Phased Out: The Doomsday cast reveal and how Disney screwed up its own winning formula

I have always been a bit of an apologist for the MCU. I was there, from the beginning, before it was a universe spanning franchise. I was watching Phase One's stand alone movies, which defined a genre and set a winning formula made so much more special by those who have tried to follow in Disney's franchise footsteps and failed.

But as the franchise expanded into other media, it has devolved. Phases two and three devolved into intricately entwined storylines, and if you missed one thing, you had to catch up. It's become increasingly clear that these are not movies, they are episodes of television that need to hit a billion dollars for the studio to think it was worth it. And if you don't give more money to watch the actual television shows? Forget about it.

I think they know this. The nerds are going elsewhere, and now only Fandom remains. They need to get people into the seats who haven't already given up. Oh, you want a twist? We have the twist, you can see it in the trailer, but if you want to know how it fits into the greater story, you are actually going to have to watch it.

The trailer for Captain America: Brave New World is a perfect example of this problem. When I saw the trailer, I thought I spotted an epic easter egg: Harrison Ford's character was "President Ross." Oh?! Ross who is the Red Hulk, Ross?!

Well, jokes on me! They showed it in the trailer! The whole thing!

Where the tease? What exactly is putting me in theater seats here? I've seem Hulk movies before, and I know that Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes are in later phase projects, so...? The point of a trailer is to pose a question that the movie will answer. But every question I had was immediately answered, so every reason I had to watch immediately evaporated.

The twistier twist, it turns out, was who was controlling Red Hulk behind the scenes, because it's part of a greater conspiracy that it going to drive the next phase. But... I don't need to watch this movie to learn that. The internet will keep me up to date until I see something that is worth forking over money for.

Which brings me, Dear Reader, to Doomsday.

Doctor Doom is one of my favorite villains of all time, and so I am a little bit offended on his behalf that he got such an underwhelming reveal. Of all of the villains who deserved a Thanos-style end credit tease, it was Doom. And now that has been stolen away.

Imagine, Fantastic Four, already going up against Galactus and stacked with a fandom-backed cast, wraps up, and you're sitting in the theater for the post credit scene. The screen is black, the lights come up, and you just see that mask...

The camera pushes in...

And those eyes look straight into the camera.

It was a prime opportunity to renew a waning excitement for the franchise. It could have captured that spark that brought massive audiences to the MCU in the first phase. And it would have followed the formula that Disney has already shown is a success. Build interest through stand alone movies, and then bring those characters together for the climactic villain showdown.

But that opportunity is gone.

Disney has lost faith in their audience and I mourn what could have been. What could've been a breath of fresh air now stinks of desperation. The chair reveal of all of the actors that are going to appear in Doomsday is not something to be celebrated, it is blatant fandom baiting. They are banking on past success of fans latching onto actors instead of the roles that they play in an attempt to appeal to the fandom instead of telling a good story.

Is it too late to adjust course? Not necessarily. I could hope that the success of Thunderbolts might revive some of that fan-focused energy. But that is probably a little naive. I think the chapter on the MCU in the film history textbooks is closed, even if the franchise itself carries on for a few years. You would think they could take a page out of their own book again with the success of the "side-projects" in the Star Wars universe. Some of the best stories from a galaxy far, far away have been stand alone shows separated from the Skywalker saga. It adds to the universe, it doesn't repeat or undermine it. Shows like Andor respect their audience and their ability to appreciate complex stories, and I don’t think that the execs in charge of the MCU believe that their audience is there quite yet.

Will I go see Fantastic Four? Probably. But not because of its place in the MCU. I would like to reward the filmmakers in whatever way I can for what looks like an attempt to get back to the character driven roots of the MCU. The fact that Galactus got teased in the trailer is enough for me to have a butt in the seat. There is a great big MCU still left to explore. Call me an optimist, but I hope they get there before it’s too late.

Work is Hell: Notes on the Sterile Corporate Liminal Nostalgia Aesthetic

So, Severance, right?

I was terribly late to the party, only binging season one right before the finale. I think it’s a masterpiece, unfortunately regulated to AppleTV instead of a more accessible platform. It’s one of those perfect melding of style and storytelling that does not come around often.

But the style is what has haunted me the most. The aesthetics of the show are grounded in a design tradition that has lasted over fifty years. It does a lot to ground these characters in a certain vibe, one that lends to a general air of paranoia.

I believe that online communities such as r/LiminalSpaces on Reddit have given us a good introduction to the concept of a liminal space. Eerie photographs, usually lit by harsh florescent bulbs, but all with this sense of oddity. It is the idea of having evidence of the world as it exists without any people in it. It’s voyeuristic, as if we are witnessing things that should not be seen.

In corporate culture, these liminal spaces are usually shown by immaculate office spaces at the height of modernism but completely abandoned.

In shows such as Severence, this is familiar but unsettling, not only because of the historical roots of the design elements, but because it has recently been co-opted by other similar “man vs. corporate diety” stories in the last ten to fifteen years.

I have started to call this aesthetic “sterile corporate liminal nostalgia.” It is rooted in hypermodern design trends that began in the 1960s and solidifying in the corporate design of the 1970s. At the time, it was reflecting a utopian ideal of the future that technology was going to give us, with the space race having us look to the stars. This isn’t a grimy cyberpunk dystopia, where the world is human, lived-in, and dirty. It is elevated, something that seeks the pinnacle of human achievement.

We can see this hypermodernism reflected in the movies at the time, such as THX 1138, Westworld, Star Trek, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Minimalist environments, with clean, efficient lines and harsh florescent lighting that leaves nothing in shadow. But even then, as seen in Westworld and 2001, this utopian ideal was hiding something rotten under the impeccable style.

When we place these images into a 21st century context, we as the audience are immediately suspicious. The details give us a sense of nostalgia, a harkening back to that simpler, pre-Internet age where technology was advanced enough to make hard sci-fi believable but still distant.

Today, though, we recognize this as a naive ideal. The technology shown is actually archaic, more deserving of a museum display than an actual sci-fi future. We, with the benefit of hindsight, are aware that the future on display is one that never-would-be and couldn’t-possibly-be. We understand that the characters that populate this world are naive to trust this world and its systems, because we are automatically looking for the cracks in the pristine walls.

We know something is wrong, and we are on the alert.

While I think that Severance is the prime example of this trend, it is not new. A lot of 21st century media relies on this, from Black Mirror’s “White Christmas” episode, to 2018’s Maniac (an underrated Netflix original) and 2020’s DEVS.

It also is used to great effect in online-based media like Kane Pixel’s The Backrooms and to a certain extent Don’t Hug Me, I’m Scared. Adult Swim has made an entire brand identity around this sarcastic liminal vibe, and in fact what is in my opinion one of their most criminally underseen originals, Dream Corp, LLC, exists in a grimy sideroom of this very aesthetic.

One unifying thread to every story that establishes this aesthetic is how it plays into stories of corrupt corporate structure and how it contributes to cultural feelings of alienation. It is the individual against the machine and all the ways that it crushes us, setting us against our fellow man for the benefit of the bottom line. It is about living authentically in a world of conformity, and discovering yourself through the discovery of the dystopia rotting away under the utopian veneer.

And while it is a dystopia, I think that in these stories we can find the hints of the classic science fiction hope. The triumph of humanity against terrible odds. We want to root for the underdogs. We want to believe that if we fight, that things can actually get better.

Myths teach us how to live. And these myths tell us that even if we find ourselves living in these corporate hellscapes, there is a way to carry on with our humanity intact.

And I don’t see that as a bad thing.