, other offerings don't need to impact what I enjoy at all.
Reminds me a conversation I had with a guy who was literally making up reasons to rant about the last star wars movie. Like, plenty of actual issues with that film, but he hated it so much he had couldn't restrain himself to start going off about things that, essentially, didn't work the way he thinks they should have, regardless of what was established in either previous films, current-canon tv series/books, recognizing what space opera is, or really basic logic.
Okay please correct me if I misunderstand... you can't complain if you watch it and you can't complain if you don't watch it? So you can't complain about the MCU period? 🤔
@@mabusestestament With the kind of dishonest whining I keep having to hear? If you know for a fact something is REALLY working for you deep into the movie or show, then bailing out before the end is the smart option. But then, what would you say about it that anyone would want to hear?
I love you too, Johnathon 😘
A far as Star Wars goes, putting the franchise in a holding pattern for years, while using extended materials to fill in details, would just be par for the course. It worked for the 90s EU and the 2000s Clone Wars era, so *why not* keep that trend going? Star Wars doesn't need to be the MCU, and trying to turn it into that would probably fail. Let the trilogies be true Events, not just tentpole schedule-fillers.
People can't handle anything being mid or mediocre anymore. It's always it's either the best or worst thing ever. The whole "marvel is dead" is a funny trend
Or even things being just chill, you know? Lots of MCU films are good with that vibe.
@@johnathonhaney8291 Yep. I don't want or need every movie to change my life for better or worse. Plus they can never win anyway, if it's huge then it's too huge and overwhelming, and if it's inconsequential they whine about why they wasted their time watching it.
Agreed 100%
Dang they have made 30+ different movies and shows, how insane that not every one will be a 10/10
Sometimes they wanna try new things and see how it does as well as attempt to reach out to new audiences to get them involved.
Even the ones that I personally think are average are still more than solid. (I liked Dr Strange 2, Black Widow and Eternals)
When people complain about hollywood "agendas", try to remind them what the definition of "Agenda" really IS, to clue them in on the fact that those opposing said agenda (real or imaginary) *themselves* have an agenda! Anybody who regularly promotes a POV or stance on an issue--or its opposite!-- has an agenda...
Well said.
Do recall that these are often the same powerless morons who think the world is more orderly (if under evil management) than it actually is with their dopey conspiracy theories. For them, I defer to Anthony Keir in Dracula: Prince Of Darkness: "You are a superstitious, frightened idiot!"
The only real agenda was every hero being a straight white male.
Which is still most movies and shows anyway.
same thing with "indoctrinate", i dont think anyone who has used this word knows what it actually means
@@monkeyking9863 correct. The dorks who use that word the most are doing exactly that to dumb kids
funny how when finally the MCU genuinely branches out and makes movies and shows for different audiences, now people are fatigued.
We both know it's code for "But I don't WANNA share my toys!" from some of the most immature and/or despicable people online.
The execs should have branched out much earlier. You know when they had the peak excitement from closer to everyone
@@MrMRMONKEY232 They couldn’t though. Presumably Ike Perlmutter was the biggest obstacle in pushing black or female characters like T’Challa or Carol Danvers into the spotlight. Wasn’t until Kevin Feige broke free from reporting to him that Disney/Marvsl could do stuff like that in Phase 3.
I think the term fatigue is starting to be used incorrectly in reference to the MCU. Clearly people have the capacity to consume endless amounts of entertainment. It would take approximately 70 plus hours to watch the complete run of Game of Thrones (approx the same amount of time it would take to watch all the MCU films) and the complaint wasn't that there was too much of it, but that it was rushed and should have taken longer. People are using the term Marvel fatigue, when what they really mean is that they as individuals simply aren't as invested as they once were, and there's nothing wrong with that, the problem is trying to make as if that is the general state of the audience.
All genres go in and out of style, regardless of the quality of the content being produced in those genres, the thing is no one can predict when that's going to happen.
I like that someone can sit and discuss something with his friends and guests for hours and hours and other people find that horrendous xD go find some friends and discuss something with passion.
I know, right? It's like they're doing what they like altogether because they're passionate about the subject down to its nuances. And you see others popping a nerve that it's taking place. What unhealthy mindset to not let others have a say. If there's a bad take, address and counter the argument, not attack the person.
Franchise, factory-film slop is such a pathetic thing to be passionate about.
@@AvocadoBawlz-Johnson Not nearly as pathetic as being reflexively oppositional to it.
for me what cured the idea of "marvel fatigue" was realizing that...i don't need to watch them all. seriously, no one is under obligation to watch every single marvel property, and if something is important enough, you'll probably find out about it through cultural osmosis, if it's not brought up as a relevant point whenever it's affects are felt later.
I think Bob said it awhile ago, but you really don't need to catch em all as much as Marvel are good at making you think you do
A genre 'dying' is pretty interesting. Of course, it always comes back, but Musicals and Westerns aren't as prevalent as they used to be. Thing is, those were produced by multiple studios, and often ended after a few big stinkers scared off studios.
Disney's basically the only game in town, dc's barely limping along and besides them there's only stuff like Morbius. This allows them to keep the genre quality higher, meaning audiences still expect a good or okay movie every time. With Westerns and musicals, it was a crap shoot whether you got something worth watching, which makes it a lot easier to jump to something new and exciting.
God damn, thanks for articulating this in the way that I couldn't, Bob. Everybody has to be loudly contrarian these days and it just makes me wish someone would invent a way to slap people through the internet. This video is as close to sending a slap to those people as it gets.
I give out the verbal slaps to those fools where I can, pal. The newbies coming in for the first time to our little subculture deserves that, don't you think?
Yeah... you either have to be contrarian on the side of "Oh, one of THOSE, how droll" or on the side of "WHY ISN'T ANYONE PAYING ATTENTION TO WHITE GUYS AND WHAT *THEY* LIKE ANYMORE?"
Kinda sad, when both sides are involved in a grift. "I'm smarter and prettier than the OTHER nerds, join me on CuriosityStream!" or "THE WOKE MOB WILL NOT SILENCE US! SUPPORT MY INDIEGOGO CAMPAIGN TO MAKE COMICS NO ONE WOULD BUY IF I WEREN'T MAKING HUMAN-SOUNDING HONKING NOISES IN THE VAGUE DIRECTION OF CHALLENGING MAINSTREAM ENTERTAINMENT!"
@JesusKrispies true. But to be fair I have noticed the contrarians are just grifters who only want to cater to an audience for money, while rejecting any responsibility to building toxic cultures around them. An opinion doesn’t require dozens of videos over the same topic, nor does it rely on misinformation, or bringing political ideology into your “criticisms.” A product is either good or bad for several craft reasons, wokism and general messages aren’t. For example I enjoyed Top Gun Mav, despite it’s portrayal of the military as better or more noble than it actually is, the film itself was as perfect as it can get. The message I disagree with doesn’t make the film itself bad, just something I don’t think had enough nuance. Opinions are like assholes, every has them
@JesusKrispies Strawmanning is also not healthy, yet here you are.
@@Darxide23 but that's more or less what you wrote so...
It's weird how some people use "Diversity" and "Representation" as scare words but insist their views aren't discriminatory.
And that's why I usually call them "proto-fascists".
This 100%
I heard in a podcast that in previous years, people would use 'communist' in place of 'woke,' with something of the same intent for dismissing social improvement.
@@SWProductions100 that makes total sense
Not merely discriminatory, but _bigoted._
I'm not that old, 34. But when I was in high school with my friends we'd bring comics to school and talk all the time about what we thought it would be like if they did an Iron Man film or movies on all these characters we loved. We got made fun of a bit but we didn't care. Lucky for us we live in an age now where they are cranking these films out at record pace and for the most part they're really good. We love it, and I'm not tired one bit. I'm still waiting for Fantastic Four and X-Men to be done right. Maybe I'll get tired after that but I doubt it in all honesty.
Grow. The Fuck. Up.
Zombies have been a constant fixture in films, TV, comics, and video games for far longer than superheroes and Star Wars, and yet nobody calls it "Zombie Fatigue".
Oh poor babies. Getting a steady stream of superhero movies. Back in my day, we went a decade between getting a decent superhero movie and we were thankful for it. Be happy with what you have and read a damn book if you are bored
What decade was that?
@@mabusestestament Either the 80s or 90s, depending on your taste.
But the 80s and 90s had multiple decent (or better) superhero movies spread out over the years 👍
Amen. You'd think getting a steady stream of cool content that used to be both intermittent and inconsistent would be welcomed. Did people whine about Star Trek fatigue like this in the 90s?
@@jordansweet8054 Kind of...during the overlapping era of TNG, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and the TNG films, there was plenty of whiners then too. Some of them have clung to that even now, which is...not good.
The only time in my life I noticed a genre fatigue for movies was after 9/11 with disaster films. And I felt like we could not bring ourselves to analyze why at the time. But I noticed and I'm not sure how many others did.
But once again that was not about the movies themselves but about Americans dealing with trauma. I lived in New York City at the time so it was a very understandable reaction.
Funnily enough, processing trauma as a theme was REAL big in video games, starting from the mid-2000s up till now. It's all over Silent Hill 2, both the Suffering games, Alice Madness Return and Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice, to name prominent examples. They, in turn, have counterparts in more recent MCU fare such as Wandavision and Moon Knight.
Eh...I know you have a personal apathy towards Mission Impossible that's kind of in opposition to a lot of other critics you otherwise share a lot of opinions with, and that's totally fine. But I would definitely argue there's a significant difference between MI and MCU in terms of approach:
MCU movies are mainly character-driven dramas or comedies and the action is mostly a vehicle for climaxing the drama (and most of the time that action is fantastical CGI stuff)
Mission Impossible movies are more like martial arts movies, the action is the point. People see Marvel movies to see their favorite characters interact, people see Mission Impossible movies not because they care about Ethan Hunt's personal drama but because their want to see what crazy stunt Tom Cruise and company will do this time.
Wait, is Top Gun but Star Wars (aka Rogue Squadron) not a thing we're still expecting to happen?
I've been through two full waves of MCU fatigue and am currently enjoying it 🤷🏽
Speaking for myself, I've had Marvel fatigue for at least 3 years, now. Same goes for a number of my friends. I think that for us it's just all become pretty boring. Doesn't mean the movies shouldn't be made anymore, just means we're kind of done watching them 🤷🏽♂️
Edit: Shit, I forgot about _Wakanda Forever_
Yeah, I'm very much on the side of "The MCU is still good, if it weren't it wouldn't be so firmly entrenched in the pop-culture canon." And I HATE that Internet discourse about the MCU would rather divide itself neatly along lines of "Aging Former Nerds Ashamed Of Being Into Nerd-Stuff Who Think The MCU Sucks Because It's Mass-Market Pabulum For The Unwashed Masses" and "Channer-Scum Sh*tposters Making A Mint Saying The MCU Sucks Because It's Soros-Funded, Pro-'Death Of The West' Mass-Market Propaganda BRAINWASHING The Masses."
I mean, those are pretty much your two choices. You can either pledge "Team CuriosityStream," who make a mint by not shutting up about how much smarter and prettier they are then everyone else, or "Team ComicsGate/Geeks&Gamers/Whatever These Flywits Are Calling Themselves THIS Week," who make a mint convincing their fellow sh*tposters that it's still 2008, angry white guys in their late 20's and early 30's are still the center of the geek-entertainment universe, and anyone trying to diversify or "class up" the joint is in on a Jewish-funded plot to "dilute the bloodlines of kings and demigods" or whatever these diseased minds are on about at the moment.
Well, I choose Door Number Three myself, Trib: following what I like, telling people why and reserving the right to tell anyone to go to hell if they get on my last nerve. Not sophisticated but it's where I'm at.
@@johnathonhaney8291 You and me both, old chum. I mean, I ALSO want to make money doing reviews and commentary, but yeah... neither one of us has any interest in interacting with either the know-it-all's or the know-nothings other than to tell 'em to go pound sand if and when they piss you off. I've got ZERO spell-slots for the TheQuarterings and the Lily Orchards of the world.
@@thetribunaloftheimaginatio5247 **Heisenberg voice** You're goddamn right.
It should be noted that "Team CuriosityStream" doesn't make nearly as much as "Team ComicsGate".
@@GeneralBolas Dare one say deservedly so in this case?
I dunno, I feel like the people who don't shut up about MCU Fatigue are very much the opposite of anyone remotely proximal to anything resembling an actual film degree. Maybe small publication professional "film critics," writing for local papers or just their untrafficked blog, or even just spamming rotten tomatoes, but that's the generally same as the former.
I don't have superhero fatigue but I most definitely have "superhero discourse fatigue". I'm so tired of having to pretend to like something just because a huge corporation at least pretended to give a fuck about something they clearly don't beyond marketing research and the reactionary weirdos of the internet are pretending to hate it for bullshit reasons and I don't want anyone to think I have anything to do with them.
Bravo. That was really well said.
Well, who the hell said you had to pretend? The old nerd ethos is "like what you want and the hell if it's popular or not". The reactionary weirdos you're talking about are the weaklings who keep thinking it'll give them some clout/relevance/identity. Sounds like you're well past all that.
I dont get why you have to pretend.
@@TheSkullknight12 I'm not saying "I" personally have to pretend, I was using the first person in a general sense (maybe I should have used the plural "we", I think that would have made it clearer). What I was trying to say is that it sucks Internet discourse has shifted from "Is this movie good?" to "Which side of this dumb made up argument are you going to choose".
And I know it's not like that for everyone but it's definitely the most common thing now.
Great video!
Personally, I still REALLY enjoy the MCU and just have fun with it. However, I'd understand if people were tired of it, given how long it is. And I'm talking about people in good faith, not the other people.
Also, I just had a though; Power Rangers will be 30 years old next year. Doctor Who will be 60 years old next year! And yet I've not seen AS many people complain about Doctor Who and even less about Power Rangers. Really reinforces your thoughts about all this being manufactured outrage.
Looking forward to part 2 :)
"Fatigue" also seems to also be thrown around when the entertainment being presented isn't exactly what people wanted. The loudest people are like, "Where are the X-Men? I'm tired of Marvel, unless there's gonna be X-Men. Ugh, I gotta watch a whole series to get a one limer about mutants, gross."
As a Star Wars fan, I'll eat whatever they feed me. I'm too old to hate on things because it isn't necessarily what I wanted, because sometimes you never know you actually wanted what you got.
The odd thing is that I would argue that the a vast amount of same people who are talking about “fatigue” are the people who are gonna get super hyped for Kang Dynasty or Secret Wars or something…
At least personally, my arc with the Marvel movies has been accepting that they were always popcorn flicks for children/all ages. That the things I want from media aren't something that a film with that much money riding on it is allowed to be. I want stories with complex characters wrestling with difficult questions that don't have easy answers. And part of my journey has been learning that Disney won't gives that, and it's not their fault that popcorn flicks aren't really a thing I can enjoyably watch anymore. Perhaps some people are in the middle of that, feeling that Disney isn't for them anymore, feeling betrayed by that, and lashing out rather than looking in.
Roger Corman gave a very insightful observation in an interview with Leonard Maltin around 2000. He noted that if you're going big budget, you're going to be very conservative on what of a movie you're going to make, whereas with an independent film with a smaller budget, you can afford to go nuts. That's why I laugh at anybody screaming at Marvel for "not taking chances".
The only part I get is if someone feels put off by the overall lack of variety in mainstream film releases in modern times and if they attribute that to the IP-franchise thinking of modern conglomerates (I think "Marvel" is a stand-in for that general trend when most people say it)...but most of the people whining the way Bob showed here aren't even saying that, they still want IP-franchises but just want them made exactly the way *they* like them, whatever that might entail (for many of them? Usually not wanting to see women or actors of color in major roles, because "i hAtE wOkEnEsS" or whatever).
@@jmn327 Yeah, basically it's a case of "where's mine?" Something else our Mr. Chipman likes to point out: the crowd whining on and on about women, LGBTQ and the like showing up in "their" stuff don't have the economic clout to change that. Probably why they usually feel so powerless...GOOD.
@@johnathonhaney8291 Yep, so they create conspiracy theories that Disney, a global conglomerate concerned solely with making infinite amounts of money, is somehow part of a "woke cabal" or some nonsense, because they can't accept "oh, this is happening because the position I hold is unpopular, while the opposite position is widely accepted and profitable."
Sounds familiar to something in modern politics, if I could only put my finger on it...
The fact that the Avengers theme playing over a bloody amusement park attraction still gives me a jolt of excitement like some sort of pop culture LSD flashback should be a pretty big signal that the MCU has ingrained itself into our culture for the foreseeable future. Also people need to start really really really accepting that if they don't want to watch a thing, it's okay not to.
Who gets tired of consistently good quality films and shows?
Not me. If you need a reminder, watch morbius and let there be carnage. Thats what it was like before the MCU.
AAAAAGH! Why did you remind me they exist? /s
But seriously, as someone who suffered through the pre-MCU era, I can attest that it was all that you say. Hell, I even remember an article talking about how action and sci-fi films of the time were just falling so short.
@@johnathonhaney8291 haha remember Spawn?
@@breadordecide Sadly, yes.
@@breadordecide Spawn at least had John Leguizamo hamming it up as Violator. He was at least fun.
@@darkseid1975 I’d say its so bad its good.
"this isn't fatigue this is (precisely describes what fatigue is)"
Movie bob saying the things that need to be said about nerd culture.
is it still nerd culture? Last time I checked "the Nerds" never cared about what can anybody say about their things. Also this may originated in nerd culture, but is mainstream for like 12 years already.
@@Dukenukem RUclips and twitter would beg to differ considerably with your assesment.
@@SavageBroadcast
I'm not sure that RUclips and Twitter are the authorities I'd appeal to, were I inclined to make an Appeal to Authority.
Indeed..longstanding problems that predate the Internet and which my generation failed to solve. Look no further than Harlan Ellison's essay "Xenogensis" for examples of the analog version of the ugly we've all seen.
Things that are problem with nerd culture but that said nerds don't seem ro realize to be problems and just blame others.
“[____] fatigue” exists, except not really. At a personal level it exists, for those who have watched every entry as they’ve come out, and has gotten tired of them. What we lose sight of is how small a sliver that is of the general population, and how unimportant said consumers are in the big picture.
What some people forget is that we don’t have to watch any of these, and not everyone sees these when they first come out. Every day one person burns out in MCU or some other franchise or genre, and every day a new fan watches these fir the first time.
For their part, Marvel seems to understand all this, as they’ve had >60 years of experience in publishing, where one segment stops reading comics, and another batch of new readers discover a series and starts reading. By the time I was born some people had long since fatigued on James Bond films, and Connery was long gone from the franchise, but they kept getting made, and I didn't get into them myself until my 20s, but then I watched them all, enjoying some more than others.
They also seem to understand that certain characters and franchises are more popular and enduring than others. Not every character is going to be as popular as Batman or Spider-Man, nor need be. The beauty of Marvel is, they likely have a superhero for nearly any taste. Thor, Iron Man, and Punisher were never my favorites, but they had plenty of titles, so I just picked the ones I liked. With their movies and TV shows, same business approach can apply. You don't need a majority of a population to like a property for it to succeed.
Box office numbers recently says otherwise
The MCU is great i say keep em coming movies tv shows all of it
Nice, classic Big Picture. Can't wait for part two. :-)
People will complain. They been complaining since the 1st Avenger.
I'm still enjoying it. I just haven't gone to the movies since covid and I now have a kid.
I grew up in a bad neighborhood. You would have gotten harassed and/or get your ass beat for liking fantasy or comics. I sadly pretend i didn't like it when I would step outside my home when I had all that in my room.
I'm glad this stuff is mainstream and every type of class of people knows about it and could discuss it. Kid me would have loved it.
More on the main topic: anecdotally, I think I have in fact reached a point of fatigue with the MCU, in that while up until Endgame I felt the need to see everything in theaters so I'd be in the know, just because it's more MCU...I've been less inclined to take the effort of seeing projects I'm not specifically interested in. I watched Wandavision, FatWS, and Loki, but I didn't even start Loki until it was a few episodes in. I watched Moon Knight and She-Hulk but skipped Ms. Marvel and Hawkeye for now.
And I saw all the 2021 Marvel movies because I had specific interest in all of them (Black Widow for the prequel element and for being the first post-Covid movie, Shang-Chi and Eternals for being new, unexplored corners of the MCU with brand new characters)...but I still haven't watched Thor 4, even on D+, because I heard from people who like MCU movies that that one's pretty meh.
I still am always interested in new MCU stuff, but my interest has significantly waned from "I've gotta see every new thing and each new bit of news is another car added to the hype train" to "oh cool, that could be fun". Which is the normal person reaction, I know...but the fact that as someone who's super into comics and superhero stuff and movies, the biggest comic superhero movie thing doesn't have my rapturous attention probably indicates something.
Say what you will about the DC side of things, but good or bad, I'm always very intrigued to see what they're doing, because I never know how it's gonna turn out. Whereas with Marvel...you know you're gonna get a pretty enjoyable but not mind-blowing family action flick. You're not gonna get BvS OR get The Batman.
If there was a fatigue we would be talking about something else.
I also think some people don’t make peace with the fact that you grow up. Your tastes change. A hit of marvel at 30 might not be as potent as it was at 15. It doesn’t mean the franchise sucks now it just means maybe you need to fill your life with more meaning then whether the next bright colors fun time picture show makes you feel like you did when you were young and hope existed
As someone who watched Iron Man in the theater in his early 30s and still loves it for what it's become since, I find that assessment true but also funny and ironic in my case.
@@johnathonhaney8291 lol yeah it’s not scientific law or anything but sometimes it’s genuinely like people forget it’s okay to just read a book. Go touch grass. I’m a filmmaker and even I think people need to give less of a shit about movies lol
For real. People don't realise/think about the fact that they change and sometimes you stop liking something. It's fine and it doesn't mean the MCU has to stop now, just accept you don't need to watch it and move tf on. I feel like that's a big thing with SW now, it's been going for so long that people aren't getting the same "hit" from it like they did when they were younger, and they don't think that maybe it's just they they've changed, and also that you can't always replicate the feeling you get watching something from so many years ago.
During the pandemic I've been rewatching TV shows and movies from my youth, and I gotta say, a lot of them don't hold up for me now. It doesn't undo the fact that I enjoyed them a lot back in the day, it's just now I have different tastes that have matured, and I don't enjoy them nearly as much now (Buffy still holds tf up and puts other TV shows to shame tho).
I've also stepped waaaay back from fandom since, if anything, I'm fatigued from *that*, and the repetitive cycle of pre-release/release/post-release ~discourse that now drives me insane because it's so damn same-y and the people who hate the MCU still hang around to shit on it, as though they're being held hostage and their life depends on spitting out hot takes and dunking on those who still enjoy it. And that's without getting into the hate merchants grifting all over the place and fucking up discourse even more. I'm peacing the fuck outta that and just enjoying the MCU mostly independently now.
@@natf7942 I really hate how the facist hate merchants make me wanna be facist against the facist hate merchants.
@@jordankellyparrott7819 Ghostwriter here...still read, still always on the hunt for interesting and forgotten films. I love the MCU but I've got other venues as well. That's REALLY the antidote to burnout...seeing what else is out there. But it also takes the kind of work I rarely see the complainers put in.
I genuinely don't understand the attitude that watching Marvel movies/TV shows is some kind of chore, like cleaning the bathroom. As Bob keeps saying, these are fairly self-contained stories that use continuity as an occasional treat, and even when they use callbacks, I've never felt like I was missing something major. Blackbolt's cameo in Multiverse of Madness is probably more rewarding if you watched Inhumans, but we're told and shown enough that I didn't need to.
It ultimately is about clout and social currency with that crowd who cares...a nasty tribal belief that must not be contradicted.
Oh man. That Avengers Campus but at the end feels extremely Vought Studios.
“It’s fine” is very much where I am with the genre now. I was the guy that saw Blade and Steel in theaters not because I was a monster fan of either but because I wanted the genre to thrive. Post Endgame I’ve used the world fatigued to describe my feelings towards the genre. In so much as (save for No Way Home) I haven’t hit the theater or paid for the premium access to see an MCU movie.
All that said, I’ve actually found She-Hulk refreshing and look forward to new episodes of it. So even my fatigue knows limits. But overwhelmingly the new releases have not excites me or gotten me stoked enough to count down the days.
I do feel that it’s lost a step, in that the Infinity Saga seemed somewhat focused on a “endgame” the MCU has seemed a little scatter shot since. In the end I still watch the stuff and usually enjoy it in some capacity but don’t yearn for it like I used to back in the phase 1 and 2 days.
Love your content Bob
I cannot wait for Schlocktober 🎃
No bulls*it, it would have been comedy gold (to me) if, after Anthony Mackie's introduction of his own character at Avengers Campus, Bob had inserted a clip of the first episode of The Legend of Korra where the titular character burst through a wall doing elemental bending as a child yelling "I'm the avatar...DEAL WITH IT!"
Having to keep up with all of the MCU stuff can be exhausting, especially if it's part of your job and it's the part of your job that brings in the most revenue. But with Phase 4 it has gotten to the point where you can pick and choose what you do or don't want to watch and for the most part it won't really effect your understanding of it. (I saw Doctor Strange 2 but not WandaVision, and although what happened in WandaVision played a pretty important part in what's going on, but I still got the gist of it mainly thanks to cultural osmosis.)
What is exhausting, however, is going online and having to deal with the horde of chuds and grifters making 5-hour screeds about how it all became "woke" simply because they chose to put women and minorities in lead roles. I've been psyched about The Rings of Power but deliberately chose to avoid any articles or tweets about it simply because I knew the comments would be flooded with racist dipshits hellbent on poisoning the whole experience.
That a lot of these guys are in my age, racial and gender demographics is embarrassing. And FYI, Rings of Power is GOT with 90% less blood, swearing and other gross stuff...REAL good to me.
FWIW, getting people to avoid media is exactly why they do this.
The *want* to create the impression that something is hated. They want to create the idea before something exists that it is bad. They want to create negative feelings towards things long before you experience them. And they want to pollute any discourse so that it is impossible for you to say anything about it without having to deal with their nonsense too.
This is their goal: to control the conversation and make it impossible for people who like certain things to like them in peace. They either convert you to their side or run you out of the room.
To be fair, there's a fair bit of the pre-phase 4 stuff you can skip and still basically follow the plot up through Endgame. Having only actually seen most of the movies once when they came out (and a few of them I never saw), any time I didn't remember exactly what something was I just defaulted to "okay this is one of the magic rocks they got from some dude at some point," and it pretty much tracks.
Totally agree about Rings of Power though. I have next to no interest in actually watching it and I'm *still* tempted to check it out just because I know it pisses off some of the worst people on the internet xD
@Graham Kristensen
"What is exhausting, however, is going online and having to deal with the horde of chuds and grifters making 5-hour screeds about how it all became "woke" simply because they chose to put women and minorities in lead roles."
Why are you watching it if you don't like it? I believe that's the standard response you give when people complain about "woke" movies.
"I've been psyched about The Rings of Power but deliberately chose to avoid any articles or tweets about it simply because I knew the comments would be flooded with racist dipshits hellbent on poisoning the whole experience."
Don't worry the series will still be terrible even if you don't read these articles because of basic problems with the plot and characters.
@@uanime1 There's a big difference between blockbuster movies and tv shows existing, and bigots screaming hatred about anyone other than straight white men being able to exist in franchises. They're feeding racism and misogyny while entertainment is at least trying to do the opposite, so don't pretend like the dehumanisation and targeting of those of us who aren't part of the "acceptable" minority to these fuckwits is something to be ignored.
Long man bad?
I get MMO fatigue. I have one that I play all the time. I just took two weeks off it playing Jurassic Park Evolution. I then came back to the MMO for more. I cycled them regularly over the year. This means I've been playing the same game for 7 years
It's truly hilarious to me that some people think Marvel are putting out too much stuff now. I worked it out and their output is basically equivalent to ONE 22 episode network show every year. A few years ago I was watching like 10 of those a year, so the varied output of Marvel putting out content for just a single one is entirely easy to deal with. If someone is fatigued that's fine, but acting as though everyone else is because you are ain't it. Plus this is varied stuff, not the exact same thing over and over.
You probably have a lot of people like me, who only mildly care about MCU stuff, pay attention for projects that look interesting usually to be a bit let down, and otherwise only keep up out of a faint sense of obligation. From that perspective, going from 4 hours of films a year to 6 wasn’t so bad, but going from a few movies to watch whenever to multiple entire TV series a year is exhausting.
Being the biggest game in town means getting to own the conversation, but owning the conversation also means people feel obliged to listen, and get tired of it. The price of being the biggest game in town is that more people will get tired of playing.
@@UnreasonableOpinions I've never understood that at all, if you usually get let down then stop watching it? If it's exhausting just don't watch any of it? Reminds me of people who still watched Supernatural until the end, or who still watch Grey's Anatomy but are only doing it because they want to finish the whole thing. I peaced out of both of those in the 5th season when I stopped liking it, but some continue to cling and hate that GA is still on because they're "not free". It's their own sense of obligation trapping them, nothing else.
As someone who still loves the MCU but hates the repetitive online discourse about it and so avoids it as much as I can, it's pretty easy to not see anything about it if you don't want to. I do occasionally come across stuff about it but no more than I also do other franchises. Feels to me more like people let themselves get caught up in things instead of ignoring stuff they don't like. Like I follow someone on twitter who hated the first two Jurassic World movies yet he was there on opening weekend seeing the third and trashing it, and I'm like... but why? I didn't care for the first one so I just didn't bother going forward, I didn't go see them so I could hate on them, what a waste of time.
(before watching the piece)
Saying that comic movie burnout is a thing when you only get 3 or 4 of them a year is stupid. We get a lot more action movies every year and no one says we have action movie burnout. And don't give me that crap about "well you have to see every Marvel movie" because you don't. Any major movie that ties into a previous film will have 10 minutes of exposition that gets everyone caught up to speed.
Hey, go play in high speed traffic "mate"!
I have a note from my doctor who says I'm suffering from a bout of 'Ranty people bitching about ranty people bitching about the MCU' fatigue.
I don't have Marvel Fatigue. I have "Marvel Fatigue" Fatigue.
I don't get fatigue over the MCU. All the TV and films combined in a year isn't much more watching-minutes than a year's worth of an old many-episode TV show. Haven't checked but I think we're getting less MCU each year than we got Trek back in the 90s and the MCU's not spread between only 2 TV shows at a time and mostly terrible films.
For real. Three movies and three tv shows of shorter runtime = slightly more than a standard 22 episode network tv show from back in the day. I used to watch 5-10 of those a year, so anyone acting like "too much" content is their problem is being silly.
@@natf7942 it's that we binge now, TV used to be weekly.
Now there's an idea that we watch all of a tv show in few days then a film or 3.
@@SuperFunkmachine Back in my day we called it marathoning, I like that word better, makes me sound like an athlete instead of a junkie. But also, might be a reflection of how we see content now, something to gobble up as fast as possible without being given the chance to absorb it properly.
That's why I'm glad Disney+ drops weekly, despite the shrieking of those who like to binge claiming that it's a money grab (you know you can wait until it's aired and then sub if it means that much to you). I for one like a breather and like to watch things the way they always used to air. Not all of us have multiple hours to sit watching something just so we don't get spoiled the second we go to twitter.
You haven't said anything I didn't already know, but you articulated it far better than I could. Thank you Bob!
I think you are underselling how dead Westerns were at one point. They were everything everywhere in Hollywood for 20 years, with movies in the 50s and then immigrating (one might say settling) on TV in the 60s. And then it died. Because people got tired of the genre, tired of the tropes, tired of the same backlot sets. It took Eastwood making Unforgiven for western movies to be possible once again, and that had to be among the best westerns ever made to get peoples attention.
So I don't disagree with your eventual points, but you can tire the public out on a genre to the point where money is impossible to find to make a new movie about "x" until many decades later, and while I'm certainly not here saying Marvel needs to go away for a while, I will say they need to up their quality control because some stuff is not hitting like it used to.
Yeah, that's pretty spot on. It's not fatigue. It's just acceptance and that they're branching out and trying out new audiences but people who were always the original audience are like BUT NOT FOR ME!? THEN IT MUST BE BAD!!!! Instead of just like, yknow, accepting it.
The big change over time seems to be that it's normal now to have comic book movies. The first superman was a very new type of thing, and between then and spider man there wasn't really another one (I'm choosing to ignore Howard the Duck). So a new comic book movie or tv show (especially one with major stars and a significant effects budget) is just....normal. So it isn't as worthy of breathless excitement and hype as it was back when the first Sam Raimi Spiderman was launched, simply because back then it was seen as a huge risk and departure from the norm, and something that hadn't been done in a generation, whereas now it's done every summer.
Well, Mr. Chipman, you promised us more fun content in the near future. In my books, this counts.
To expand on the age thing a bit, I'm thinking on how some of the loudmouths and/or their followers in our mutual age bracket have developed a Peter Pan complex. As you say, they used to be the young insurgents. Now...well, they're something else. It's like they want to "rebel" more than they want to be responsible. For me, I feel like I owe it to the newbies coming into the MCU to support them the way NOBODY ever supported me on what I loved.
"An artist's responsibility is to be irresponsible. As soon as you start thinking about social or political responsibility, you've amputated the best limbs you've got as an artist. You're plugging into a very restrictive system that is going to push and mold you, and make your art totally useless and ineffective."
--David Cronenberg
That having been said, you're not wrong about the "Peter Pan Complex" thing. It's why the contrarian discourse can be divided neatly along the lines of "Aging Nerds Being Contrarian To Prove How Smart And Grown-Up They Are Now," and "Channer-Scum Idiots Who Think It's Still 2008 And Angry White Guys Are Still The Center Of The Geek-Entertainment Universe." I could give ya a few examples of both types.
@@thetribunaloftheimaginatio5247 Please don't, Trib. I probably know both types by heart by now. And what I meant by responsibilty was just being a better elder. If the kid likes something different than you, something that causes no harm and you don't understand it, then support them. This is doubly true when new guys are coming into a fandom you've been part of a while.
@@johnathonhaney8291 As one of my favorite comics RUclipsrs would say-"Ambassadors, Not Gatekeepers." I agree 100%... old-timers like us need to be elder statesmen, not "Get Off My Lawn" old fogies constantly bitching and moaning about how the world's best days are behind it. Luckily, my mind is still flexible enough that I'm a damn quick study on what the kids are into these days. I refuse to let Abraham Simpson's words be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"I used to be With It... until they changed what It was! Now what I'm With isn't It, and what's It seems weird and scary to me! IT'LL HAPPEN TO YOU..."
@@thetribunaloftheimaginatio5247 Me, I've always been in my own weird dimension with things I love, very little of it hip. But it does give me a knowledge base to trace the roots on anything that IS popular.
Nut jobs on RUclips railing for hours about how bad or overrated a popular thing “actually “ is we shounen anime fans see quite a bit of. First it was Naruto, Bleach and One Piece (DBZ got similar treatment but that was usually on blogs prior to RUclips), nowadays it’s My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer. Actually there was an attempt at that with Spy x Family but that fizzled out because there wasn’t enough out for them to stand on.
Would that was where the beginning of such tiring nonsense began? Or would you attribute that more, as others have, with Gamergate?
@@johnathonhaney8291 I remember that happening before Gamergate became a thing. Though I will admit after it did you would see a rise in Gatekeepers disdaining younger/newer anime fans for starting with shows that are popular at the time.
That shot Mauler was very much appreciated 😁
i have toxic RUclipsrs fatigue
As I scroll down the comments on this video I'm seeing the recommendations on the side, and phew, it's like a who's who of Fuck No. The "don't recommend this channel" option sure is getting a workout.
I think the problem is not fatigue.
In the Infinity saga, no one was making it a priority to keep up with the MCU. Everyone watched what they wanted to watch and when the Avengers came around, some RUclips filled them in on what was important. The thing is that most people hadn't noticed that the infinity Stones where the important part to keep track of. And when they noticed, it was already clear that you never had to keep track of them in the first place.
Now they made pretty clear from the start that multiverses is their next big thing and people are now want to keep up with every movie and TV show while the MCU does fuck all with the concept. People are not fatigued, they are confused.
my take on fatigue is that we have been accustomed to popular stuff going out of fashion quickly: fads. fatigue grows out of situations where a thing about x subject is suddenly surprisingly good (it doesn't have to be fantastic, just better than whatever the expectations were). then lots and lots of creators/companies/etc try to cash in on x thing by making increasingly uninspired and hackneyed stuff that contain x or are about x. then x becomes more associated with the bad shit in a way that isn't really related to whether x is a good thing or not. eventually, the bubble bursts, and x thing becomes the butt of a joke because it was a fad that didn't last.
this happens all the time, but since the MCU stuff has been mostly pretty good (and almost never worse than a bit below average) the expected pattern of consumer fatigue hasn't kicked in yet.
this has been true of all kinds of stuff: breakdancing in the 80s, rollerblading in the 90s, hipsterism and teen dystopian/sci-fi/fantasy franchises in the 2010s etc.
I'd actually argue that the pattern is holding, it's just people don't understand that the Internet has made it possible for the overall life cycle to be extended.
I did not care about Top gun, then and now.....
This is a bit off-topic, but does anyone know what happened to Bob's old setup? It's now been a few months since his face segments and audio has changed, and I'm worried that something important happened in his life and I missed it.
I don't know, but the audio quality has certainly been rough.
Ages of comic book movies:
Superman Age 1978-1988
Batman Age 1989-1998
Platinum Age 1998-2007
Golden Age 2008-2019
Silver Age 2020-now
"Ethan Hunt doesn't team up with Gladiator, Robocop, and Sonic for one bigger movie"
SOMEBODY GET STARTED ON THAT, PRONTO!
I think Jenny Nicholson said they built the avengers campus in away that it could easily be rethemed to a different IP if the mcu ever declines in popularity. Which may speak to the fact that even Disney does not have complete faith in it for this decade.
I'd say that is less having no faith in the MCU to remain popular for the next couple of decades and more having experience in building theme parks.
Of things that could be termed urban fantasy, superpowers have a larger umbrella than vampires or zombies.
If someone talked about being tired of zombie movies ten years ago it would be understandable.
20 years ago, someone talking about being tired of vampires would have been understandable.
But superhero fiction can easily include zombies (marvel's what if...?) Or vampires (blade, morbius, etc) without leaving the umbrella of it's genre.
If you were watching a zombie movie and superman showed up it wouldn't feel like it was the same genre as dawn of the dead
You may not be aware of this but the old Superman series Smallville actually DID a zombiesque episode in Season 9. Indeed, given that many episodes of this series were riffs on films like Election, Saw and The Hangover, it does much to prove your point.
What exhausts folks such as myself is consistent bad writing that's been plaguing these big-budget films. No, of course, not every Marvel film would ever need to be at the level of screenplay caliber as that of Twelve Angry Men, Citizen Kane, and The Godfather. It would be nice if that is the case, but doesn't seem likely to happen in the current film-making business climate.
However, it would be really, really appreciated if the writers put so much more effort on the scripts to make the payoffs stick with a great impact to the viewer and not because the spectacles alone will carry as many memorable moments as possible per the decisions of the filmmakers.
Avoid going through just 1st, 2nd or 3rd drafts. Go beyond. Really iron out the inconsistencies. Consider well on how to build strong and sensible setups relative to the story being told and the characters going through the story and connect them well to the desired and appropriate payoffs. Do everything in a screenwriter's power to not sacrifice cause-and-effect; keep the rules of that fictional universe intact, bend but not break, to get to those payoffs, especially all the supernatural, fantasy, and sci-fi elements that get introduced to thicken the plot. Even worldbuilding and character choices, decisions, words, and actions should be given the same great care and consideration.
You'll get more intriguing scenes back to back not built on sheer nonsense and even raise the stakes for the characters in the story, thus leading to more entertaining films built on strong scripts. They may still be far from perfect and definitely won't appease all, yes. But efforts will show and seep through for acknowledgment from the audience with so much fantastic merits in the films, thanks to good/great writing that got translated well into what things that have been put onto the screen.
Do that and the fatigue for the media vanishes.
If I have any sort of fatigue with regards to movies, it's imitation fatigue--as in, studios trying to replicate Marvel's success. Nobody has done it, and it's very likely nobody will. David "The Algorithm that Walks Like a Man" Zalslav is just the latest to state that he will catch that same lightning in a bottle... and is off to a roaring start in entirely the wrong direction already.
What potato model do you use to record your audio?
The only thing I have Fatigue of is the folks on social media who instead of gushing about something they like, instead chime in with a bull horn "I DONT LIKE MARVEL! I AM SO SPECIAL AND UNIQUE! LOOK AT HOW COOL I AM FOR NOT LIKING CURRENT POPULAR THING!!!!" When it turns out they didn't even watch the movie but read a plot outline online.....
What a petulant outburst. You're angry that your cinematic cow slop is starting wane in popularity.
I think folk need to learn that if something isn't doing it for them then just stop watching. It really is that simple. I've not been that invested in Marvel since Endgame, but I'll casually check out the odd film or show if it looks interesting.
However, the sheer obsessiveness of some "fans" is kind of worrying. It's getting to Star Wars levels of venom in certain areas, and there's just no point to it. Like, we're 3 episodes into She-Hulk and still the dude bros are making a point of trashing it at every opportunity when they should have just walked away after the first episode if it wasn't for them.
Hot topics are good income generators for content creators, so the more they turn up the heat the more rage click and views they'll get. It's all very seedy.
I'll go you one better. Since Captain Marvel, Marvel Studios has learned to use said dude bros as free PR generators to get the word out. So they're being used twice...once by the grifters and again by the studio they oppose.
I don't have Marvel fatigue, I have Disney fatigue. Every 6 months, Disney reminds us they're a shite company, the CGI in she Hulk is bad because Disney had workers under crunch
And if they were giving you what you wanted, would you even give a damn about those workers? Or are they just props for whatever argument you want to make?
@@johnathonhaney8291 Not really. Moon Knight is probably my favroite Marvel super hero right now and I like Kamala Khan. I haven't gotten Disney plus yet.
The problem is that once you go mainstream, you lose some of that spark, and edge that made you loved by many in the first place unless you stay true to yourself, and go against the pressure to turn against your core fanbase in favor of an audience that isn't big enough to support, or appreciate you.
And that's long been the haters' biggest misunderstanding/problem. They're NOT the totality of the core fanbase and thus lack the clout to steer anything.
@@johnathonhaney8291 That's where you're wrong. If that's the case, 'The Rings Of Power', and 'She-Hulk' would've gotten a more favorable reception if they were payed more respect to their source materials.
@@Launchpad05 What, the reception from the Internet loudmouths? Bad example to cite always, as again, they are no more than a piece of the audience...and not a particularly big one.
@@Launchpad05 By "respecting the source material" you mean make everyone white and dare not offend the mens by existing. Or we could actively ignore what bigots who hate the presence of anyone who isn't a straight white man think because their pathetic asses don't matter and are not indicative of the general audience who make up the vast majority of those watching entertainment. Your assertion is simply a low-effort and transparent dog whistle, it's cute that you tried though.
"Ethan Hunt doesn't team up with Gladiator, Robocop, and Sonic"
Maaaaaaaaaan, now I'm sad that I can't go out and see THAT movie
Dude...how long have you been doing RUclips. Why do you have such terrible audio issues...and also..take a breath man. Your allowed to take breaks in-between your sentences.
no fatigue here, in fact i want a more broad range of characters. lets get some more street level heros, maybe some anti villains, some period piece heros, hell i would love to see one about actual Super Vilains who dont have redemption arcs
Somebody post the episode where 1:25 was from - IDK how to explain what I am looking for in google.
RUclips critics: "The MCU is _over_ ! Marvel movies are trite and lowbrow!"
General audiences: " _I missed the part where that's my problem_ "
Lowbrow implies the story is coherent... Which most of modern marvel films are not
@@josephstrand3595 Coherent in this context = something I can signal boost without being ostracized by my preferred in-group/contradicting my self-image. Depending on which condition applies here, either get better friends or get therapy.
15:00 Oof, that reality-parodying-the-franchise scenario with the actor passing the torch/shield to his character played by a struggling actor was really really cringe in the 'Oh god, it's all gone corpo and I never noticed until now' kind of way.