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In retrospect, I love the first three phases of the MCU as a whole. Not only does it tell an impressively coherent story about…the seven or eight major themes it approaches over time, but the movies leading to Avengers and Ultron also feel like distinct time capsules of comic book movie making.
I also was checked out for a all of Phase 2 at the time. Civil War brought me back because I knew that story and heard Spider-Man might appear. But doing the big download before Infinity War, it became pretty clear that something happened to the franchise thanks to Winter Soldier (and Guardians) - it found a voice and a primary plot, even if that primary plot would often linger as the B or C story outside Cap movies. And it made those past two Avengers movies not just feel like spectacles but real stories with actual stakes, I matter how full of tropes and quips.
It’s be very, very cool if this movie injected this current run of Marvel movies with a sense of what it means to lose something. These movies lost almost all of their stars, or otherwise are in the business of passing the torch from icons to unsure bets. Aside from the real world business, the characters that are left lost the ones that have them purpose and a higher calling than simple monster of the week stuff. I didn’t see Strange 2, but the most hollow aspect of Spidey 3 was that it nodded at what it means to experience loss and estrangement in the least subtle, most Saturday morning cartoon way possible.
Which I also get - this franchise is never gonna find room for Logan in its canon, let alone a character like Falcon dealing with the loss of Steve more than the responsibility of wearing the shield - but this trailer gives me a possibly misguided sense of hope that Fiege and team realize they’re flagging not just because the product is diluted by the TV shows but because the audience still cares about Tony, Steve, T’Challa, Bruce and whoever else. The characters we have left ought to be dealing with that too, not Scarlet Witch’s trauma from the end of Infinity War. That’s a potent story, but at the risk of speaking for a lot of people it’s really hard to care about a character who’s always been on the fringes of these movies - even with a clever TV show, she’s still just the gal what does the hand motions like Strange without similarly galactic implications.
I really, really want to see this movie absolutely wreck itself over T’Challa the person/king as much as Black Panther the costume, with where the last movie left him and his counsel fighting to become a global example for Black excellence rather than hesitant recluses. There’s so much potential for this movie to chart the path toward Jonathan Majors’ Kang swaggering through the major plot of the MCU as a sort of trolley problem for these current heroes - are they too burdened by the achievements of their predecessors and idols to become their own best selves? Is the franchise similarly too weighed down by that run from 2013-2019 to pull the same trick again?
It feels really grim to write all of that considering this is ultimately in many ways due to the actual tragic loss of Chadwick Boseman, but sadly part of what excites me so much about this movie’s trailer is that in the same way the Russo brothers figured out that the original Avengers arc was a World War allegory about who wields power and how, Coogler could totally unlock how this current phase is capable of really examining how hard it can be to exit a time of supreme faith in established heroes only to realize the threats aren’t gone and the need for new heroes isn’t abstract.
Edit: Just to say that after saying way too much, I totally get ultimately this will be a comic book movie with action set pieces, tie-ins to the greater MCU and have to appeal to late adolescent and teenage children as much as geeks like me. I say all of the above the implied caveat “for a Marvel movie, anyway.”
Then again, they’re making that She-Hulk show, so.
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