A Viewpoint

The MCU is now officially the biggest movie franchise of all time and they’ve completely earned every bit of their supermassive success. The greatest thing the Marvel films did lies not in their sheer cinematic spectacles but in their delicate balancing act which focused on it’s characters’ super-heroism as well as their human vulnerabilities, simultaneously humanizing these super heroes on a level that’s both relatable and heartfelt for us. This is the real key to their success—they made those fictional characters feel real and brought them closer to the audience with their individual emotional journeys, character arcs and resolutions. It’s what makes the MCU both universal and intimate, at the same time. To make us feel for it’s characters so deeply is the real success of these films and that’s what’s responsible for bringing back the audiences into the theaters for multiple viewings. However, when viewed from a purely cinematic standpoint, it’s also not hard to see that...

If there’s one word that can aptly contain the essence of the whole MCU-flavor of films, it’s this one—straightforward. These films give the audiences exactly what they promise—plenty of blockbuster spectacles, unpredictable plotlines and sometimes, memorable approaches at characterization (Winter Soldier, Iron Man 1 to name a few). But the chief aspect of the MCU is their interconnected-ness, which was genuinely refreshing back in 2012, but after watching Infinity War, it seemed that even that mold is starting to lose it’s luster. The main contribution of the MCU in the broader aspect of the world of filmmaking is the episodic format of storytelling that it has introduced in it’s movies. Every film in the Marvel-verse exists as a stepping stone to something exponentially more, which too, has become rather a hit-or-miss effect on the films. Some movies shine in that framework while others suffer or at least, lose some of their meaning in the long run. Winter Soldier is an ex...

As massively successful as the MCU has become, there has always been one rough edge in it's franchise wheel—weak, underdeveloped villains who are mostly used as mere plot device characters in service of the main storyline. Other than Zemo in Civil War, almost all of the MCU's villains have received a particularly lackluster treatment (Ronan, Malaekith, Yellowjacket) and in some cases, were even reduced to just a punching bag for the heroes' (Ultron and Loki in The Avengers comes to mind).  And this really begs the question: how will the MCU portray Thanos in the upcoming Infinity War? Will he truly get the 'ultimate badass' treatment that he deserves from his long comics history or will he just turn out to be another addition in the MCU's long pantheon of de-powered and under-utilized villains? Now of course we won't know the final answer to this question until the movie actually comes out or at least a full length trailer gets rele...