Greetings from a house on a lake. I’m in the Lake District this weeks at a workshop with a bunch of design researchers.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Media Franchises
About seven months ago I had a bunch of time where for various reasons, I didn’t have much to do but sit around and I decided that I would have a crack at the Marvel universe having completely lost track of it sometime in the early Avengers. And I mean the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe, not just the films, all the series, shorts and crossovers. Watching all of the Marvel properties in in-universe chronological order, starting with the horrifically awful Agent Carter, perhaps eventually reaching Thor: Love and Thunder. This is uncertain because I think their adding new properties faster than I’m able to watch them.
I’m now seven months into this and I mostly watch it while training because it requires little concentration or meaningful investment and I’m now up to number 70 on the list; Agents of SHIELD, Series 5, Episodes 20-22. I don’t know how many hours of Marvel that is, probably in the hundreds but, despite all this commitment, I still don’t find myself caring much for the universe or the people in it.
The cinematics of it are quite often wonderful. The good Marvels (which we probably agree on) are really good; some of them are also really impactful like Black Panther or even Loki – rightly striking up popular discourse about their subjects or just the quality of the storytelling. But I just don’t care about the universe: It’s quite hard to connect with any of the characters as people, the sense of peril is fleeting or temporary as almost all of the stories are redemption stories and we know they’ll be redeemed. There’s no shocking twists or turns or grittiness like you might find in Game of Thrones, The Expanse or similar where hours of scrolling through wikis uncovers new relationships and motivations. Marvel always follows the same path: New character gains powers, makes mistakes, is redeemed, becomes rostered to the universe then appears in crossovers. It’s very hard to invest in any of their futures when they’re already predestined.
The exception would be the Netflix ones; Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Daredevil and Iron First (in descending order of good-ness). Before Disney sequestered the whole lot, Netflix had a go at dark, gritty and ‘real’ superheroes in an almost perpetually night-time New York, with all their flaws, warts and irredeemable transgressions torturing them. I hear they’re going to reboot some of them and it’ll be an incredible shame if they tune the tone to the rest of the chipper Marvel universe. Although seeing Charlie Cox reprise his Daredevil in the very meta latest Spiderman gives me hope.
All this is to say that Marvel isn’t world-building so much as character-mashing. The world itself rarely changes, grows or has a relationship with the characters other than the occasional ethical conundrums over rampant destruction brought on by their hero quests. And as an audience, you don’t relate to the world or imagine yourself in it as good world-building invites us to do. The ‘universe’ of the MCU is really just a fighting arena, neatly fenced off with destructible cities.
Two last things: Jessica Jones and Luke Cage are standout pieces of television, regardless of their amendment to the Marvel narrative factory because Netflix did them and they knew how streaming TV worked. Both well worth watching. Meanwhile, the early Disney TV series are unimaginative and incoherent with Inhumans easily the lowest of the low for Marvel. Agents of SHIELD, which is probably the most volumous marvel property in sheer hours, hits its stride around season 3 as a sort of pretty kitschy Stargate SG1-style thing; incredibly bearable but with some schonky VFX and unimaginative scripts. Runaways was a schlocky and meek attempt at cracking the young adult market but a special place in hell is reserved for whoever green-lit Inhumans which I had to watch all of sometime in April which is indescribably awful. And not in a ‘so bad it’s good’ sort of way. I leave you with a review:
Inhumans is a work with almost nothing of value for anyone. It’s not even an interesting train wreck. It’s just a boring, lifeless slog easily shooting to the top of the list of the worst things the MCU has produced in its near-decade of existence. Ratings would suggest everyone has already done this, but: Stay away. Life is too short and your time is too valuable. Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Live your life and be happy.
https://www.destructoid.com/reviews/review-inhumans-season-1/
I will of course continue. You know when I decide to do something I make sure it’s done even if it melts my brain in the process. I also think some of the better things lie ahead because they start to find their feet with streaming TV. If, for some reason, you ever wanted to challenge yourself to this narrative of endurance, this is the list I’m using which is constantly being updated.
DS076
I liked this one because I had practical limitations. I’m away so have only my laptop (Macs are crap at 3D work) and not much time so have to use Eevee. Then for some reason I decided to put a fluid simulation in it. This is actually an image from a book that always stuck with me. Iain Banks’ (of M. fame) Walking on Glass, which got some average reviews but I think is one of his best and isn’t really an accurate reflection of how the space is described but fluid sims take ages to run and I only had so much time to get a ‘least-worst’ option.
Short Stuff
- A few weeks back was the ‘New frontiers in funding, philanthropy and investment‘ event which involves some luminary folks. It’s not a game I have any particular skin in but the list of links at the bottom is incredible. Just oodles and oodles of good stuff. I hope to work through it all by the end of the year maybe. Crikey.
- Scott Smith of Changeist and John Wilshire of Smithery do a double header on their futures practices here at a Stories4Policy event. John does a particularly good job of breaking down and reconstructing the futures’ cone. He is always messing with diagrams.
- I haven’t been following the social network discourses for some time, other than what Mrs Revell send me in the middle of the night I’m happily and blithely unaware of what being someone on TikTok is actually like; largely because I like the mind-body harmony of actually being able to direct my own attention where you want.
- Powers of Ten recreated with Dall-E prompts. Ok that one is good and fun.
- Discovery of the first triple star system.
- Thanks Justin for this one on bicycle repair games against real bicycle repair.
- Suadi Arabia, cracking on with Neom, design a 170km-long mirrored skyscraper.
Ok, love you, another successful Wednesday blog. Almost back to normal service, folks.