Ok, so trying to consolidate the above, I'm sensing a just a tiny bit of pushback on the idea that DS2 is a decent movie.
Here's my perspective on Marvel movies. What I'm looking for in a Chuck Palahniuk movie is a surprising and intelligent plot orchestrated to create a multilayered extrapolation a philosophical viewpoint. What I'm expecting in a Marvel movie is WWE RAW with 5 million dollars worth of one liners and 100 million dollars worth of special Viz effects. So similar to Moonfall or Geostorm, but with familiar characters to reassure me that I'm watching an actual story. I don't like professional wrestling, so I think it's not a great creative muse for "the only movies that ever get funded past 2014" but you know, it's what I'm stuck with. I'll boil it down for you "Mwahaha, I am eviltron, and I demand riches and power" Good guys "Not on my watch, I will clobber you in a fistfight with lasers" bad guy again "I have a special trick, and will win" good guys "we were not smart enough to foresee your trick, but we are an attractive group of people that know how to punch things, and will win via the earnestness of our character" AAAAnnnd scene. Anything better than that, and I'm "shocked by how unexpectedly good the writing was for a marvel movie"
Basically, my logic is that if some person down the street made a pile of 300 million dollars and set it on fire, I would definitely go watch it burn just for entertainment. That's my level of expectation going into one.
Sometimes I'm caught off guard by a decent plot, I think the last time this happened was Captain America Civil War, and you know, the first Dr Strange wasn't too bad. Honestly, it felt like the current Spiderman trilogy just accepted what it was, and like DS2, just went about gleefully spending the money on set pieces, without stressing out too much
As far as Star Wars episode 8. It's a different story. The first SW trilogy was great, and so we have a legacy of movies that were actually great stories. So when they intentionally crash one because they got super excited about feminism one year and decided to make an action movie about elderly women scolding people for "not being responsible enough during the battle", I feel like we as an audience actually lost something that could have been great.
If you don't know the story, Kathleen Kennedy became a militant ideologist priest sometime during her turn controlling the SW franchise, and when it was time to find a director for episode 8, she interviewed several highly skilled and proven directors for the job. Each one that came in was asked to make the film a neo feminist version of star wars, with pop politics first, and the legacy Star Wars story an afterthought. Since the first several directors interviewed were too smart to think that this was a good idea, which obviously it isn't, she passed on these legendary directors, and kept interviewing until she found a guy that would just make the film her way. That was indie film director Rian Johnson, who just agreed to anything Kennedy said, because for him this was a gigantic promotion.
You'll notice that on number 9, they went back to using a AAA director, and toned down the feminism way down to the level of, "Luke Skywalker is inferior to a teenage girl" so, you know, it really went out on a logical note, nicely tying up the story we all began watching in 1979. Can you imagine if Kathleen Kennedy had released episode 8 in 1993. All the jedi wearing flannel shirts with Pearl Jam playing in the background of the space battles. In 1500's Africa, morbid obesity was considered the highest marker for culture and intelligence, and athletic people were "stupid people who just don't understand what cool is" 1982 USA, the exact opposite. Since no one in Hollywood knows this yet, I'll tell them, "good stories are timeless stories"
I have probably talked more than enough politics lately, but here's an easy way to spot some idiot pop trend. Oversimplification. Hey guys, we just figured out that all the left handed people are the best, and now every movie is supposed to be about that, or you're a bigot. Hey guys, we just figured out that all the Canadians are the best and everybody else is the enemy, so every movie needs to be about that, or you're a maplephobe. Can you imagine if they had forced pop culture all over the Indiana jones sequels? Indy swinging through jungles on vines in hot pink parachute pants, listening to "can't touch this" by mc hammer. Every one liner is about cold war politics of the day, and the Digital Underground is performing "the humpty dance" inside the temple of doom when they arrive. Anyway, that's how I perceive SW episode 8, I think that their job was to make a movie about Star Wars, and instead they made a movie about 2017. Look how special I am, I can say the same thing everybody else is saying right now.
Anyway, Dr Strange 2 was ok, if you go in understanding that Marvel movies are fireworks shows, not novels. I think it could have been worse.
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