Are Past MCU Movies Being Appreciated More?

Are Past MCU Movies Being Appreciated More?

The MCU is the highest grossing movie franchise of all time. With 35 movies it grossed a total of $31 billion at the box office. For 11 years, it was the most consistent and popular franchise. But since 2021 the quality of the MCU has been very up and down, with some great projects and some bad projects. It raises the question with more disappointing MCU projects coming out, are past disappointing MCU movies being appreciated more? That’s what today’s blog post is about! Let’s get started!

The Problem With Recent MCU Movies

Why do I ask this question? Are past MCU movies being appreciated more? I think the answer is pretty simple. A common complaint of so many of the recent MCU movies is that they feel generic and don’t like a distinct voice. There’s been a lot more reshoots done on several of the recent MCU movies that takes away the director’s vision for the movie. 

The big example of this would be Nia DaCosta for The Marvels. She was doing press for that movie and said it turned into a Kevin Feige movie not a Nia DaCosta movie. All of the distinct elements that DaCosta could have brought to The Marvels to make it a better movie was lost completely. I enjoyed that movie more than most people. But it’s still a flawed film and it’s not as good as it could have been. There’s ideas and plot points in there that could have made for a very solid Captain Marvel sequel. Because of the reshoots and rewrites all of the potential great ideas were lost. 

Another example of this would be the latest MCU movie, Captain America: Brave New World. Once again, this is a movie that was reworked a lot by a committee of people and were trying to fix a very broken script. Instead of green lighting a great script and shooting it. They greenlit a mediocre script and tried to turn it into a great movie. But that’s easy to do and when you fix the movie too much in post and give it a bunch of reshoots the final product tends not to be great. It turns into a movie that no one is super happy with. I like the movie, I’ve seen it twice since it came out and enjoyed it both times. But it’s not as good as it could have been and the 48% Rotten Tomatoes score isn’t great. I don’t think Anthony Mackie or Kevin Feige look at that movie’s reputation and are happy with it. With Brave New World, it’s frustrating because I felt like it was trying to be something it wasn’t. Based on the trailers they were going for a Captain America: The Winter Soldier vibe. It was marketed as being this tense spy thriller with a complex plot. You watch the movie and it’s not complex, it’s not as thrilling as it should be. It feels like a poor man’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier when it shouldn’t be. 

In the case of The Marvels and Brave New World they both feel like movies that should have been better. There’s ideas and moments in both of them that work and are a lot of fun. But the overplot and the execution of ideas is messy and you can tell that scenes were cut and moved around. Not all reshoots are bad, every MCU has had reshoots. Even the top films like Infinity War and Endgame had reshoots. But in that case, those were probably just some extra shots they needed while in the editing room to make things flow better. The reshoots done for Brave New World were extensive reshoots that changed a lot of the movie. That’s when you have bad reshoots that take away what made the original version interesting. Why do I explain all of this? Well, it ties into my next ideas as to why past MCU movies are being appreciated more?

Past MCU Movies 

When it comes to the revaluation of past MCU movies, I think there’s two things to keep in mind that I’ll discuss in this section. First one, with many recent MCU disappointments and duds, we look back at the past disappointments more fondly. Second, some past MCU movies have a distinct style in a way that current MCU movies don’t. 

First up, there are a number of disappointments from The Infinity Saga that people looked down upon for years. The prime example of this, Avengers: Age of Ultron. It has a 76% on Rotten Tomatoes, there’s a lot of fans of this movie. But when it came out it was and still is viewed as weaker compared to The Avengers. Now with four Avengers movies, widely regarded as the weakest of the bunch. I would agree with both of those points, it’s a weaker sequel compared to The Avengers and the weakest of the Avengers movies. But that doesn’t mean that it’s bad. I think it’s a good movie. I enjoy it every time I watch it and there’s a lot in there that I do enjoy. I think with time people have grown to appreciate the movie. For most people, so many recent MCU movies are bottom tier MCU. When you add more movies at the bottom tier Age of Ultron moves away from the bottom tier. If you think Age of Ultron was disappointing before you look at the recent MCU movies and go “Age of Ultron has more going for it then Thor: Love and Thunder and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”. If that example applies to you, you look back at Age of Ultron more fondly because it's a better crafted movie then Love and Thunder and Quantumania. Being a film reviewer, it’s important for me to watch a lot of movies. The reason for that is that it helps with my scoring. If I score a movie a “D+” because I think it’s bad. I’ll watch  another movie that I’ll also score a “D+” but then I’ll look at the original “D+” movie and think “this second movie is worse, the first one isn’t as bad as I thought”. Therefore I might give the first “D+” a “C” or “C-”. I think that can happen with the MCU movies. I’ve seen a lot of people come around on Age of Ultron because it looked worse when the MCU’s quality was much higher. With the quality being much lower now, it raises the quality of Age of Ultron when you compare it to recent MCU duds. 

Second, some past MCU movies had a distinct and unique style to them. One of the examples I’ve heard most frequently is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. I think there’s a lot of good in that movie, but I’ve never loved it as much as I want to. That movie is very James Gunn. Gunn’s style and vibe is all over that movie and the entire trilogy as Gunn’s stamp and style on the entire thing. They feel totally different from other MCU movies and that’s a good thing. Despite it EASILY being the weakest of the trilogy there’s a number of jokes in that movie that I remember because they’re so Gunn. I think that’s why Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is one of the MCU’s best in recent years, it’s very Gunn. It does feel micromanaged by a committee of people. It feels like they let Gunn do his thing and whether you like Gunn’s style or not, it’s very Gunn and I love that about the movie. You compare Gunn’s style and flavor and they pop more than the recent MCU movies that have no style. The Marvels and Captain America: Brave New World don’t have a distinct style because they were micromanaged and reshot a lot. I think that's also why past MCU movies like Avengers: Age of Ultron and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 are being appreciated more.