As hard as it may be to believe, some of us have nev­er seen a movie belong­ing to the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse. If you’re one of those unini­ti­at­ed, none of the count­less clips incor­po­rat­ed into the Like Sto­ries of Old video essay above will tempt you to get ini­ti­at­ed. Nor will the laments aired by host Tom van der Lin­den, who, despite once enjoy­ing the MCU him­self, even­tu­al­ly came to won­der why keep­ing up with its releas­es had begun to feel less like a thrill than a chore. As if their CGI-laden sound and fury weren’t try­ing enough, there’s also “the con­stant quip­ping, the annoy­ing self-aware­ness, the fact that every­thing has to be a fran­chise now.”

Van der Lin­den labels a cen­tral fac­tor in the decline of the MCU “sto­ry­telling entropy.” Clas­sic films, you may have noticed, con­cen­trate prac­ti­cal­ly all the ener­gy in every facet of their pro­duc­tion toward the expres­sion of spe­cif­ic themes, sto­ries, and char­ac­ters; at their best, their every line, ges­ture, cut, and inven­tion rep­re­sents the tip of an artis­tic ice­berg. Take, to use a pop­u­lar exam­ple, the lightsaber intro­duced in Star Wars, which Van der Lin­den calls “not just a weapon, but a metaphor” that “sym­bol­i­cal­ly com­mu­ni­cates a lot about the phi­los­o­phy of its wield­er, and about the larg­er world that it exists in,” con­dens­ing “a mul­ti­tude of mean­ings and ideas into a sim­ple, sin­gu­lar object.”

It does so in the first two or three movies, at any rate. In the decades since, as the Star Wars uni­verse has grown ever vaster, more com­plex, and con­cep­tu­al­ly unwieldy, so the pro­lif­er­a­tion and mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the once-mar­velous lightsaber has turned it into some­thing mun­dane, even banal. So it goes with sto­ry­telling entropy, a phe­nom­e­non that afflicts every nar­ra­tive fran­chise com­mer­cial­ly com­pelled to grow with­out end. That process of expan­sion even­tu­al­ly turns even the most cap­ti­vat­ing orig­i­nal mate­ri­als dif­fuse and unin­volv­ing to all but the hard­est-core fans — by which point it has usu­al­ly become obvi­ous that cre­ators them­selves have long since lost their own pas­sion for the sto­ries.

Most MCU view­ers will admit that it has pro­duced miss­es as well as hits. But Mar­veliza­tion, as Van der Lin­den calls it, has also inspired oth­er, imi­ta­tive cor­po­rate fran­chis­es to pump out glob­al­ly mar­ketable con­tent fierce­ly pro­tect­ed by intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty lawyers — and has even drained the inter­est out of realms of film and tele­vi­sion that have noth­ing to do with super­heroes, swords, or sci-fi. Hol­ly­wood has always been about the bot­tom line, of course, but only in recent decades have mar­ket sat­u­ra­tion, cross-plat­form strat­e­gy, and max­i­mum crossover poten­tial come to dom­i­nate its pri­or­i­ties so com­plete­ly. From the MCU or oth­er­wise, a Mar­velized movie is one that, at bot­tom, has no press­ing need to be made — and that we, ulti­mate­ly, feel no press­ing need to see.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why Movies Don’t Feel Real Any­more: A Close Look at Chang­ing Film­mak­ing Tech­niques

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Any­one who keeps an eye on Hol­ly­wood knows — indeed, has been ever more fre­quent­ly and anx­ious­ly informed — that the the­ater busi­ness is in trou­ble. If few­er of us than ever have been going out to the movies, one rea­son must have to do with the easy avail­abil­i­ty of home stream­ing, to say noth­ing of all the pro­lif­er­at­ing dig­i­tal dis­trac­tions pre­ci­sion-engi­neered to cap­ture our atten­tion. But could it also have to do with a change in the pic­tures them­selves? With more than two mil­lion views racked up in just four days, the new Like Sto­ries of Old video essay above ven­tures an expla­na­tion as to “Why Movies Just Don’t Feel ‘Real’ Any­more.”

In recent years, even long, colos­sal­ly bud­get­ed, and cease­less­ly mar­ket­ed spec­ta­cles feel strange­ly insub­stan­tial on any screen, big or small. The video’s cre­ator Tom van der Lin­den points to a vari­ety of fac­tors, begin­ning with a wors­en­ing lack of cor­re­spon­dence between the cin­e­mat­ic image and our per­cep­tion of real­i­ty.

One clear­ly — or rather, read­i­ly — notice­able con­tribut­ing trend is the preva­lence of shal­low focus, which keeps the char­ac­ters in the fore­ground sharp but lets all the details of the back­ground go blur­ry: not the way we see the real world, unless we mis­place our glass­es. Because we live in deep focus, deep focus cin­e­matog­ra­phy feels more real to us.

Of course, not every movie can be Lawrence of Ara­bia. But there was a time when prac­ti­cal­ly all of them did deliv­er what’s called “hap­tic visu­al­i­ty,” the word hap­tic relat­ing to the con­cept of our sense of touch. Old­er films have a tan­gi­bil­i­ty about them in large part because the film­mak­ers had no choice: work­ing only or pri­mar­i­ly with ana­log tools, they could only do so much to detach images from our phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence. Dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy, post-pro­duc­tion CGI, and now the open abyss of AI have made any­thing tech­ni­cal­ly pos­si­ble, though as van der Lin­den under­scores, those tech­nolo­gies by them­selves don’t guar­an­tee that the result­ing movie won’t feel real. Ulti­mate­ly, unre­al­i­ty is a choice, and one we movie­go­ers should hope the indus­try will stop mak­ing — if not for our sat­is­fac­tion, then for its own sur­vival.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dark Knight: Anato­my of a Flawed Action Scene

The Impor­tance of Film Edit­ing Demon­strat­ed by the Bad Edit­ing of Major Films: Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, Sui­cide Squad & More

Why Mar­vel and Oth­er Hol­ly­wood Films Have Such Bland Music: Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Per­ils of the “Temp Score”

Why We All Need Sub­ti­tles Now

Why Do Wes Ander­son Movies Look Like That?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.