Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies and Streaming Series Discussion

"Everybody shows up for the finale" is kind of the MCU brand. It's like that's its own goal now.

I'm sure when the movie comes out there will be press releases about how this movie beats the previous record for most returning characters.
 
Misfit said:
Definitely. I got to the end and probably asked myself aloud "That's it?" When Game of Thrones was on its roll, that show did a really good job of paying off a season in the penultimate episode and then using the finale to setup the next season. Daredevil just stops in its tracks. I'm almost surprised they didn't flash "To be continued..." on the screen. It didn't ruin the season for me or anything, and other media has done a worse job of this in the past (looking at you Spider-Verse), but it's inelegant story design, at best.
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It makes me bring up the age-old question in fiction: Is a thing still good if the end is bad? Does the final season of Game of Thrones invalidate the previous seasons? And if the ending is what determines quality to some degree, can you essentially make a show that's 'never bad' by never letting it end?

The best way I can answer that for myself is to split the question into two parts that don't necessarily intersect: Did I enjoy it and was it good?
I enjoyed watching Daredevil: Born Again. I wouldn't say it was 'a good show' because it ends poorly without any real resolution. I can't judge whether it was good because I don't have the totality of the product in front of me TO judge. If season 2 comes out and has a great ending, then it will likely go down as a great show. If season 2 never comes out, for some reason, I think I'd have to say that Born Again was a bad show.

And yeah, it all really boils down to the people in charge not being interested in each season of a show being its own thing that can be evaluated on its own merits. Maybe that's intentional. Maybe it's a by-product of wanting to force people to keep coming back endlessly. Maybe it's a little of both. But it's definitely a touch frustrating.

Ru1977 said:
One factor may be the show was originally to have an 18 episode first season. Then things got overhauled, some rewrites occurred, three episodes were completely redone, and they decided to split it into two seasons.
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That could certainly have thrown a big ol' monkey wrench into the works. But ultimately they did all these re-writes, so we have to assume the trombone-fart ending was intentional because they didn't write it out at any point. They cut the show into two seasons, sure, but that's still (to me) ultimately going to mean the ending we got for season 1 is the intended ending that everyone was happy enough with to go to print on it.

Maybe I'm also just hanging on the MCU a general frustration with the feeling that nothing has an ending anymore because everything has to be about the next thing. We're all in the same boat as toy collectors that our collections are always going and there's rarely an 'end' in sight, and that feeling is okay in small doses, but now it's also in my video games (constant sequels and DLC) and movies (constant sequels and tie-ins) and TV shows (ditto) to the point where it feels like I can't enjoy the totality of anything anymore because there's always something else tacked onto it.
 
I definitely get that. As much as I enjoy long form story telling, there are some miniseries that have a firm ending that I really adore. I guess with marvel, I just kinda expect this to happen. Even something like Loki, which had one of my favorite marvel endings with season 2, I still didn't expect that to be the end. BUT, yeah, they did treat it as a resolution.
 
Ru1977 said:
I definitely get that. As much as I enjoy long form story telling, there are some miniseries that have a firm ending that I really adore. I guess with marvel, I just kinda expect this to happen. Even something like Loki, which had one of my favorite marvel endings with season 2, I still didn't expect that to be the end. BUT, yeah, they did treat it as a resolution.
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They did, and it was great.

I often go back to the recent Netflix She-Ra cartoon. In my opinion it's one of the best cartoons ever made in terms of the story. It's five seasons. It was planned out as five seasons. It VERY CLEARLY follows a set arc from beginning to end. They were even offered a chance to make it longer because it was so popular and they said no because it has a set beginning, middle, and end. They respected the story they were telling so much that they wanted to stick to it.
That's what's missing from a lot of modern media -- the desire/ability to write and tell a story from beginning to end and all of the stuff that comes with that (personal arcs, foreshadowing, etc).

And I would argue that some of the MCU's best movies to this day are the ones that are the most self-contained (none are completely, but some movies rely way less on the wider MCU to make sense). The first Iron Man, for example. They just told a story. It ended in a way where it could have continued, but if it literally never did that would STILL be a great movie. Would Infinity War be a good movie if End Game never happened? Oh well. I'm just rambling now.
 
Yeah, when I was reading your last post, Iron Man did come to mind. I dunno... I still love Empire Strikes Back. But I couldn't agree more about stories being told across multiple sequels/seasons needing a planned beginning, middle, and end. I know examples exist of people figuring out as it went and making it work extremely well (such as Breaking Bad), but there are way more examples like the Star Wars sequels. And this is something I think about A LOT since I'm working on the fourth book in a series of five (only one has been published, to really convey how much work I'm putting into having it tie together well). But yes, a solid beginning, middle, and end, along with several personal arcs and foreshadowing are all things I'm constantly dwelling on every day.

With my Daredevil rewatch, I just finished Defenders and will start season 3 soon. I did appreciate Defenders a lot more this time. (I've rewatched all three Daredevil seasons several times since they came out, but only watched Defenders once.) And even that weaved a lot of stories together, servicing not just the four leads but moving some of their supporting characters a little further along too. I really enjoyed, for instance, seeing Foggy interacting with Luke, Karen with Trish, everyone meeting Colleen, especially of course Misty Knight.

While I am not as bothered by the cliffhanger ending of Born Again 1 (but totally get why you are), I felt Born Again lacked strong supporting characters with their own agency, especially when compared to the Netflix show. Heather was the biggest example of this. And people like Cherry certainly had personality and impulses etc, but was really there SOLELY to service Matt's plot. maybe if they'd added a few more episodes, made it an even dozen, we could have had people like him fleshed out more with their own sideplots that still tied to the greater story, and we would have cared more about those characters rather than missing Karen and Foggy so much.

That said, the Matt and Fisk stuff... I'm still really happy with.
 
Initially, it was supposed to be one 18 episode season. When they decided to connect it more to the Netflix series, they had to do a lot of overhauling, and ended up breaking it up in to two seasons (S2 may only have 8 episodes). I know it doesn't help the "unfinished" feel of the finale, but it helps explain why it may feel that way.
 
So basically, it was release it in two parts or do the whole thing at once but waiting another year to do so?
 
I'm going to say something controversial; I don't care very much about tertiary characters. I think sometimes storytelling over-relies on the idea that you have to flesh out everything to make the narrative feel 'real.' Every character can't 'matter' or you get bogged down in a lot of ultimately futile nonsense. But I also see what you're saying. You do need to give a character the -appearance- of agency. I just think it can go too far and shows/movies (and books as well) can go in the direction of wasting the audience's time with characters no one actually cares about and whose lives don't matter to the larger narrative.
To me, while I'm not saying it's not complicated, I think this is the kind of thing that's best fixed with a few lines of dialogue or one or two extra 30-second scenes rather than expanding the narrative too far outward. Writers often underestimate how small you can make your worldbuilding and still have it be effective.

I would say superhero shows/movies are the ones that need to walk this tightrope the best. You don't want every non-hero/villain to be a Bethesda NPC, standing around glass-eyed until the main characters need them for something. But you also want that 'splash page' feel.
 
Ru1977 said:
So basically, it was release it in two parts or do the whole thing at once but waiting another year to do so?

That's kinda what it sounded like. They had filmed six episodes already when they made the changes. Brought in the new showrunner, changed the tone to match the Netflix show, and make it more connected to that as well.
 
Damien said:
I'm going to say something controversial; I don't care very much about tertiary characters.
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I don't know how controversial that is, but the way Karen and Foggy especially carried B plots on the Netflix show was one of my favorite parts. I don't need everyone in every show to have a backstory that's filled in completely, but after the Netflix show, I would hope that characters like Heather, Cherry, even Muse would have more meat.
Damien said:
I think sometimes storytelling over-relies on the idea that you have to flesh out everything to make the narrative feel 'real.' Every character can't 'matter' or you get bogged down in a lot of ultimately futile nonsense.
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Sure, and that's not what I'm wanting either. A good example of that, in my mind, is when James leaves Twin Peaks to have a whole subplot that has nothing to do with anything. It's something I always skip through upon rewatches. What I'm talking about is when Karen and Foggy explore a plot that ends up completely tying into what Matt is up to. Exploring different facets of the plot via the main cast.
Damien said:
But I also see what you're saying. You do need to give a character the -appearance- of agency. I just think it can go too far and shows/movies (and books as well) can go in the direction of wasting the audience's time with characters no one actually cares about and whose lives don't matter to the larger narrative.
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Right, it's a tightrope for sure.

One of my favorite books of all time is Sleeping Dogs by Thomas Perry. (For reference, anyone who has seen The Old Man, the first season of that was based on the Perry book by the same title.) The main character carries most of the book, and the secondary character is a DOJ agent trying to pursue that character. But every now and then, Perry will give you the POV of someone else. And they're always really fascinating, but it will go on for a page or two before they encounter the main character. So it always comes back and doesn't wander too long to get there, and that's another thing I really appreciate. but mostly, the main character and the DOJ agent are exploring two completely different sides of the same main plot, and Perry is a master at such a thing. It's something I really admired about the Netflix Daredevil show, which eventually also weaved in characters like Castle and Poindexter.
DarthDre758 said:
That's kinda what it sounded like. They had filmed six episodes already when they made the changes. Brought in the new showrunner, changed the tone to match the Netflix show, and make it more connected to that as well.
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I think ultimately it was the right call too. I read the biggest changes were in the first episode and the last two, but obviously any scenes with original Vanessa were the result of reshoots as well.

I really feel like the next season will be even better since they, God willing, should have a stronger sense of what they're doing and where they're going with it.
 
Ru1977 said:
I think ultimately it was the right call too. I read the biggest changes were in the first episode and the last two, but obviously any scenes with original Vanessa were the result of reshoots as well.

I really feel like the next season will be even better since they, God willing, should have a stronger sense of what they're doing and where they're going with it.
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That's what I've read as well. If you watch the Heather scenes with Fisk and Vanessa, they rarely show them together in the same shot on the couch. Full front him, full front her. That's a pretty obvious reshoot. I agree on season 2. Unless they have something similar happen, I think it'll feel a lot more cohesive (even though I enjoyed the hell out of this season, start to finish).
 
DarthDre758 said:
Unless they have something similar happen, I think it'll feel a lot more cohesive (even though I enjoyed the hell out of this season, start to finish).
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Same here. it's hard to not compare to the Netflix show, but I was still very happy with this one and can't wait to watch it again after I've watched season 3 (and an episode of Echo and She Hulk, heh).
 
Also, with Defenders, I STILL wish after Matt told Danny to watch his city for him, they had a shot of Danny on the rooftop in a yellow or green version of Matt's season one black suit with eye holes. His hoodie and mask look in IF season 2 was definitely better than anything he wore in season one or Defenders, but I still think that would have been a good opportunity to veer closer to the comic.
 
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