@JessieGender1

The core issue is that we live in a polarized country, and Disney wants to make movies that offend no one so they can market them for everyone. But in trying to please all sides, they end up making movies that say nothing. Anything remotely political gets attacked—acknowledging that Sam Wilson is treated differently as a Black Captain America (which is true) would be labeled “woke DEI propaganda” by the right. So instead, we get a film that nods at these issues—like Isaiah Bradley being a victim of past American systemic abuse—but frames it as something we’ve already overcome. The movie also says that our current problems aren't systemic, just due to a few bad apple presidents, and the movie avoids naming a political party so each side can blame the other. The right assumes it’s Biden, the left assumes it’s Trump, and in the end, the film takes no stance at all nor even does anything to point out the reason that Sam Wilson even vaguely has to mention his discomfort with being a Black man with the name Captain America. Hell, at one point in the movie he literal helps the cops violently arrest a Black man and all he does is say "go easy on him" and doesn't seem too upset later on when that Black man who was cleared of any wrongdoing is sent to solitary confinement regardless. Instead, we celebrate when Bradley gets released and act as if its all good - water under the bridge there. A movie made for everyone ends up meaning nothing to anyone.

Say what you will about the bigoted garbage from Daily Wire—they at least say something. They’re racist, transphobic, and homophobic, but they have a clear ideology. Disney and Marvel, on the other hand, are just cowardly, backing away from every opportunity to do what art is supposed to do: take a stand.

Also, uperhero movies that are just “superheroes doing superhero shit” without saying anything are easy for fascists to co-opt. They love strong men taking action for action’s sake, with no deeper meaning—because meaning is the real threat. They can't really coopt this one though because the mere presence of a Black man in the hero role goes against their white supremacist world view, so Sam WIlson - even though the movie upholds the very systemic white supremacist system they are trying to weaponize - is labeled as a slur like "DEI hire" because they can't see themselves in a Black man doing meaningless action. They instead want a white hero like Steve Rogers so they can see themselves being the strongman and ignore that most Steve Rogers stories are very anti-US government and anti-white supremacy/fascism and instead just focus on the empty visual of a white superhero doing superhero shit.

It's also weird we get Sabra - an overtly Israeli character who, in the comics, is a Mossad agent - but in this movie, is barely relevant to anything. Clearly, they cut some stuff during reshoots with her to avoid seeming pro-Israel considering Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza - but the very fact they choose to include her at all (probably before 2023) speaks to the desire to promote Israel who was still doing ethnic cleansing and genocidal actions against Palestinians before 2023 but people weren't paying attention. So now we're left with a character who is barely there and reshot out of the film because a topic that Disney thought would be seen as apolitical in most of the world but still would uphold the global status quo of Israeli propaganda has now become a politically central issue in the US.

@Ninja_McMuffin

The craziest part of a Cap 4 is there's a villain as president and it felt less chaotic than real life...

@jasonpeacock9735

Themes make sense. The Guardians of the Galaxy movies are some of the most absurd movies Marvel has put out. But Gunn’s themes for those movies are so solid we accept the absurdity.

@r.j.sullivan2104

I think another big problem with just OK movies is that we have streaming to see just OK movies and the price of going to the theater has risen to the point that if we’re not completely blown away by what we’ve just seen it’s a huge disappointment. Taking a family of four can cost nearly $100 if you dare splurge for some soda and candy, and for that, I’d better be blown away.

@EqqusHearts

Strangely enough I was just thinking about how powerful the scene where Captain America is introduced in the first Avengers movie. We don’t see Steve as Captain America until after Loki is confronted by the old man when he demands that everyone in the crowd kneels. The first time we see Captain America is when he SHIELDS an old man who is about to DIE for speaking truth to power to a wannabe tyrant. 

The things that made superhero movies great was never just the superheros. These characters were always political and made to tell political stories.

@darby2314

I am reminded of how weirdly muddled Batman VS Superman got. The story, at it's core, is answering the question "Can a man kill a god". Which is a timeless human story theme. With countless stories predating the written word.

The "Martha" scene, is supposed to be a moment where batman realizes that Superman is not a God. Superman has a mother, whome he loves and presumably loves him. He is not worried about his own life, but rather that his mother is safe. And Batman, realizing that, decides maybe Superman can be a force for good. Because if he was once a baby who loves his mother, he can see the value in human life.

But instead, we got a film focused on spectacle. That muddied its themes with pointless cameos and 'cool moments'. That was built to try and set up a franchise.

Art is not a business. When it tries to be, it is forced to devalue itself.

@aidanlegomaniac

Youre telling me that the movie featuring Thunderbolt Ross becoming Red Hulk and The Leader as a shadowy hidden antagonist is a fucking Captain America movie? Hulk really can't get his own solo film to save his life, huh?

@afterhourscinema782

I remember as a kid fastforwarding all the "boring" parts of superhero movies but now those scenes are some of my favorites. Peter confessing to Aunt May, Alfred leaves Bruce, Tony talking to Yinsen in the cave, just some of the absolute gems that make the movie more than just about superheroes.

@eme.261

Here's my take on superhero movies fatigue: yes, there is fatigue, but it's not the audience's, it's the creators'.  It seems that the ones creating the movies and series have thoroughly lost their mojo.

@lebeaumuni6247

It might just be me, but i feel like the movie originally was  going to be a little more than just a superhero movie, then people/studio worried it would be a political controversy so it became a "YO Red hulk cool!"

@dalberttran8134

"Superhero Fatigue" is a load of bullshit, if that were the case why movies like Guardian of the Galaxy 3, Deadpol and Wolverine, The Penguin (TVshow), The Batman, or Spidermanverse movies are not only successes in the box office but also liked or loved by fans. People are not tired of Superheros, they are tired of mediocre movies.

@3182john

I think this is why my favorite character from spider man homecoming is the vulture. 

Why? Basically, he was some regular small guy that had built a company, at first wanted to continue his business, then went further because he tasted true power and much more money.  

Unintentionally, Stark created vulture and basically treated spider man as an annoyance, which, from Stsrk’s POV, could you blame him?

@TheJacobG

You can absolutely have a movie that is just spectacle. But that spectacle has to then be really, really good to make up for a lack of theme. Either way you have to commit to the type of movie you are making. An audience can tell when you're half-assing it.

@normative

It's a little hard not to wonder if maybe earlier drafts did lean harder into themes of holding power accountable or confronting America's history of racial injustice, and then the studio got skittish about getting attacked for excessive "wokeness"

@tommc5132

So, I watched Deadpool and Wolverine had fun and laughed a lot. There were some small threads about being a second stringer, cast aside, things like that but that really didn't land too well and was lost under all the quips. Whereas Logan, is right up there with The Dark Knight for me.Logan had things to say about aging and legacy that scored pretty directly on me. That's the last superhero movie I remember really being about something.

@Jikkuryuu

The talk of theming hits so hard. I remember back before the main stream consumed the Sci-Fi and Fantasy genres, that these stories would explore the human condition, deconstruct society and its values, speculate on concepts, show us who we are or could be.
And while these stories are still being made, it sure is hard to find them under all the melodramas with a veneer of Sci-Fi/Fantasy.

@4891MR

I think you probably read the interview with James Gunn several months ago where he said that superhero fatigue is not a concern if the movies are good. You probably were not conscious of echoing him at a couple of points here.

@achimdemus-holzhaeuser1233

I just saw some Videos about writing Dialog that encapsulated what you said in the end : 

Show us why the Characters Care. If they don't care about what happens, If they don't have believable connections to what happens we don't connect.

@Tier1Diabetic

CABNW felt like there may have been deeper themes in earlier drafts, but then studio or test audience feedback led to multiple rewrites and reshoots that stripped allllllll of that out to give us room temperature soup that just serves to move the MCU timeline along

@Faction.Paradox

C'mon Steve, as the angry reactionaries have told us "No film ever had politics in it before the invention of the word woke". We need to go back to making non-political films about manly Americans going to other countries, committing slaughter then installing a new leader who is more easily manipulated.