Expectations or not - CinemaScore is usually the best sign of how people talk about the film in the immediate future. So it’ll be interesting to see if this has as much legs as most MCU movies do at the box office.
And yes - I agree that it is from a snapshot in time and the longer time goes on some movies are remembered more fondly. But out of all the MCU movies, there’s probably only three times I left a theater feeling kind of empty from the experience…Ant-Man & the Wasp, Eternals and this.
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@Brian G. observation…I think some of the disappointment can also stem from the fact that this movie post-Spider-Man and Loki felt like it would be the next step in providing some sort of roadmap or inkling of where things are heading, and it didn’t outside of a little potential tidbit at the end.
I also personally feel this lack of enthusiasm because the characters from Phase 1-3 completed their original journey for the most part, and the new characters in Phase 4 (Moon Knight, America Chavez, Agatha, Eternals, etc) just aren’t that interesting or the way their stories were told aren’t that interesting. I have no excitement about seeing Moon Knight show up in an MCU movie. Like even when Ant-Man, a lesser loved character, showed up in Civil War, I cheered!
Granted I realize this is what the comics do, they sort of reset and start anew, but outside of Spider-Man: NWH, there hasn’t been a Phase 4 entry yet that I would put as anything above mid-tier MCU.