I haven’t watched Solo or Aquaman yet, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, even for someone who’s a big fan of these franchises… And I’d be surprised if there weren’t many more like me. Here are some reasons why…
Not that long ago I’d pay money to go and see films such as Ghost Rider, Spiderman 3 and X-Men: The Last Stand (God help me)… It wasn’t necessarily because I didn’t know they wouldn’t be bad films, I think it was more the fact that I wanted to be entertained by something in the comic realms, and these films were all I really had to go and watch. Fast forward to the current day and age and nerdy materials are being thrown at us non-stop on the big and small screen. You may hear that Solo is average, or Aquaman was ok, and you think “I’m going to stick to my small screen shows”, especially when you’re already paying a subscription AND you know they’re great (I personally feel Legion and Preacher almost compete with the MCU)… So the first reason is cost; instead of paying £13 for film that’s ok, you can sit in the comfort of your own home and watch some great TV, especially as the TV budgets have greatly increased and are a lot closer to movies than they used to be; have you seen the talking monkey in The Umbrella Academy?!
This leads on to reason number 2, content. Now, because the budgets for TV shows have increased, it means that a lot more time can be put into the stories and production, so quite often they’ll achieve a more in-depth story due to time; it also means a better universe and cross over content can be achieved (e.g. the DC TV universe, although it’s too much for me). Compare this to DC movies and it’s a whole different league – The DC movie universe has a shambles of a timeline, and it seems like some drunkard planned their layout until someone was like “actually it’s meant to be this way, we care about individual stories”… Yeah, sure you didn’t just see that Wonder Woman did well due to being a better movie then Justice League or the god awful Suicide Squad…? Now this was an opinion formed on my own after wasting mine and my girlfriend’s time and money on this travesty, but your mind can often be made up for you…
Now I’m unsure if this reason is down to age or my knowledge or what, but EVERYTHING is affected by critics opinions, and this is another reason to be put off. Now we all love reviews, it’s what sites like ours survive from, and everyone needs them; everything is more expensive so we need to know what we’re spending our money on for sure (Especially expensive things like games). It’s generally impossible to go in blind, as you know if something is going to be good or bad, or at least for you, far before you’ve seen it. If you know it’s lower than a 6 out of 10, maybe 7, you’re probably not going to rush to see it – The only exception to this rule for me is the MCU as I believe the worst films are Ant Man 2 and Iron Man 2, and they’re 7s in my books, but people would go lower, however the glowing fan boy coating can’t be accounted for… The big downside to this is that I still haven’t watched Solo despite it being out for a long time, and I may enjoy it when watching, but this also comes down to time, as my free time at home is GENERALLY spent on my PS4, especially as I play a lot of long RPGs… So it’s not only money and what’s available, but also it comes down to my time, and not wanting to waste my time going and watching something half okay when it could be spent on a few more episodes of something like Preacher which is really impressive and really entertaining.
So I don’t feel (And neither should you) that I’m less of a fan because I’ve technically missed the most recent Star Wars movie. Yes, I wouldn’t miss a main episode, but is this a reflection of over flooding a franchise? I’ve only watched Rogue one once… Maybe another reason I was in no rush for Solo. Some people may say you’re not as much of a fan because you haven’t seen them or you missed out on them, and you may be right, because how dare I miss them completely and I wouldn’t do it for the MCU… But that comes down to my fanboy glow that can’t be beaten down; they’re also all relevant to the story so I have more reason to watch, and as far as I understand it, Solo only kind of feeds into the story of Star Wars canon (I think?) and the DC timeline is a joke so that’s Aquaman out of the picture. So it makes it feel like it doesn’t really matter as much in terms of missing out on info, so this plays into it as well for sure.
I’ll more than likely be going to see Shazam and Star Wars: Episode IX, but they have me interested already. I’m still a big fan of all these materials, but I need it to be worth my time and money, alright?!