"As hard as it may be to believe, some of us have nev­er seen a movie belong­ing to the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse. If you're one of those unini­ti­at­ed, none of the count­less clips incor­po­rat­ed into the Like Sto­ries of Old video essay above will tempt you to get ini­ti­at­ed. Nor will the laments aired by host Tom van der Lin­den, who, despite once enjoy­ing the MCU him­self, even­tu­al­ly came to won­der why keep­ing up with its releas­es had begun to feel less like a thrill."
"Van der Lin­den labels a cen­tral fac­tor in the decline of the MCU "sto­ry­telling entropy." Clas­sic films, you may have noticed, con­cen­trate prac­ti­cal­ly all the ener­gy in every facet of their pro­duc­tion toward the expres­sion of spe­cif­ic themes, sto­ries, and char­ac­ters; at their best, their every line, ges­ture, cut, and inven­tion rep­re­sents the tip of an artis­tic ice­berg."
"Take, to use a pop­u­lar exam­ple, the lightsaber intro­duced in Star Wars, which Van der Lin­den calls "not just a weapon, but a metaphor" that "sym­bol­i­cal­ly com­mu­ni­cates a lot about the phi­los­o­phy of its wield­er, and about the larg­er world that it exists in," con­dens­ing "a mul­ti­tude of mean­ings and ideas into a sim­ple, sin­gu­lar object.""
Some people have never seen a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. Clips and public laments fail to persuade uninterested viewers to start. Long-term engagement with the MCU can shift from enjoyment to obligation as releases accumulate. Common criticisms include heavy CGI spectacle, constant quipping, pervasive self-awareness, and the imperative that everything become a franchise. A key problem is storytelling entropy, where expanding universes spread thematic and symbolic energy across too many entries. Classic filmmaking concentrates meaning into lines, gestures, and objects that carry layered significance. Ongoing universe growth dilutes that concentration and reduces artistic density.
Read at Open Culture
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