Disney Plus has been an absolute treat for me lately. As a fan of both Star Wars and the MCU, there is no shortage of new content for me to enjoy. From "The Mandalorian" to "Loki" and "What If" coming out in the next few weeks and months
Some of my colleagues at Tom's Guide have grown weary of Marvel content. The term "Marvel fatigue" is often used. However, I love Marvel and would like Disney Plus to always offer everything Marvel has to offer.
I can understand where people are coming from in regards to Marvel fatigue; back in 2019, there were three Marvel movies, and now it seems Disney is trying to break that record with the rapid expansion of the MCU. With "Wander Vision" and "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" now in theaters, "Loki" will begin next week, and "What If" will be released in August. In addition, Ms Marvel and Hawkeye will also start by the end of the year.
The pandemic also means that four films can be consumed in their entirety, starting with "Black Widow," which opens in theaters and Disney Plus Premiere Access on July 9 (followed by "Shang-Chi," "The Eternals" and "Spider-Man: No Way Home") The MCU is also a very important part of the film industry. Also recommended is "MODOK," which does not appear in the MCU but airs on Disney Plus outside the US.
There is a lot of Marvel to consume, especially over the course of several weeks. And since it is "all connected," you need to watch it all in case you need a passing familiarity with future MCU projects to understand them.
Obviously, it wasn't meant to be. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was scheduled to debut last summer, but production had to be halted due to the pandemic. Wand Vision was also supposed to appear in December instead of mid-January, but the reason for this has not been officially revealed.
Both "Loki" and "What If" arrived as originally scheduled, and this combination of factors has kept the MCU content flowing nonstop. Even though Wander Vision started Marvel's year off on a high note, it's understandable that people are starting to get sick of it all. Especially since "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" had its own flaws.
I have recently noticed that many of the TV shows I used to watch religiously have either ended or simply stopped being interesting. Even the DC TV shows I've been watching for several years haven't done enough to hold my attention this season.
Indeed, it doesn't help that so many shows are released on very odd schedules with little or no publicity, making it quite difficult to keep track of which shows are airing when.
Disney Plus is making it easier. Not only does the company go out of its way to promote upcoming shows, but it also knows when they will air. Every Friday, like clockwork, a new treat arrives. Of course, Loki is different (he bows on Wednesdays).
The fact that Marvel's show is brand new and has an array of interesting concepts makes it more likely that I will keep track of things.
That said, I will admit that the weekly release schedule does make it quite difficult to avoid spoilers, as does the big screen release. Disney Plus updates at 8:00 a.m. UK time, 3:00 a.m. EST.
It's inconvenient, and working online, there is always the threat of someone spoiling the big reveal at the end of an episode. Like Luke Skywalker revealing that he appeared at the end of the second season of The Mandalorian. So, thank you, Sim Liu.
I (like many others, I'm sure) am a huge Marvel fan and have been watching everything Marvel Studios has put out for over a decade at this point. There have been movies, TV shows, and even a few tie-in comics in the past (at least when they were telling original stories, not just adapting existing movies).
Disney Plus is telling a story unlike anything we have ever seen in the MCU. In the past, Marvel's TV shows have typically featured supporting characters who have little connection to the films and have never appeared in Marvel's many feature-length adventures. This is not the case with Disney Plus, which gives the MCU the opportunity to explore characters and ideas that would not work well on the big screen.
"The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" may have been a very ordinary Marvel action adventure, but could we see something like "Wander Vision" on the big screen? The setting of that series, telling a story about love, family, and grief in a way that mimics old TV shows like Situation Comedy, would be almost impossible to portray on film.
The same is true of "Loki," which is set up as a god of mischief doing evil in multiple eras and areas of Marvel's multiverse. And "What If," like the original comic book series, can only be a short story anthology.
But that is only the beginning. While details about the upcoming series are still unknown, the TV format allows Marvel to play with the genre in a whole new way; most of the MCU films can also be defined as a specific cinematic genre. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was inspired by a Cold War spy thriller; Ant-Man is a heist movie.
All are clearly Marvel films, but that would be an overly simplistic approach; the same seems to be true of many of the MCU's television shows. It has been said that "Wander Vision" is half situation comedy and "She-Hulk" is legal comedy. It immediately brings to mind something like "Night Court," but with a protagonist and her super-green cousin Hulk.
Adapting the MCU for television means that we get to spend a lot of time with characters relegated to supporting roles in Marvel movies.
It may surprise you to hear that Wanda Maximoff and Vision only appeared in the Marvel films for a total of 31 and 23 minutes, respectively. But then Wanda Vision came on the scene, and for five hours and fifty minutes, she made them the star of the show. For reference, Robert Downey Jr. only appeared in a total of 5 hours and 20 minutes in 11 years of movies. Wander Vision surpassed that number in just eight weeks.
And then there are the new characters debuting on Disney Plus in the coming years. These are characters who will be given special screen time to explain who they are and what they do. Imagine if Hawkeye had been able to appear in a TV series around the time "The Avengers" was released. Maybe people would have taken Hawkeye a little more seriously and he wouldn't have been laughed at as the guy with the bow and arrow fighting aliens and robots.
This, of course, ignores all the new concepts that might have to be introduced in a given series; Ms. Marvel would probably have to reintroduce the Inhumans to people other than comic book fans and, God forbid, a few years ago, a " Inhumans" will have to be introduced in a way that dispels the bad taste left by the Inhumans TV show. Similarly, "Secret Invasion" may have to confront audiences with the fact that the characters and events in MCU history were not the first ones to appear. The extra time to delve into such matters can only be a benefit.
Maybe I'm a heretic here, and my love for all things Marvel is not so common among others who watch Disney Plus. But I do enjoy Marvel stuff, and it's an exciting prospect to see the MCU expand in such a huge way. Some of the new shows may not be masterpieces, but they will allow us to see and experience things we could never see on the big screen.
Obviously, others feel differently, and that's okay; the MCU is huge and it can be hard to keep track of it all. It was easy for me to watch every new episode as it arrived, and since my friends and I are huge comic book nerds, we just happened to be paying attention.
So I am willing to continue to absorb everything the MCU has to offer. And as long as Disney keeps doing it, I will gladly continue to pay my Disney Plus subscription.
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