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Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War‘s release is quickly approaching (May 6). Everyone’s picking sides, stating whether they stand with Captain America’s team, or Iron Man’s team in the fight. And I’m…not sure what to think about Marvel anymore.

I have a love-hate relationship with Disney’s Marvel movies. The year Avengers came out, I fell in love. It was the first time I really got into super heroes, and the more I learned about the upcoming movies the more excited I got. Guardians of the Galaxy had me rolling with laughter and in love with it’s world. Captain America: Winter Soldier was thrilling, and I was loving the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

And then… I got sick of it. It was hard. I liked Thor: The Dark World, but it wasn’t amazing. But hey, not every movie can be! I still liked it.

But the more I watched Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, the more they kept pushing the “it’s all connected” gimmick of all the movies. I use the word gimmick because the connection between all the movies has gotten a little overwhelming. It used to be cool, but now I feel like it’s shoved down our throats.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D shifted gears and added so many characters I can hardly keep track of them all. The plot threaded itself into the movies and I began to lose interest. Yeah, it was cool to see them all existing in the same universe, but it was more fun when Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D was just… Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Not “Agents of ‘hey, we’re in the Marvel universe! Don’t forget that. We’re gonna use the show to set up the plot of a bunch of other movies now'”.

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It’s cool to see plots intertwine and allude to each other, but there comes a point when the movie stops being it’s own movie and starts to just be a lead up to the next, and then the next, and the next. I still wanted to love the movies; I’m attached to the characters, but the stories seemed less concerned with telling the audience their story, and more concerned with setting up the next story to come. When that happens, you start to lose great parts of a narrative! It gets sort of tedious. I think that’s why I love Guardians of the Galaxy so much. It is connected to the story through the infinity stone, yes, but its so far from Earth and everything else that it just tells its own story.

So…maybe it’s just me. It is just my personal preference. I still haven’t seen Ant-Man, and I’m still a fan of the heroes. I’ve just been disappointed in the story quality as of late. Civil War is going to be a deciding factor for me. It’s going to really make me choose a side– do I still anxiously await each new release, or will Marvel be kind of Marvel-less? While I’ll always love Spider-Man, Captain America, Hawkeye, and all my other favorites– whether or not I love the movies is to be determined.

How do you feel about Marvel’s recent ventures? Weigh in in the comments!

If you want to contact me, I can be reached via Twitter @ejLadd or by my email, [email protected].

To see more from Frame Rate, check out Frame Rate: Film Age of Accessibility.