Movie is trying hard already. None of it feels earned and the stakes aren’t clear. Like other than The New Avengers recently forming and the multiverse existing I couldn’t tell you what’s been going on. Like it feels like Evans is back to try to save the franchise, not the world or any other heroes There’s also only the new Spiderman movie before Doomsday if they wanted to do any more set up. But hey… maybe they introduce Dr. Doom, tell a good fresh story that warrants the tons of characters and cameos all in one movie and make it work.
As much as I've enjoyed the films as pieces of entertainment, I agree that this doesn't feel like the culmination of a saga because this saga has been so disjointed. The Infinity Saga, whether you enjoyed all the films or not, at least felt like every film was a link in a chain heading towards somewhere inevitable. It's hard to imagine removing any one film and not lose some piece of the overall picture. Whereas here, we have threads, like the Wanda-Vision thing, the Loki thing, the Young Avengers thing, but no clear destination and nothing really connecting it together. We have whole movies/shows like Eternals and Moon Knight that, at least as things are now, don't add to the picture at all and may never be followed up on. Even if they hadn't pivoted to Doom, in no way did they even set Kang up well enough to be the final foe of the Saga. They should have had him everywhere, even if just cameos, to build him up as a true multiversal threat. Not to mention the heroes, there should have been cameos of them across the films, not all these extraneous legacy characters. And so now we're left with a villain we haven't met yet, facing teams we've only just been introduced to and one team not even related to the franchise that is surely here just to die, for stakes that are completely unknown, with the return of a character that has barely been talked about the entire Saga. So I understand the concern/criticism/exasperation.
I just hate the lack of emotional stakes if they're all essentially immortal , obviously they had to undo the Thanos snap but he left on such a good note
It’s so desperate like see like the OG cap is back!! and we got RDJ!!! just please come see this movie please we beg you
Actually and to be fair, Doom does show up in the F4 post-credits scene and he's after Reed's kid so he's been slightly introduced and we know what he's after. Also, in hindsight it looks like the first saga was carefully planned out but there are many accounts of how a lot of it was made up as they went. Other than a couple short appearances Thanos wasn't properly introduced or fleshed out until Endgame. That said, they're wasting an opportunity to tell great new stories with new characters and they've got plenty. Bringing back the old cast is desperate and screams please give us more of your money again. And it'll take a lot to retrospectively make this saga seem like one great story.
You're sort of right, although Thanos had a major cameo in Guardians to familiarize people with him before Infinity War fleshed him out, plus we heard Gamora and Nebula talk about him at length. But even beyond that, Thanos wasn't the goal, the Infinity Stones were the MacGuffin that kept the plot ship on course and here, there is no MacGuffin like that. We've seen rings, bangles, chairs, with fuck all tying any of it together. They needed something to ground the overall plot to make it easier for people to connect the dots. It used to be that post-credit scenes teased the next film. I don't know if there's even one post-credits scene this saga that was properly followed up on.
Yeah at this point we could have a team-up of characters they never followed up on from end credits like Starfox, Hercules and Clea
Followed up on post credits scene from phases 4-6. 1. Black Widow: Yelena is told Clint is to blame for Natasha’s death and she appears in Hawkeye as a follow up to that. 2. Quantumania: technically, the council of Kangs was dealt with (off screen) in Loki s2 along with the actual scenes from s2 at the end of the film. Appears to be set to be followed up on in Doomsday -The Marvels: it seems the X-men we see there are of the group in Doomsday, but I don’t know if that’s fully confirmed. -Brave New World: is a vague enough statement from Sterns that it could apply to Doomsday. -Thunderbolts*: appears to be followed up in Doomsday. -Fantastic Four: duh
If they’re somehow able to tie this into a majority of this saga’s entries in a somewhat satisfying way, I’ll be happy enough.