Why WandaVision was the best disney plus show Ms Marvel has just started up and… it’s
decent.
I like Kamala and Iman Vellani is doing a great job in the role, plus it has a bit more
artistic flair than the usual Marvel offerings.
It looks set to capitalize on the high school angle of the homecoming films and I think
it could be a lot of fun - plus anything that manages to make the Captain Marvel film suck
less ass is a noble aspiration in my book.
Not even Iman Vellani liked that movie.
But I have to say, I’m not very enthused by the fact that it’s a six parter - because
at this point every single six part disney plus show has struggled to perfect that structure.
Even Loki didn’t quite stick the landing with the finale, and its third episode really
wasn’t of much consequence compared to the other stellar episodes.
That is the best case scenario we’re dealing with here.
From Loki, every other six parter just gets worse in terms of its structure and pacing.
This isn’t exclusive to Marvel; the Star Wars shows have suffered too.
I think the conception around all of these shows is that they’re better than getting
“just a movie” because we get more time with the characters.
2 hours of Kenobi is cool but 6 hours means we get even more screen time with the jedi
master after almost twenty years!
That’s great right?
Well so far the Kenobi show has shown some brilliance, particularly in its character
study of Old Ben - I like that he’s been a mopey sad boi and we’ve really felt the
weight of his past actions and the toll that has taken on his psyche.
But we’ve also had to endure a lot of padding to get to and from the moments we’re really
here for.
Wandavision
was designed and
structured to be a TV show.
The concept of jumping through the decades to give us a different era of television each
week, starting with the “I Love Lucy” double bill rolling straight through to “Malcolm
in the Middle”, was more than just a gimmick - it gave the episodes purpose.
It allowed the show to peel away more of the “Why” behind Wanda’s construct of reality.
It also meant that the more standard mcu fare was more restricted, so that when we got some
more action towards the end it was a nice gear change.
All of the other Disney plus shows could be movies.
There’s nothing inherently complex about any of the stories they’re trying to tell
that couldn’t hit the same emotional crescendos in two hours.
Moon Knight could have been a movie.
Loki could have been a movie.
And I’m thinking Miss Marvel could end up the same.
Hell, the Falcon and the Winter Soldier is basically Captain America 4.
If that show was a two and a half hour movie you’d immediately jettison the unnecessary
madripoor detour and the focus would remain firmly on its strongest threat - John Walker.
Wandavision is really the only Disney plus show that couldn’t be a movie, and that’s
why it works the best.
You need that week to week format if you’re going to jump through different eras of tv.
You need to draw things out if you’re going to structure the mystery around this TV format.
And it feels right at home in your living room when you find out that Wanda's connection
to television is unexpectedly personal.
Sure, you could
do this television hoping as a two hour movie, but you want 30 minutes to get a full I Love
Lucy episode.
The first two episodes work only because they commit to the bit.
Its strange, I feel like the marvel films that have graced the big screen almost feel
like the ones that should be tv.
Eternals takes place over thousands of years with a whole new cast of characters and could
have totally benefitted from a well structured episodic format to really give some much needed
texture to all these people and the time periods in which significant life events happened.
Spider-Man belongs on film and I know Sony is committed to theatrical, thankfully, but
reintroducing 5 old villains and 2 past spider-men all whilst honoring the relationships from
the previous two Holland features leaves the whole thing clamoring for space.
James Cameron recently talked about the idea of flirting with a 2 hour theatrical cut of
something alongside a 6 hour home release cut.
I think that’s an incredible idea particularly in the age of streaming - imagine if we had
gotten No Way Home in the theatres as is, and then a longer episodic cut on streaming
six months later.
That would be different to just stretching out a two hour idea over six episodes as is
often the case on disney plus - there’s so many characters and spinning plates that
i think you could easily delve much further into all the villains and heroes of this piece
for juicier results.
I loved seeing all three of the spider-men together, but i can’t help but look to something
like day of the doctor which devotes a lot more screen time to the trope of having a
character meet themselves twice over, rather than something that just happens towards the
third act.
All of the disney plus show have struggled to fill their run times.
Consistently the third episodes of the six episode runs tread water, often feeling like
we’re going on a side quest that doesn’t especially matter.
This is where a lot of them start to feel more like stretched out movies.
For example, Kenobi’s third episode might end up in a cool place, but did we really
need to see Ben and Leia trek across this bland planet to get to that moment?
I think in a movie that was paced to be around 2 and a half hours the second and third episodes
would probably be about 20 minutes a piece and would flow a lot better, without sacrificing
the key details that we’re actually here for.
Just because something is longer doesnt mean it’s automatically going to be better.
And as for that fourth episode, I doubt we’d have time to screw around with Leia getting
captured and freed again in a two hour story.
That filler would have been excised entirely and it would have been all the better for
it.
I had a lot of good will towards Moon Knight in its first two episodes despite being burnt
out on a lot of this shared universe stuff, but even that faced the same problem when
it came to a middling third and fourth episode.
Episode three was downright abysmal, and even some strong horror direction by Benson and
Moorhead couldn’t save it losing steam in Episode 4.
I have been told that episode 5 is really good and look - I’m sure it is - characters
have always been the mcu’s strong suit - but it just can’t bring myself to watch it.
It got really boring.
I’ll get back to it at some point but we’re just bombarded with so many six hour movies
it’s almost impossible to keep up and have a life.
I really tapped out when the show started trying to convince steven and the audience
that the physiatric hospital could be the real world - its like yeah - no, theres no
way it is, why are we even bothering to go down this road?
Part of what intrigued me from the trailer was this idea that steven wouldn’t be able
to differentiate between truth and fiction - reality
and dreams - but very early on in the series it is abundantly clear what is real and so
this turn of events as late as episode 4 feels very unearned and redundant.
This year dc and warner bros dropped Peacemaker on hbo max and that looked and felt way cheaper
than any of the marvel and star wars shows we’ve had, but guess what - it was leagues
ahead of any of them, because it was built from the ground up to behave like tv rather
than a stretched out movie.
Each week we found out more about its wonderful cast of anti-heroes and the butterfly threat
they sought to uncover - the end always left me wanting more.
Peacemaker is one of the only superheroes outside of Wanda and Vision that made the
jump to television and worked.
I’m not particularly excited for the future of Star Wars.
I was worried when they announced that they were going to release annualized movies, because
the whole point of star wars is that it should feel like a massive event - but now I’m
wishing we could back to that over it existing purely on tv.
In just three years alone we’ve been inundated with hours and hours of Star Wars content
and it is just starting to feel really cheap, in spite of the huge budgets and movie stars
taking part in it.
The Mandalorian has been good and worked being a TV show to its benefit, but unlike Wandavision
sometimes it drops in an episode that feels like total filler to hold off getting to what
we want to see.
I don’t mind having a problem of the week, but when you tease season long arcs and drop
them for episodes at a time it becomes very bitty.
For all the faults of Doctor Who, it has always handled season arcs amongst an episodic monster
of the week format really nicely.
When the Mr Saxon or Crack or Torchwood arcs were drip fed to us in those earlier seasons,
it felt like much more of a cohesive effort than Boba Fett showing up in the Mandalorian’s
first episode of season 2, or Mando’s quest to find a Jedi.
These arcs don’t feel like they build to something - they feel like they become relevant
as and when the show feels like it.
Maybe Andor will squash that six hour movie problem, being 12 episodes more akin to a
season of good doctor who - but at the same time, was anyone desperate for 12 more hours
with a supporting character to a one off protagonist’s story?
Was this really the thing that disney was burning to make from a creative perspective?
Can we not do more with new characters and new eras?
The Mandalorian and The Acolyte are trying to do this in some form, and to be honest
these could have been the only shows we needed.
Who really gives a fuck about skeleton crew starring Jude Law, the blandest man in Hollywood.
Make more projects like The Nest Jude, then we can talk.
So
in spite of liking The Mandalorian and Loki, and having some high hopes for Ms Marvel,
currently for me the only show that has truly managed to escape the Disney Plus curse is
Wandavision.
I think Disney would be smarter to release less Disney plus shows and take more time
thinking about why certain characters would work best on film or tv.
The MCU was better when it released two films a year; if those great years were bolstered
by I don’t know - one to two disney plus mini series’ maximum, then I think that
would be a decent amount of content.
I can’t keep dealing with a new Marvel thing coming out every three months - it’s starting
to get a little ridiculous.
Anyway, if you want some awesome recent superhero TV, check out Peacemaker or
The Boys…