# Marvel Cinematic Universe

6 Hacker News commenters recommended Marvel Cinematic Universe and 20 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** A hugely popular franchise of over twenty films that people say tied its storylines together well. Critics say it became formulaic and oversupplied, and that it stopped being fun.

## Why people recommend it

- Hugely popular and widely loved (3 comments): "Say what you want about it but the popularity of that universe dwarfed everything else in the last decade" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46930571)) "They made a franchise that spanned 20+ movies and tied it up in a way that was almost universally loved" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47670600)) "no one thinks Marvel films are moving film forward, but they are hugely popular" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48812250))
- Coherent storyline across many films (2 comments): "They made a franchise that spanned 20+ movies and tied it up in a way that was almost universally loved" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47670600)) "Phases 1-3, Marvel et al. managed to wrangle a dozen films of varying genres" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47391666))
- High score deserved (2 comments): "for most in this list with a very high score, I think it's deserved" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47669831)) "Marvel got things (mostly) right with their MCU" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48841393))

## What people warn about

- Formulaic, corporate, slop-like output (4 comments): "The Marvel slop that the human creators have been putting out hasn't inspired much confidence" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232161)) "MCU is slop that caters to Redditor man-child Funko-Pop people." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48875854)) "The MCU tried to imitate the style and mostly failed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47156727))
- Oversupply and overexposure of films (6 comments): "Star Wars and Marvel are getting so overexposed people aren't bothering to show up for them to theaters." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49011017)) "then there is Avengers, MCU, Star Wars and idk how you can balance that" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50226650)) "I have personally got fed up with the oversupply of superhero stuff" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46068372))
- Lost originality and fun (3 comments): "The issue with marvel really is that it took another 20+ movies worth of unique ip or stories that could have been told out the window." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47678336)) "After a while they started to all just become "Marvel Movies" and that's the point they stopped being nearly as fun imo" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389673)) "I don't think the MCU and its ilk are satiating enough intellectually" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49142695))
- Juvenile, empty hero themes (2 comments): "the heroes in the MCU stories didn't have to outgrow their nerd phase through virtues like courage, responsibility, duty" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49144303)) "The entire Marvel Overextended Universe runs on this. They're all Chosen Ones." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45958573))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Mad Max: Fury Road](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mad-max-fury-road.md): 7 recommend
- [Mad Max (1979 film)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mad-max.md): 6 recommend
- [The Dark Knight Blu-ray](https://hackerapproved.com/p/dark-knight.md): 6 recommend
- [The Good, the Bad and the Ugly](https://hackerapproved.com/p/good-the-bad-and-the-ugly.md): 5 recommend
- [Die Hard (1988)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/die-hard.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Marvel Cinematic Universe", https://hackerapproved.com/p/marvel-cinematic-universe/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).