I remember when they had a big long-arc that was spread intelligently across all of the movies that built up to Endgame. I think they've forgotten this.
Phase 4 lost the plot. It's like they didn't know what to do after Endgame.
For the plot going forward, you have to see:
Wandavision (Disney+, Blu Ray this month)
Loki Season 1 (Disney+, fresh on Blu Ray)
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness
Ant-Man: Quantumania
Loki Season 2 (just finished)
I think you've put your finger on it. The shows didn't exist prior to Endgame. Now, they're doing the same nonsense as 90s/early 2000s Marvel where if you wanted to understand everyone in large events (which happened all the time) you really needed to read a bunch of different series.
But, watching a ten episode show is a time committment and there are so many actually worthwhile shows that one can watch...
I think the biggest problem is they keep hamfisting action and comedy where it's completely unnecessary. If something is worth watching people will find the time.
But they keep making the same mistakes on most of their stuff, like Wandavision was pretty good up until they decided they needed a big fight scene for the climax. Quantimania, Falcon & WS, Captain Marvel were milquetoast. Then you've got Thor L&T and Secret Invasion which were handled badly. It was weird to get Sam Raimi back for a one-off but not branching into the supernatural side of Marvel.
I think most people will finish a bad movie, but people aren't going to finish another 9+ hours on a TV Show once they're turned off.
Not a single bit of action happened in the first 2 Loki Episodes after which I gave up. But I'm expected to have forced it down my gullet so the next movie makes sense.
I enjoyed Loki, the overall story was interesting. Season 1 felt better paced, season 2 dragged in some places then rushed other scenes. It's definitely not like most of the other Marvel stuff so it's not going to appeal to movie goers, the same can be somewhat said about Wandavision.
Haven't seen a lot of recap channels, but Movies in Minutes does a decent recap of Wandavision and Loki if you're only interested in the stuff relevant to upcoming movies and/or events.
I'd recommend watching a recap of Secret Invasion, imo that was poorly done and I feel sorry for Emilia Clarke and Cobie Smulders. Feels like a waste of good talent and plot what they did with Secret Invasion. Secret Invasion could have been a huge reveal and great interweaving throughout movies and shows in phase 2. But the whole story got turned into a generic spy thriller with no depth.
True, but that doesn't fix their quality problem. Loki wasn't bad but everything else since endgame has been unwatchable to boring and forgettable at best.
Guardians 3 was really good, but they just let Gunn do his thing and it wasn't just trying to move the general plot along. I wish they had more stuff that was just doing it's own thing.
I just saw Guardians three the other day finally. Did it feel to you like 20 minutes was missing out of the third act? It just suddenly stopped making linear sense.
Oh. Well that explains it I guess. It just seemed so hacked up, I can't even watch it again because I noticed the first time, 2nd time the frantic pace won't even mitigate
They completely glossed over how Warlock changed sides n why, and everyone was just running and changing scenes at such a frenetic pace that poorly hid the missing connector scenes. Plus that one all out fight scene and then bang they're somewhere else for some reason
That's my point, you have to turn a hobby into a chore so that you can keep up.
It's the same reason popular game franchises have also failed. 343i messed up the Halo franchise when they started putting plot critical events and information in side media like novels and comic books. The moment you cater to the hardcore fans who have no other interests, you alienate the more common fans that enjoy it but don't make it their entire personality.
So now if you play Halo 5 you might be confused at what happened to the Didact, you know he survived Halo 4 but where is he? Oh. Right. He got killed in a comic book. Onto the next villain! Cortana took over the AI's? Holy shit, this is going to fill up the whole next game! Just kidding, that conflict happened off screen and now you're fighting the banished.