Armory

Spider-Man making over a billion world wide draws a pretty stark comparison between it and the previous three MCU films.  Some characters are just more liked, and they also went with a more reliable cast and crew for this one as well.  The formula is this:
 
1) Pick a director who loves the material and is an established quality
2) Cast it with great talent
3) Write a solid, enjoyable story that honors the source material and the fans
4) Focus on entertainment, not checking off special identity and narrative boxes
 
When they stray from this, they stumble.  When they stick to it, they succeed.  All the other excuses and explanations offered fall short.
 
Oh, it also helps if you stick with beloved, time-tested characters.

I'm glade it is doing well and as soon as it releases for general viewing I will most likely see it. 
As for the MCU movies cratering, well they are.  Spider-man may now be linked to the MCU, but it is still being made like the old MCU movies.  Actual heroes doing heroic things. 
 
Don't worry, they will "fix" Spiderman soon.  The next movie will still do well because the audience will expect more of the same, but after they get blindsided, they will not go to the next. 
 
The MCU movies did not immediately crater because people base their movie decisions on the last of a series that they saw and anyone with a viable brain cell pays no real heed to "critics" or "reviews".  And these days "awards" are generally 180 out from the quality of a movie.  The more awards the crappier the movie.  If you go and see a movie and it is fantastic, when its squeal or follow-on movie releases you will generally go see it as well. But if it sucks hard enough to change the moons orbit, you will not be back for #3. 
 
The last several MCU movies (with the exception of the latest Spiderman) have accelerated in a screaming downward spiral.  And most people, including me, don't even consider Spiderman movies as part of the same studio output.  The last three Spiderman movies have been an anomalous throwbacks to the great writing and storytelling of the MCU phase one type of movie.  
 
It is possible that we could still see good MCU movies, but with them doubling down on the rhetoric I doubt it.  
 
 
 
 

NYT has an article pointing out how deeply ludicrous the anti-vax mandate criticisms are.
 
 
So the "moral uproar" that "forced vaccination is tyranny" is absurd.  Not that it matters;  the article points out later that Biden may do the Republicans a favor by giving them something to rant about, while at the same time not forcing them to endorse vaccinations any more than some have.  And unfortunately that may be true, but not creating the workforce mandates is 100% certain to be a failing strategy.

So who decides what is an acceptable reason for the population in general?  And what else do they have the right to decide?  The law and the government are not subtle instruments.
 
In some cases, we can readily demand that there are no valid reasons...get vaccinated or get fired.  Health care workers is the most obvious, and the staff of a nursing home.  I have no problem with school districts requiring vaccinations for all employees and all students.  More broadly, I have no problem with any employer deciding that all employees must be vaccinated;  they don't need extra grounds.  
 
But that isn't the same as the government stepping in and making these decisions.  If freedom means anything, it must include the right to say No.  That isn't absolute;  when there is no meaningful imposition on a person's freedom (wearing a mask), then the requirement is well within public safety concerns.  Does requiring vaccination impose a burden?  That is a good question.  I don't think so.  I'm sure you don't think so.  But it is a more intrusive move, and it is not completely risk-free.
 
 

New OotS!
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1236.html

Well, a couple of members of Alpha Flight would qualify, and I wouldn't mind seeing an adaptation of that title to the MCU.

I watch the series finale of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine today. It was kind of a tearjerker watching Odo dissolve into the Great Link at the end, knowing that Rene Auberjonois is gone now.

I'm sure the Spike Network will continue provide plenty of entertainment free of the scary colored and queer people, and women with minds of their own.
 
Oh, it got rebranded in 2018 and now features an original movie about the Trayvon Martin story, and Ice Cube hosting Lip Sync Battle? Oops! 🤷‍♂️ Well, there are always those Christian film industry movies. Enjoy!

IIRC there are a lot of Heroes in Marvel's books that came from those cultural backgrounds. 
 
Write a story with a good plot/reason for them to come together/team up and then cast them with actors that fit the parts. 
 
But that will never happen.  My guess is the nearest thing will be taking an existing super team and change all the white people to Indiginous and any males to female and then rant about how all whites are genetically racist, all males are toxic and anyone that didn't like the show is something'phobic.
 
So many great Marvel characters are being left to obscurity just so they can swap everything.  Now that they are openly proud of being discriminatory, I expect we only have a couple more years of cringe worthy movies and TV before the MCU ends. 

Well it was nice while it lasted

Maverick did it a smile. Danvers can’t smile. Maverick lost a friend due to that arrogance and was humbled enough to learn at the top gun school. Danvers only learned that she was being held back by the system. 

Thanks.
 
I try to present my thoughts in a way that they are understandable without be perceived as antagonistic.  I don't know if I succeed, but I hope so.
 
Understanding does not equal agreement, which is why I am puzzled sometimes by reactions.

I saw the 'she's got help' scene in Endgame for what it was.  A fan-service moment for female fans in a movie full of fan service moments.

Man, they should make Contortion its own Olympic sport so all the effort some straight white men go to explain how media spotlighting women or minorities isn't actually successful or popular despite all evidence to the contrary doesn't go to waste. 🤣

I read these words as an English sentence but they don't make sense. Everything is made for me and I'm a middle-aged White man who used to buy comics thirty years ago, so clearly Captain Marvel was made for middle-aged White men who used to buy comics thirty years ago.
 
Or maybe it was forty? Anyway, point is, I paid my dues back when comics cost a buck and a quarter every issue, and now I'm entitled!

You are not their primary target demographic for the character. The goal was to get more women to purchase tickets by providing a protagonist that they can identify with.

That scene never made sense to me.  He threw his hammer near her and so she's great now?  The Thor endorsement based on her not going "eek" when a magical hammer goes by her head?

Not really.  This comes up a lot online but its pretty inaccurate.  Captain Marvel is sneering at times, and humorless, never happy or showing any excitement in what she does.  Maverick was having a blast and brought you along with him, and never treated anyone with contempt.   A much closer equivalence would be Sigourney Weaver in Aliens 4, where she's super competent yet charismatic and likable.
 
It wasn't confidence that was the problem.  It was a humorless lack of charisma and likability.  It was a lack of any challenge and treating everyone and everything like they were dirt beneath her fingernails.  Except women, who she was generally nice to (other than the Skrull woman).
 
And honestly this pretense that women and men are utterly equivalent in action and mood is ludicrous.  What works well for a woman might not for a man, and vice versa.
 
*EDIT: and as Spence points out, Maverick undergoes a change, starting from arrogant and cocky to more disciplined and sober.  Captain Marysue doesn't change because she's "perfect" to start with.

Not at all. 
 
Maverick was an a$$hat in the beginning and wasn't liked at all by pretty much everyone except the backseater.   He alienated pretty much everyone and even killed his best friend. That arrogant version of Maverick is not what a real combat pilot is.  There is a difference between "arrogant" and "aggressively confident".  In the movie Maverick was on the edge of losing his commission and being kicked out but was given a last chance at redemption.  Not because they CO wanted to, but because the situation forced him to.  It was a twist on the Hero's Journey.  In other words the Maverick you are citing was the "bad do not be like this jerk" version of the character before he understood his real purpose. 
 
Like many Hollywood types (as well as many civilians) their concept of the military is actually parody itself.  They applied their "not correct" concept of what a military pilot was to Carol Danvers.  The issue is her character was never shown the Hero's Journey and they completely misinterpreted the concept of "aggressive competence" with arrogance.  I have been around military aircrew my entire adult life and there is a vast difference between the Hollywood idea and reality. 
 
But back to Captain Marvel, I really can't say if the personality and character of the character Carol Danvers followed the comic closely or not, but they had her glomp on to every bad stereotype of a military pilot and then never even tried to have her become the Hero in the end. 

Well, I can't speak to many of these, mostly because I stopped in the early 90's when IMO they all got creatively bankrupt and turned to rehashing old story lines instead of creating.  But that is another tale
 
I had to resort to wiki to reorganize my memories and it looks like I wasn't even thinking of Carol Danvers at all.  But Monica Rambeau (maybe???) who was the second Cap Marvel in the 80's before returning the mantel to Captain Marvel's son in the early 90's at about when I stopped reading.  
 
The biggest reason I disliked the BS in the latest Captain Marvel is that the idea of the Heroes Journey and their struggle to gain their powers was absent.  The female Heroes in the past all made the journey into power and gained the respect of their peers because they deserved it.   Pretty much all the new comic stuff (movies and books) I have seen so far that have female Heroes (specifically not including Black Widow, Sif or GotG) all beat the 2x4 to the head that they are the bestest of all because they are women and the only thing holding them down is "the evil mens". 
 
The Marvel movie didn't portray a powerful Heroine coming to her power, instead she was a oblivious dup that was being lead on and controlled by a con.  And not even a good con.  Finally after multiple massively obvious clues are dropped on her head, sometimes repeatedly, she notices "something isn't right".   Even after she is freed to pursue her own goals, she still conducts herself as an arrogant spoiled brat with power. 
 
As for Ant-man.  Yes, his part was to add humor.  But there is a sharp contrast in the appearances.  In the his other appearances (not Ant-man and the Wasp) he was portrayed as a guy who didn't know what he didn't know.  Not stupid but out of his depth who in spite of it always tried to do the right thing and never gave up.  The humor was more tasteful and more reminiscent of the Hulk/Thor interaction in Avengers.  You laughed, but not as much at him as the situation.  Ant-man and the Wasp just dropped the pretense and it became "man bad, ug".
 
Of course everyone has their take, but for the last 5 years Hollywood and their political action arm has made sure I've been buried under the never ending drum that I am genetically evil by birth.  And the MCU has made some sharp turns in that direction recently.  Black Widow was in the can before they jerked the wheel, so I hope it will still be good.  But I don't think they will be getting too much of my money in the next few years.  And we are already seeing the result of vilifying two of the larger demographics as evil, the caucasian and men as a whole. The comic industry went in hard and fast with many of the writers actually stating that they didn't want "people like that", ie White or Men, to buy their works.  Now the industry is hovering on bankruptcy and bumping prices to insane amounts per unit with sale plummeting.  When you look at the the sale figures they are touting as "good", once you realize that they are including manga in the total and the comic only numbers are dismal, you realize just how poor things are. 
 
Hollywood knows this, which is one of the reasons they recently have been publicly saying that there is not real connection between movies and the comics anymore.
The sad thing is that at the very same time they are embracing the very thing that killed the comic. 
 
I enjoyed reading Mark Millar's realization that Twitter doesn't actually represent more than microscopic portion of people and certainly not the people that pay money for anything.
Anyone that actually thinks Twitter is a good way to gauge public opinion has far worse personal issues than worrying about entertainment.  
 
I truly hope I am wrong, but I am pretty sure we are seeing the beginning of the end of the MCU as they shift from entertainment to activism.  It isn't too late if they just go back to bringing superheroes to the screen based on their original works.  To be safe they should just consider anything after 1995 as not existing.  But they won't, being the smartest people in America they will embrace their sacred truths and put them "evil mens" in their place. 
 

Wasp doesn't seem so much hero as just action adventure star with special outfit.  Like Ripley in that big mech loader, but it makes her small instead.  She doesn't act especially heroic, just... beats up on targets using her special costume.  And Thor?  Drunken dad bod douchebag thor who is funny now instead of awesome?  Maybe he can drink more beers with the raccoon to show how much a hero he is now.

I know what you mean.  A lot of the comic content is being based on versions from the years I never read.  When the "hero" part was removed in favor of murderhobo and arrogant lectures I stopped buying.  The first round of MCU movies made me think they were back to heroes, but then they began shifting.  The news about Dr. Strange being dropped from WandaVision for bluntly PC BS really lowers my expectations.  Looks like the strength of just telling a good story is going to be buried under the check box garbage.
 

YMMV
The competent professional very confident highly trained warrior is generally reclassified to arrogant hard case by those that have not encountered them. 
So YMMV.

I don't mind extremely powerful heroes, but I do mind when they aren't given any real challenge or character arc.  People use Mary Sue to describe Captain Marvel a lot for good reason.

And I don't think after WW2 being pretty much universally panned the director will be given as much free rein again.  Apparently her vision of a superhero movie is dull, pointless, and not heroic, with a ridiculous daffy ending tacked on.

Absolutely, WW1 was a great movie. 
 
WW2, not so much. 
 
For me, WW1 was a great interpretation using a solid understanding of the character as well as the source material storylines.  They knew that a 100% transition to film wasn't possible, they were diligent in bringing the core character across plus making sure that the original material storyline concept and feel was also preserved.
 
In contrast, WW2 was all "woot! look at me (the director) and what I did with WW1 now I can make my personal agenda a movie!  Yay.  Oh, and I guess we will have to tack on a super story and some visuals.   But as long as I get my agenda in it doesn't matter!   Wooo Hooo look at me!!!". 
 
The only reason WW2 didn't completely suck was the caliber of the cast.  It you watch Gadot's post release interviews from WW1 and WW2 you can tell that the excitement and personal satisfaction in WW1 is not present when discussing WW2.   Instead you only get the professional facade.