Another Hot Take: Multiverses Are Lazy and Hackish

Eh. I think it was actually a very cool idea, especially as a big Science Nerd myself, until it got overdone. I don't think the whole baby should be thrown out with the bathwater though.

Aside from The Flash, which was admittedly very lazy, I don't think it's overdone.

The whole MCU is currently in the middle of the Multiverse Saga, which will only conclude after Avengers 6 (aka Secret Wars).

After that they won't use it as much, but right now it's necessary b/c they need to bring the Fox characters into the fold (the Fantastic Four and X-Men)

Yes but the MCU has become a painful travesty. Their last several movies are awful and, watching a lot of behind the scenes stuff lately, it's in no small part do to the slavish pursuit of the multi-verse concept.

To say it has become a painful travesty suggests that there was a point in time where it was not.

To say it has become a painful travesty suggests that there was a point in time where it was not.

I am suggesting just that. I thought what Marvel did in No Way Home, for example was really lovely, brought a tear to my eye and I've seen a lot of audiences feeling the same way. And Everything...All At Once was a fine film.
As for the MCU in general, yeah, I think they did something cinematically historic there and actually made a number of entertaining movies in the process. And then they didn't.

From my own personal perspective, the MCU has been getting exponentially better in the last few years, and I am enjoying every single minute of it. There was a time when you were lucky to get just one comic book movie a decade.

Even from a purely technical filmmaking perspective, what the MCU has done is absolutely mind-blowing, it is already the longest-running film series ever made in Hollywood history, and it continues to go along at a marvelous pace (pun fully intended). What I wouldn't have given to enjoy that when I was younger - but better late than never.

The first paragraph above leaves my mind completely blown. I was a die-hard Marvel fan and I would now say that outside of Spider-Man: Far From/No Way Home all of the movies since Endgame have made up the bottom tier of Marvel (making even Thor: The Dark World seem like Casablanca by comparison). Really creating a new tier below the lowest Marvel could do. I mean, Eternals was probably one of the worst big-budget films I've ever seen. Multiverse Of Madness was just awful. Yet somehow not nearly as bad as Love And Thunder. Shang-Chi was terrible. Black Widow was terrible. Even the dismal Iron Man 3 seems like a bygone day of great filmmaking compared to the absolute dreck they are churning out now. It's just a disaster right now in my mind except one that's sunk so low I no longer even think about them unless a discussion like this comes up.
But your mileage may vary.

The second paragraph I actually agree with all the way up through Endgame and that's why the current quagmire is such a travesty. How could they have fallen so low?

You, being the writer of a story, have total control over what happens in the story, when it happens, and how it happens. And yet, in an ungodly amount of media I see today (not just movies) these writers manage to write themselves into corners, and create plotholes all on their own. It's like God creating the rock too heavy for him to lift. Why'd you do that? So what do they do? Throw in some contrived time-travel/alternate dimension mumbo jumbo to try and undo it or cover it up. "Hey, isn't that character dead?" "Uh...no...he uh...it happened in a different timeline! Yeah, that's it!" Come on, now. How dumb do you think your audience is? You wrote yourself into a corner, and are now desperately trying to write your way out of it. I just think it's embarrassing. Just don't write yourself into a corner in the first place. Pay attention to detail and continuity, etc. I'm certain there are some exceptions to the rule. But in general I think multiverses and time travel are often just lazy plot devices used by hackish artists trying to escape a situation of their own making.

Edit: Also worth noting situations where there's no need at all for the multiverse to exist. "Yeah, this movie is also in the same multiverse as that other one, they just didn't crossover." So why mention it at all? You could just say it's a different movie, and that it doesn't have to fit into any others. It's like me saying that James Bond and Twin Peaks take place in the same universe, and it just so happens that the two never cross paths.

Edit 2: It also diminishes the effect of certain happenings withing a movie. I, somehow, was made to watch some Marvel movie involving Spiderman. God knows I wouldn't be found dead watching a Marvel movie voluntarily so a girlfriend must have dragged me to it, or a friend's little sibling wanted to see it. In any case, by that point I knew what to expect from the people making this schlock. I think at some point someone died, and I just remember shrugging and thinking, "don't worry, he'll be fine." There are no longer consequences because people can just keep going back and rewriting events.

I think the absolute best MCU stuff is pretty much everything that came after Endgame. It is when we actually begin fully exploring the whole universe that makes up the Marvel story (as initially laid out in the comics)

I think the absolute best MCU stuff is pretty much everything that came after Endgame. It is when we actually begin fully exploring the whole universe that makes up the Marvel story (as initially laid out in the comics)



Well, like you said, YMMV. Up until Endgame I wasn't particularly excited by the franchise; entertained, yes, but not particularly excited.

The best directors imho are the ones they've hired after the end of Phase 3. Almost all of them came from the world of indie film, and it is very exciting to see them apply their unique visions to the world of big-budget filmmaking.

Chloé Zhao, in particular, is probably the very best filmmaker they've ever hired. It will be a pity if she doesn't come back to direct another one.

I was extremely excited for Zhao to direct Eternals, especially since I was very familiar with the property, but she actually made the single worst Marvel film. Almost certainly due to Feige and company's interference but hey, it is what it is.
All of the indie filmmakers who've worked for Marvel have fallen on their faces under the weight of the machine. Captain Marvel might have been the best and it was fraught with issues.

There is no metric by which this is true aside from some sort of bizarre subjective opinion meant to fan the dying embers of discussion pertaining to the MCU.

Have you heard Zhao's audio commentary on Eternals? The collaboration with the Marvel team was actually smoother than she had expected. She described it as an experience of mutual learning for both sides.

I'm going to join this conversation soon... and then there will be... a reckoning.

As far as universes go... "There shall be only ONE!"

I read about how they let her do so much

She is probably one of the most prestigious directors in the world, an Oscar winner, so of course they went out of their way to let her make the movie the way she wanted.

But that movie really isn't a great example of multiversal narratives. There are better examples, I think.