Does anyone really miss that era of genre film that ran from like 1997-2011 where the special effects were often janky, but the stories were self-contained narratives, often loosely based off something public domain a well established concept but sometimes just wildly original and high concept, half the time they were just bad, but they were creative and weird?
You know - Independence Day, The Matrix, The Mummy, Pirates of the Caribbean, Van Helsing, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Wild Wild West (hey I did say half the time they were just bad), Reign of Fire, Pans Labyrinth, The Covenant, Underworld... I could go on. Some of them classics that shaped cinema. Some of them absolutely forgettable (Don't lie, you forgot about The Covenant until now and most of you still don't remember it.)
That style of movie was almost entirely killed off by The Avengers. Everything had to be a franchise starter, a shared universe builder. But that didn't work, it only worked for the MCU because Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America were all workable standalone movies with a little hint of a shared universe at the end, not "the story grinds to a halt for half the movie so we can introduce Not!S.H.I.E.L.D."
I miss those movies.
Even the terrible ones.
Well.
Even the fun terrible ones.
