Marvel's Act One Problem

Don't yada-yada the character intros. It bad.

Music:
“Electric Mantis - Daybreak | Majestic Color”

[ChloeAriT]

so, something funny about these three movies: they're all about grooming victims. and, as a survivor of grooming (albeit for different ends) I can tell you that that kind oftreatment kind of breaks your autobiographical memory. your experience of time becomes non-chronological, unable to place memories in time and distinguish between memories and the current moment. so I actually found the storytelling of all three of these movies extremely relatable and accurate to my experiences.

[cheezemonkeyeater]

The idea of keeping important information for reveals for no reason is an old problem. The original writer for Finding Nemo wrote the script so that we didn't find out about Nemo's mom until later in the script, but the director - a smart guy - took on look at that and said, "But then everybody will hate Marlin" and put that reveal as the prologue.

[killpy]

This strikes me as Marvel trying to sidestep the "origin story problem" and in doing so creating stories with weaker foundations.
Like, they heard all the fans complaining about every new supehero movie being an origin story, and oh it's all the same thing. But they decided the solution was to skip to the middle "cool" part of the story and just gesture vaguely to what should have been the first act .
Turns out maybe origin stories are actually just good structures for these kinds of stories?

[RiseOfTheKumquat]

I don't want to speak for everyone, but I've definitely noticed that watching these Marvel movies consistently over the past few years has affected my perception of pacing. I watched Kimi last night and kept thinking that it was taking way too long getting to the point of the story, but then by the time I got to the third act, almost every piece of information from that first 20 minutes had paid off in some way and the final conflict could play out really efficiently. The movie didn't need to stop and have a flashback or an exposition scene to reestablish the stakes, it can just *go*.

[digvi]

ironically, end game had a really fine, slow paced, character driven first half and people loved it. ofc with fresh characters it can't be that much of a slowburn but generally speaking, i think audiences are prepared for a solid build up if it means a fantastic pay off and walk into theaters with a degree of faith

[ThreeProphets]

Your question about Black Widow actually has an answer, and it's never occurred in film history: It's because this movie should have been made a decade ago. The reason Natasha's backstory is glossed over so briefly is because we already know this story. She's been hinting at it, revealing key pieces of information and showing flashbacks ever since her first appearance. Eagle eyes fans who paid attention to and remembered these scenes had almost everything they needed to piece it together. So Marvel Studios essentially wrote themselves into a corner in which showing her full history would be repetitive, but simply reminding you of the lore that's what been established would be confusing. If they hadn't waited so long this could have hit a lot harder by all being revealed at once, but as is we even knew most of the Bulgaria mission before the film even began

[SPat]

The problem with your proposed structure for Shang Chi is that it establishes him as a foreigner running from his past as opposed to an American trying to live his life but beholden to his cultural heritage. The way way the movie is laid out speaks to the Asian (or more generally immigrant) American experience of being an American first but trying to find where your heritage and family fit within your true self.

[RuNacken]

Billy Wilder said it well: “If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.”

[matthewparker]

I sorta disagree. I have found the first acts to be the most enjoyable parts of recent marve movies. But you did touch on the real problem. Marvel wants to explore some difficult themes, but Disney wants to avoid any depiction of these topics on their films which leads to writing hurdles and cinemanarritive dissonance.

[robchuk]

When you keep saying "Natalie" in Black Widow, do you mean... Natasha? lol

Anyway, another great analysis. Solid First Acts were ABSOLUTELY a strength of the MCU in the early days! And while I understand the desire to mix things up a bit, the storytelling does suffer when they don't do it right. As for the sudden rise in folks criticizing Marvel in general, I'm fine with it. When you're the dominant form of action blockbusters in the industry, and you're coasting so much that you're starting to get lazy, that kind of thing warrants a closer look. These films have an influence on young up and comers, after all. We want them to know what they're doing, and not make the same mistakes. Besides Marvel is so big and popular enough that if criticized, I think they'll be ok.

[samkaranja]

I feel like black widow should have been about nat's training as shown in in the credits and then her meeting Hawkeye, her defection after he doesn't kill her and finally Budapest (A tense cat and mouse game with Nate and Hawkeye against an insurmountable force hunting them in the city instead of big CGI freefall sequence)

[G-Blockster]

You nailed the reason for my vague dissatisfaction with the recent crop of Marvel movies and specifically my great disappointment with Shang-Chi in particular. The entire comic series was about Shang hating his father for his hypocrisy, turning him into an assassin while espousing the values of the Tao and Zen. And the character arc was about Shang finally able to come to terms with the Tao within himself, a good man who is capable of evil.

[JoshuaFagan]

Shang-Chi isn't perfect, and I have a hard time caring about the big CG battle at the end, but the structure makes sense to me. He's not just an unambitious loafer at the beginning, but someone who's tried to make a new start for himself after the suffering he endured before coming to the U.S. Over the course of the film, he learns to confront the consequences of his decision to leave, especially the abuse he left his sister to endure, while still maintaining his own identity and sense of self. I don't think it's a great film, but it got the family interactions right. For that reason, I think it's different from Black Widow and Captain Marvel.

[RedCaio]

I was literally thinking "this is a lot like with Book of Boba Fett" and then you say the same at the end haha.
Both BoBF and Hawkeye hold back on a villain reveal that would've made waaaay more sense to develop the _whole_ time but they think (wrongly) that twist and reveals and cameos are all we want.

[cg]

Im glad you called out the algorithmic pressure that has been guiding movie analysis channels to drift into taking endless, repetative potshots at popular properties like marvel and star wars. I like how this video is framed less like "the reason why shang chi was... underwhelming" and more like "hey i noticed this trend, lets take a closer look at it"

[ryanratchford]

8:30 I agree that Captain Marvel’s a media is a better reason to have it in flashbacks. But I think Shang’s assassin background IS meant to be a mystery until the bus fight scene. We’re meant to be as shocked as Katie that Shaun is an assasin

[PsychadelicoDuck]

Of the movies shown, I've only seen Legend of the Ten Rings, and I'm not sure I would describe its problems as "first-act" problems so much as a "character-motivation" problem. You don't need to see the lead kill his mother's murderer to understand his character, but you are absolutely right that he is far too normal and well-adjusted for being a runaway child soldier assassin, that should have been reflected in the character (it actually reminded me a lot of Finn, the storm-trooper character from the newer Star Wars, it was the same sort of weird disconnect from the traumatic past).

And it wasn't just there. The father character veered repeatedly between "grieving father and lead in a family drama about his children trying to convince him to get therapy" and "mustache-twirling Fu Manchu", so much so I wasn't even sure he was supposed to be the villain until halfway through the film. And for all the film seems to have wanted to say that murder-is-bad and Shang-Chi is no longer an assassin, there was no place where he actually shows mercy to his enemies, and his attempts at talking his father down are so perfunctory it came across to me that he was actually really, really eager to kill his own dad. Just a lot of mixed signals, and not in the clever way. I'm not sure why the sister, or the girlfriend, or the actor were even there. I'm not sure who sent the letter that was the inciting incident or why. I'm not sure why Shaun didn't recognize his own father's men (not even his right-hand man, who would basically be his uncle, right?) or react to them in any way when they attacked him.

One thing I really noticed with that movie was that I kept thinking the movie was going to go one direction but then it kept trying to go another. It starts off in its first act looking like a "normal guy thrust into strangeness" story, but it's really about family drama. But the family only gets pulled together to have the drama by a James Bondian style macguffin plot that is then immediately forgotten about. And now suddenly there's a secret magic village and also Sauron was behind everything. Maybe this is related to the "not establishing things properly" problem this video is about, but it strikes me as a more fundamental problem than just telling the story in the improper order. The film didn't know where to focus itself, or who or what it was about. It wasn't sure if it was about a child soldier assassin who grew a conscience, or about an ABC relatable screw-loose with a secret family history, or what. And I think it could have done both, but that would have meant threading the needle, rather than just throwing the tropes all at the wall at once.

I'm going to disagree with the assertion that "at least we know how to feel by the end" for Shang-Chi. Yes, I could tell what heartstrings they were pulling at, what box formula they were going for, but it just felt forced. Mostly, I just wanted it to end already.

I think the comment on the film being plot-driven rather than character-driven is spot-on. The film was doing things because that was the way the set pieces and canned emotional beats had been laid out, rather than because it made any logical or emotional sense to do so. They treated character development the same as exposition.

My Chinese momma was wincing and covering her mouth by the time they were in the secret village. Said the film had a sense of "faux-insiderness" she found distasteful.

The whole wuxia bit at the beginning was fun. The bus scene was pretty baller.

[star_strm]

Starting with the flashback would lead to a real tone problem - a dark opening into a light and quippy second act

[TreeHairedGingerAle]

I'd love to know what you thought of Encanto.

I agree that Disney doesn't remotely have the brand to tackle a story like Black Widow's properly.

Yet I feel that, with Encanto, they may have succeeded to address issues of realness, very much because: a.) they make it a musical -- so some of the pacing and detail that one would expect in a heavy story doesn't apply, and, b.) they show Abuela's trauma in a romanticized version in the beginning, that is recalled in a more serious way at the end...and so, they manage to soften the impact for children by preparing them for it first, and are then able to dramatize it a little more in the end -- just enough for adults to feel that the conclusion is somewhat satisfying.

[bipennate]

For me, The Eternals was the perfect example of this. The concepts and the plot twist (which was already done in captain marvel, for) landed utterly flat due to the excessive and never-ending exposition dumps and flashback storytelling that failed to even remotely create interest or connection with the characters. A linear storytelling progression would have been significantly better in that film. IMO.