couple days ago i tagged along with my brothers and sister who were watching Spider-Man 3 (2007) and watched like, the whole thing except for the first 30 minutes of it.
Who told me that this movie was bad??? It was fantastic. Masterpiece
I mean it wasn't a good movie but it was amazing
What am I saying
In some ways that are very noticeable it was not a "Good Movie", but according to an idea of a "good movie" which is based around how embarrassed you are to be watching it
The action scenes were very creative and engaging, and interacted with the surroundings in interesting ways. All the character arcs were really well done. It had real emotional depth and drama. It was tightly plotted as well.
There was A Something that is definitely missing from MCU and I'm struggling to put my finger on what it is.
I had the same experience when I watched that spiderman trilogy a few years ago. The conclusion I came to is that what the MCU is missing is Saving People as a general motivation.
like, this is most obvious in Homecoming, where Peter wants to upgrade from the baby heroing of stopping street level crime to fighting space gods, and the progression of his arc is him gaining the experience to get that “promotion”. The implication is kinda that stopping a bus from crashing is kinda lame, cuz you only save like, what, twenty people?? And if you fight a space god, you save millions of people. There’s no point in helping someone carry their groceries or saving people in a burning building, because the numbers are too small to mean anything. What’s the point of saving anyone if you can’t save everyone? If you’re not incredibly powerful, you can’t make a real difference.
And I think this is the MCU’s disconnect from the superhero genre. We’re not watching people who have a passion for helping others and using their abilities to alleviate suffering—we’re watching people win glory in their personal epics. The soap opera of gods and giants. That’s not a bad type of story, but it lacks one of the core emotions of superhero stories—the fantasy of being able to make a tangible difference. This extends into the MCU’s unwillingness to disrupt the status quo, as described in this excellent video by PopCultureDetective. (One example of his that really stood out to me is how in Age of Ultron, Stark and Banner’s attempt to use their superhuman genius to create something that will benefit all humanity is framed as foolish, dangerous hubris.)
This incongruence is most obvious when comparing Spiderman movies, because the core of Spider-Man’s character is “great power, great responsibility”. The thing that makes Peter Parker stand out is how no matter how broke, lonely, or even powerless he is, he still tries to use what he has to help the people he can.
I think it’s also noticeable how the MCU superheroes don’t really have Helping People as their Job. Like, whatever they’re doing in between movies, when we’re not watching, when there isn’t a massive problem to solve, they don’t have Rescue as their day to day Job the same way most superheroes do. Plenty of them have Beating Up Bad Guys as their Job, but that makes them more……soldier than superhero. More military than first responder.
Anyway, that’s a huge ramble, I’ve just been thinking about this for like years trying to figure out why the MCU made me so uncomfortable.
