Oh not you too! The Marvel brand isnt doing cinema any favors. These trite morality plays arent helping superhero movies either. Arent you exhausted by Marvel’s aesthetic? I hear the defense that it’s a genre, but the problem is that it’s a brand. These are shot like car commercials, no real direction. You want actual cinematic superhero films? Try Shyamalan’s Unbreakable; PWSA’s Res Evil 4&5. Cinema isn’t supposed to be a poly-sci essay or a polemic, told in clunky close-ups, bland action, etc

**poli-sci… and you know what’s infinitely better than any Marvel movie? Jupiter fucking Ascending. Hell, any Wachowski film. Or Edgar Wright’s. Sorry for rant but you were praising CA like it’s a goddamn Edward Yang movie. It’s all shouted worldviews, heinous action coverage, grimdark fetishism, horrible use of lighting, no sense of even competent cross-cutting. Meta diologue analysis of American exceptionalism? No thanks.

I think you and I have fundamentally different aesthetics, Anon. 

1. Marvel’s films can be incredibly stylistically different from one another – Joe Johnston, Joss Whedon, Kenneth Branaugh, James Gunn, the Russo brothers, are quite distinctive in their styles and interests, and indeed have produced movies that belong to different genres that all happen to be superhero movies. 

2. Captain America: First Avengers is not grimdark fetishism. (If it’s grimdark fetishism you’re looking for, Batman v. Superman is over yonder) It’s 40s camp, and it’s absolutely expressive of Joe Johnston’s aesthetic. Seriously, go watch Rocketeer and then watch Captain America and tell me that you can’t see the visual and thematic similarities. And yeah, I like some ideas in my super hero movies; better that than Zack Snyder. 

3. I don’t find your alternatives appealing in the slightest. Unbreakable is over-praised and incredibly self-serious from one of the biggest flash in the pans in cinema history. PWSA’s movies are video game movies rather than super-hero movies and they’re frankly unwatchable. Jupiter Ascending is ridiculously overstuffed, badly acted, poorly plotted, and strangely pro-bestiality, and if you don’t like cinema as polemic, how can you enjoy Matrix Reloaded or Matrix Revolutions? 

But at the end of the day, this is just my opinion about my aesthetic preferences. You don’t have to like what I like or vice versa.