Add to the fact that Flashpoint is one of the most played out story arcs at this point. It’s like rehashing Spidey’s origin over and over again.

Reminds me of the YT griefers who had nervous breakdowns over She-Hulk. Like, it’s a goofy sitcom. Also, had those people ever read a She-Hulk comic?

Something that a lot of critics who accuse Marvel of destroying cinema or whatever fail to realize that it’s not really a traditional movie franchise so much as longform television that mostly plays in theaters first. As with Friends or Lost, there is enormous comfort to be had in selectively bingeing the movies and…

Yeah, it’s likely that Rudd is nearing the end of his contract anyway, and the movie is clearly setting up his daughter as his replacement on the Avengers. 

Oh yeah, the Asylum would be doing its own “Evil Universe” or whatever, and the DVD box art would probably look about the same as Universal’s. 

I don’t think the Arrowverse is anything to sneeze at. Hundreds of hours of weekly serialized superhero adventures set in the same shared world. I wasn’t a huge fan, but on the whole it did a better job of providing a weekly live-action comic book experience than the Marvel shows did, at least in the pre-Disney+ days.…

Still, I would’ve watched the hell out of an MCU Rushmore with Peter in the Max Fisher role and Tony as his Herman Blume, respectively.

Anecdotal, but I’ve heard several stories from folks who brought their “normie” friends along and they were going, “Wait, so he’s Batman now, I thought it was Affleck. And what’s a General Zod, and why is he important? And... was that Nic Cage?” the whole time.

Heh, I wonder if Fox played Lance in Pulp Fiction in that timeline.

It’s very much a Boomercentric movie, and I think the movie speaks, in a way, to the Boomer experience — they were the first generation to grow up having the world mediated to them via television, almost instantaneously, to the point where TV and other kinds of media became, in the words of my old academic advisor…

Which is very funny, since some of the movies biggest gags assume the viewer is familiar with production details on Back the Future and Superman Lives. One is over 35 years old, the other never existed. And they aren’t blink-and-you’ll-miss-it gags either. They aren’t Lou Ferigno as a security guard in a Hulk movie…

I’m reminded of how Star Wars was, back in 1977-83, the most mainstream thing imaginable. It was the opposite of something like Star Trek or Doctor Who, which were popular but fairly niche by comparison. Nowadays we think of it as a franchise ruled over by gatekeepers and Wookieepedists, but back in the day those…

DC will always default to Batman. Marvel learned eventually that Tony Stark didn’t have to be in every MCU movie for it to be a hit.

Still seems weird to me honestly. Marvel started out without their two most well known (outside of comic fans) properties and basically had to introduce mainstream audiences to who these people even are, turning them into household names.

One way movies like this generate early buzz is by having the most charismatic stars - even cameo players - show up on talk shows in the weeks prior. Get Affleck or Gadot to show up on Kimmel hoping they say something cute that goes viral thereby reminding everyone on Youtube or Tiktok that the movie exists.

There’s also the factor that this movie seems to be trying to get, frankly, Endgame levels of impact without any of the legwork necessary to get there. 

It also helps that Way of Water works pretty well as a standalone movie. You don’t really have to rewatch the original to follow the action (I didn’t). There’s a bit of a recap at the beginning but really the only recurring characters are Jake, Neytiri, and Quaritch; everyone else is brand-new, as is the setting. I…

I don’t know that the 30-years since Keaton’ films are the issue. I think the 30 years on Keaton’s age is more significant.

Flash just doesn’t have the character recognition of a Batman, Superman or even Wonder Woman either, which won’t have helped. Throw in Miller, who as you say, is hardly a headlining name, and you’ve already got problems that just get compounded by the varying quality of prior films.

People tend to forget that the MCU started out with extremely modest goals. Do a handful of standalone movies with different characters, hint at connections between them, but hold off on a major crossover until Avengers, which was the sixth movie in the series. And the interesting thing is that tonally the first five…