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Movies

Farhan Akhtar Movie Weekends

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With most of my family away for a few weekends, I decided to catch up on movies. After queuing up a few, I realised that Farhan Akhtar was a common element in all of them; hence decided to continue the theme.

Farhan Akhtar is a multi-talented Indian filmmaker, actor, singer, and writer. Here’re the movies I saw, associated with him:

01-Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011)

Zindagi na Milegi Dobara Theatrical poster

Farhan’s Role : Actor, Writer, Producer, Playback Singer
My Rating : 7/10

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (You only live once), is a road comedy drama film. The film stars an ensemble cast of Hrithik Roshan, Abhay Deol, Farhan Akhtar, Katrina Kaif, and Kalki Koechlin. The film’s story follows three childhood friends, Arjun, Kabir, and Imran, who reunite for a three-week road trip before one of them gets married.

I had seen this movie before but didn’t remember much of it except the central theme. Second time round, I found the movie quite entertaining and well made; especially enjoying Hrithik’s acting and his character Arjun’s transformation over the course of the movie. I also enjoyed Farhan’s background recitation of poetry at pivotal points.

That being said, I didn’t like a few things, like how desperate the women were, for the men. And how they wanted us to believe that average people from India look anything close to the three lead actors and the 2 actresses.

02-Dil Chahta Hai (2001)

Dil Chahta Hai Theatrical Poster

Farhan’s Role : Writer, Director
My Rating : 7/10

Dil Chahta Hai (The Heart Desires) is a coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by Farhan Akhtar in his directorial debut. The film stars Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan, and Akshaye Khanna as three inseparable college friends navigating adulthood, relationships, and diverging life paths. It also features Preity Zinta, Sonali Kulkarni, and Dimple Kapadia in pivotal supporting roles. Set in contemporary urban India, the film explores themes of friendship, love, and self-discovery among upper-class youth.

Of course I had seen it before, but I had no idea back then who Farhan Akhtar was. The movie is extremely well made and feel-good in nature and I enjoyed the acting of all 3 lead men, especially Akshaye Khanna’s.

However, the overwhelmingly 90s feel of this movie is a bit of a turn-off for me now, for personal reasons. Also, even though it was considered ground-breaking back then, it still carries some elements of bollywood of yore, especially silly jokes, unrealistic way people talk, characters suddenly breaking into dance sequences etc.

03-Dil Dhadakne Do (2015)

Dil Dhadakne Do Theatrical Poster

Farhan’s Role : Actor, Writer, Producer, Playback Singer
My Rating : 7/10

Dil Dhadakne Do (Let the heart beat) is a family comedy drama film directed by Zoya Akhtar. The film has an ensemble cast of Anil Kapoor, Shefali Shah, Priyanka Chopra, Ranveer Singh, Anushka Sharma and Farhan Akhtar with a voice-over narration by Aamir Khan, as the family dog Pluto. The film tells the story of the Mehras, a dysfunctional family who invite their family and friends on a 10-day cruise trip to celebrate the parents’ 30th wedding anniversary.

I saw this one for the first time after a recommendation from Chatur; in fact I had never even heard of its name before. It was a nice feel-good movie with a (mostly) happy-ending for everyone. I especially liked the fact that the movie was narrated by a dog and is from his point-of-view.

04-Lakshya (2004)

Farhan’s Role : Director
My Rating : 4/10

Lakshya (Aim) is a 2004 Indian Hindi-language coming-of-age war drama film directed by Farhan Akhtar. I think I had seen this movie long ago, but can’t remember for sure. Even if I did, I didn’t like it much this time.

It was annoying the way they kept repeating the word “Lakshya” in daily conversation among the characters. What normal person even uses this word in real life?

Many scenes in the move are cringe, especially the flashbacks where Hrithik tries so hard to be awkward. Even an actor like Boman Irani doesn’t shine, because his character is inconsistent/not fleshed out. Preity’s reaction at Karan running away from the academy is un-realistic.

Also, no Indian war movie is complete without a customary moslem Indian soldier who puts country above religion. I also had to skip 10 minutes when the soldiers all broke into an impromptu song sequence.

I liked the scenes shot at familiar locations in Delhi – Lodhi Garden, India Habitat Center but not much else.

05-Luck by Chance (2009)

Farhan’s Role : Producer, Actor
My Rating : 6/10

Luck by Chance is a 2009 Indian Hindi-language drama film written and directed by Zoya Akhtar in her directorial debut, and produced by Farhan Akhtar. It is about Vikram, a talented actor, but a selfish human being.

It was neither great nor bad, just average. I liked it because it showed the dark underbelly of Bollywood. Everyone acted well, but it was just a one time watch. This movie also has dance numbers, but in this case they are acceptable because the are part of the movies being shot inside this movie. I skipped them nonetheless.

06-Rock On (2008)

Farhan’s Role : Writer, Producer, Actor, Singer
My Rating : 9/10

Rock On!! is a 2008 Indian Hindi-language musical drama film written and directed by Abhishek Kapoor & produced by Farhan Akhtar. It is also my favourite Farhan Akhtar movie and one of my favourite movies overall.

I remember watching this movie with my friend Bhupesh at PVR at Ambience Mall in the late night show. While on the way back, we talked about how much we had enjoyed the movie.

The songs are kick-ass and capture the rock essence. I appreciate that both Arjun Rampal and Purab Kohli spent some effort to learn the basics of the instruments their characters play. Farhan was already an accomplished singer, but he did the rock numbers well.

Javed Akhtar’s lyrics, at that point considered ground-breaking for Bollywood, feel a bit wannabe now. Aditya’s reaction to the squabble is a bit overboard. Ditch the girlfriend and leave town?

Overall, top movie.

Common Farhan Akhtar Themes

Overall, I found the below common themes from all the movies

  1. Even though the movies are not strictly bollywood-type movies, they do retain common bollywood elements like song-and-dance sequences, which I always skipped.
  2. All the male actors are unbelievably (for real life) ripped. For some characters, it makes sense, but for many, it doesn’t.
  3. Most of the major characters, with some exceptions belong to filthy-rich (by Indian standards) families.
  4. Most of these movies have feel-good themes, with no real villains. The less-good characters more-or-less redeem themselves by the end of the movies.
  5. All of these movies are quite long, even by Bollywood standards, most exceeding 3 hours.
  6. Farhan seems to like working with the same actors
    • Hrithik Roshan in Zindagi na Milegi Dobara, Lakshya & Luck by Chance
    • Preity Zinta in Dil Chahta hai and Lakshya
    • Dimple Kapadia in Dil Chahta Hai, Luck by Chance
    • Aamir Khan in Dil Chahta Hai, Luck by Chance
    • Himself in Zindagi na milegi dobara, Dil Dhadakne Do, Luck by chance and Rock On!!
Movies

Mickey 17

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My Expectations : 6/10
My Rating : 7/10

Mickey 17 (2025) on IMDb

The most recent movie I watched is Mickey 17. I had read the reviews, so walked in with low expectations.

Robert Pattinson plays Mickey Barnes, a dumb loser who cannot do anything right. He joins a space colonisation mission organised by a cult leader Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), in a bid to escape debt collectors. In the mission, he has the role of an expendable, which means he is assigned increasingly dangerous and fatal tasks. When he dies (mostly in very painful ways), his body is 3D printed and his memories restored from backup.

Each of his clones, till Mickey 17 are identical to the previous Mickey incarnation. However, when they print Mickey 18, assuming Mickey 17 is dead (he’s not, just left for dead), the consciousness of the 18th iteration diverges. Unlike the Mickeys before him, Mickey 18 is assertive and strong-willed. When they both come across each other, hijinks ensue.

Mark Ruffalo’s character as a genocidal cult leader is a bit over the top and hard to digest. Naomi Ackie as Nasha Barridge, Mickey’s girlfriend was my favourite character from the movie. The remaining characters are all forgettable.

Overall, even though the premise of the movie is interesting, the story does not feel coherent with random things happening; a far departure from Bong Joon Ho‘s most well-known work, Parasite. Most characters are not very well fleshed out and often do contradictory things. Pattinson’s acting is not notable.

However, there are still fun moments in the movie, like when Nasha tries to to initiate a threesome with both the Mickeys. Marshall’s wife’s obsession with creating the perfect “sauce” based on increasingly bizarre ingredients is also noteworthy.

Overall, I can’t recommend this to anyone except Sci-Fi fans.

Movies

Alien : Romulus

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Alien : Romulus

My Expectations : 5/10
My Rating : 8/10

Alien: Romulus (2024) on IMDb

I had been looking forward to Alien : Romulus with high expectations for a long time. However, I tempered my expectations down by a lot after watching the boring teaser trailer. Thankfully, the trailer was not an accurate representation of the movie.

Movies in the Alien franchise all had varied themes over the years.

  • Ridley Scott’s original was a horror/survival movie.
  • James Cameron’s Aliens was a typical Hollywood action movie.
  • Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant had philosophical undertones. Prometheus is still my favourite movie in the franchise.
  • The less said about the remaining movies, the better

Alien : Romulus goes back to the basics and is a horror survival movie. Thankfully, the movie is excellent and doesn’t disappoint.

Spoiler Alert

The movie starts with a Weyland-Yutani ship retrieving the Xenomorph from the first movie from the wreck of the Nostromo.

Cut to present-day, we are introduced to Rain (The female protagonist of this movie) and her android brother Andy who their parents had retrieved from the trash, where he was discarded by the company. He has internal malfunctions, which make him equivalent to an autistic in humans and is prone to sensory overloads. They live in Jackson’s Star mining colony, which is a hellscape they are desperate to escape.

An opportunity to move to another star system appears, but to do that, they need to enter cryogenic sleep and to do that, they need to steal cryo-pods from the derelict twin spacecrafts called Romulus-Remus.

It looks like a simple enough mission as they enter Remus and quickly locate the cryo-pods. However, the cryo-pods are low on fuel and to get more fuel, they need to go deeper into the spacecraft. You know immediately that things are going to go wrong soon.

Long story short, they trigger the thawing of facehuggers that the evil company had been growing, one of whom impregnates one of their crew. The rest of the movie is typical Alien fare with the humans getting picked-off by the Xenomorphs one-by-one.

Worth Mentioning

  1. It was good to see a clone of Ash, from the original Alien movie, played by a cgi-ed  Ian Holm.
  2. It was good to see a bit more of the Xenomorph life-cycle, especially between the chestburster and full-Xenomorph stage, shedding its organic skin and replacing its cells with polarised silicon.
  3. I liked the parallel with Aliens where having almost reached their escape craft, the female protagonist goes back all the way to save one more.
  4. The scene where the ship is in zero-g and they have to float through swirling globs of acid-blood was great.
  5. The Xeno-human was terrifying in appearance, especially the scene where it is nursing on its dead human mother/host.
  6. The relatively lesser-known cast acted well.

Overall, I am very happy to have seen that Fede Álvarez didn’t disappoint and made an actually good (and terrifying) movie.

Movies

Post-Pandemic Cinema Experience

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The Covid-19 pandemic was hard for everyone, but especially for the movie industry. I, too, missed going to cinemas to watch newly released movies. Below, I write about my post-pandemic cinema experience.

Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)

My Expectations : None
My Rating : 6/10

Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) on IMDb

This was the first movie we saw after pandemic restrictions lifted and also the first movie we saw in Bangkok. It was good that I went in with no expectations because the movie was dull and forgetful. I remember nothing of what was in it.

No Time to Die (2021)

My Expectations : None
My Rating : 7/10

No Time to Die (2021) on IMDb

This was the first Bond movie I saw in years and it didn’t disappoint. I enjoyed watching it, but don’t remember the details of what happened in it.

The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

My Expectations : 8/10
My Rating : 3/10

The Matrix Resurrections (2021) on IMDb

I have already written about what a disappointment this movie was and have no energy to dwell on it again.

Spider-Man : No Way Home (2021)

My Expectations : 7/10
My Rating : 7/10

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) on IMDb

This was my first MCU movie since Endgame and it delivered as per my expectations. It was entertaining, but relied too much on the appearance of Doctor Strange and the previous Spider-Men to carry the movie. Don’t regret watching it, though.

Doctor strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

My Expectations : 7/10
My Rating : 5/10

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) on IMDb

What a super bore movie! My family left part-way, but I stuck around. For me, this signalled for me the start of the decline in the quality of MCU movies.

Top Gun Maverick (2022)

My Expectations : 7/10
My Rating : 7/10

Top Gun: Maverick (2022) on IMDb

Time-pass movie that relied heavily on nostalgia.

Thor : Love and Thunder (2022)

My Expectations : 7/10
My Rating : 5/10

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) on IMDb

Although Doctor Strange was a bad sign for what was to come, I hoped Taika Waititi would make a good movie. But no. What a bore.

Avatar : The Way of the Water (2022)

My Expectations : 4/10
My Rating : N/A – Left in 30 minutes

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) on IMDb

I didn’t know why I even went to watch this movie when I hated Part 1 and already had such low expectations from Part 2. Never again.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)

My Expectations : 7/10
My Rating : 9/10

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) on IMDb

The best movie I have seen in years and the only MCU movie I enjoyed. I watched it twice in the cinemas and once on Disney+. Deserves a separate post.

Oppenheimer (2023)

My Expectations : 9/10
My Rating : 6/10

Oppenheimer (2023) on IMDb

Being a fan of quite a few Christopher Nolan movies and the hype surrounding this one, I had huge hopes. But the movie turned out to be only slightly above average. I would still have seen it, but wouldn’t have spent extra on IMAX Laser.

The Flash (2023)

My Expectations : 7/10
My Rating : 7/10

The Flash (2023) on IMDb

Time-pass movie. Just like spider-man, it relied heavily on the appearance of Keaton’s batman, Affleck’s batman and Clooney’s Bruce Wayne to carry it. Also an appearance from Nicholas Cage’s Superman.

Godzilla X Kong : The New Empire (2024)

My Expectations : 6/10
My Rating : 6/10

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024) on IMDb

We went to watch this movie with very low expectations and weren’t disappointed. Mindless action.

Furiosa A Mad Max Saga (2024)

My Expectations : 9/10
My Rating : 7/10

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) on IMDb

I went to watch this one with very high expectations, but it couldn’t compare to Mad Max: Fury Road.

Movies, TV Shows

Of True Detective and Talaash

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So what does Season 4 of True Detective have in common with the 2012 Bollywood movie Talaash? Quite a lot actually. In fact True Detective: Night Country borrows most of its core themes from this movie.

Spoilers Alert

True Detective: Night Country
True Detective: Night Country
  1. A woman is brutally murdered by a group of entitled men; this has already happened before the timeline of the show/movie.
  2. No one cares for the death of the woman/police doesn’t investigate seriously because the woman came from a marginalised section of the society (Inuit/Prostitute).
  3. The “ghost” of the woman starts exacting revenge, killing her murderers one by one
  4. Two/A police officer investigating the murder of these men discover the connection to the murdered woman.
  5. The police officer is anguished because of the loss of their son in a (car/boat) accident many years ago. Both have difficulty sleeping at night and spend the night wandering their town/city.
  6. People (Partner/Neighbour) tell them that they have made contact with their dead son, which angers the police officer at first. But eventually, they believe the person and finally find peace knowing their son’s soul is at rest.
  7. The police officer falls in the sea and almost drowns, but is rescued (By partner/ghost).
Talaash: The Answer Lies within
Talaash: The Answer Lies within

Even after all those similarities, True Detective doesn’t feel like an outright copy of Talaash. It has enough to distinguish itself, but clearly the creators have been inspired from the movie.

That being said, I liked both the movie and the show, though I liked the movie just a bit more.

Movies

Demolition Man

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I caught Influenza A last week. The first 2 days were so bad, I couldn’t even get up from bed most of the time. The third day, I decided to watch Demolition Man. It is a classic 90s action movie with oodles of adrenaline; about a 90s cop (Who doesn’t give two fucks for collateral damage) being put on ice and then being thawed out 30 years later. It is also one of the first movies to have predicted woke culture. Having seen it at least 20 times during school days, I decided to watch it again and see what I notice now. This follows a similar exercise that I did a while ago.

Demolition Man
Demolition Man

What I noticed

  • How does it matter if you cryo-freeze a prisoner for 1 day or for 30 years? For the prisoner, it is still over in the blink of an eye (It is later revealed in the movie that the prisoners were mostly conscious, but they didn’t know that before).
  • Why is the communication system in a robo-car called FiberOp? I would assume most consumer communication would be wireless and video service providers would be abstracted from ISPs?
  • Retina/Iris scan don’t work if the eye is severed from the head.
  • Why would handcuffs have passwords? Shouldn’t they, too, be biometric?
  • Seeing the penii of many men in a movie is not as shocking anymore.
  • Why is Lenina Huxley always typing on the police computer terminal first and then asking the same question via audio? Shouldn’t the interface be more simplified?
  • Even 20th century technology wasn’t that bad that frying 1 camera caused every camera in 6 blocks to go offline.
  • Someone saying “ching-chong” when they see people of Mongoloid descent would not have been acceptable in 2023, even if the character was a villain.
  • Why would someone (Lenina Huxley) who knows so much about the 20th century be surprised that John Spartan doesn’t know how to use the three sea-shells or have sex using a brain-machine interface?
  • They never address the topic of whether only San Angeles went woke, or the entire US or the entire world.
  • Why was there a cryo-tube in a pneumatic arm at the end-fight scene?

Overall, it is still a very entertaining movie. Stallone acts well, but the real credit goes to Sandra Bullock, who was just supreme. Especially her incorrect 90s quips like “You licked his ass” and “Let’s go blow him”.

Movies

Indiana Jones is just an Entitled White Man

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I wrote this article a few weeks ago on how I hadn’t never seen some famous movies. So we decided to start watching the Indiana Jones series, especially considering there’s a new instalment out soon. People make Indiana Jones out to be a sort of folk hero, so we were interesting in knowing the character better. What we found out was that Indy is just another toxic entitled white man.

The movie starts with Indy in a South American jungle trying to “retrieve” some priceless relic. But who gave a white American the right to take relics from another country? The mission eventually ends in failure when another white mean steals said relic instead, but not before Indy is able to kill a few Peruvian tribals.

The movie also uses the easiest movie villains ever-Nazis. Indy’s job is to prevent the arc of covenant from falling into the hands of Nazis. Because something like that can only be possessed by white people – the wrong white people or the right white people.

Indiana Jones, the rapist

The next thing we know about Indiana Jones is that he is a child abuser. His ex-lover Marion says so in no small words, accusing him of having sex with her when she was “just a child”. His comeback? “You knew what you were doing”.

The childhood rape has clearly damaged Marion beyond repair, who is now a raging alcoholic and a sex addict. Their relationship is also messed up, with her addressing him as “Indiana Jones” even in throes of lust, instead of his actual name. Indy has clearly been punished for his transgressions, too, because he fails to have sex with her on multiple occasions.

Indiana Jones, the ethnic cleanser

Not satisfied with killing Peruvian tribals, he goes to Nepal and whips and shoots a bunch of Nepalis, in their own country. Later, when he travels to Egypt, he whips and shoots a bunch of Egyptians in their own country. His lover even justifies this behaviour by yelling “I am American”, because that makes it acceptable.

At one point, Indiana Jones is surrounded by a bunch of Egyptian people, who, overwhelmed by the sight of a white man suddenly start begging. Indy tosses a few coins at a distance and the beggars crawl all over the ground to retrieve them. After destroying an entire marketplace, killing many people and blowing up a truck, he simply relaxes and openly drinks whiskey in the middle of the same marketplace. No repercussions, because he is white, na.

via GIPHY

Not surprisingly, the only people he doesn’t directly kill are Nazis, limiting himself to just beating them up, because the Nazis are white too, na.

Later, he hires some Egyptian labourers, using only whistles to order them around. Because why would he even talk to such lowlives? He makes them work day and night without break. Himself just sitting by doing nothing.

Compassion for Animals?

Indy kills a monkey by using him as bait for poisoned dates. Later, he pours petrol over a family of snakes and sets them on fire. Intent on proving that he abuses all species equally, he relentlessly whips a horse, too.

There’s also a moment where an Egyptian man (married with children) is kissed on the lips by the still sex-crazed Marion. The experience of a white kiss is so magical for him, he breaks into an impromptu opera, on the spot.

Eventually, the ark is retrieved by the right white people and transported to the greatest country in the world, America.

I am just surprised that the movie series and Harrison Ford hasn’t been the victim of cancel culture.

Movies

Popular movies I have never seen

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Yesterday, while watching Guardians of the Galaxy, there was a trailer for an upcoming yet another Indiana Jones movie. Everyone cheered and I realised I may be one of the few who is not familiar with this series. I came back home and looked at the 100 most popular movies ever and realised there are many movies that I have never seen.

Below is a list of popular movies that I have never seen:

I call myself a movie buff and am ashamed to say I have not seen so many of these popular movies. Maybe I will try to catch up with some of them in the years to come.

Movies

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

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Yes, yes, I did say I was done with the MCU, but I still went to watch Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Mainly because I didn’t want to end my MCU experience with the shit that was Love and Thunder. And boy, am I glad I didn’t.

In short, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is a great movie. It is easily one of the best movies (Not only among MCU) I have seen in the last many years. And a perfect send-off to the Guardians after all these years.

Rocket Raccoon, Guardians of the Galaxy
Rocket Raccoon, Guardians of the Galaxy

The movie is part farewell to the Guardians and part Rocket Raccoon origin story. The origin story part is quite emotional and explains many things. The rest of the movie is great, too and there are many special moments. The guardians themselves are hilarious, especially Drax and Mantis.

My favourite characters were Rocket and Cosmo. I don’t even know where Cosmo came from. The first I saw of her was in the holiday special, which itself, was quite average.

Cosmo, the space dog
Cosmo, the space dog

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is easily the best MCU movie I have seen till now, better than Infinity War and Endgame. My recommendation is, even if you are not an MCU fan, go watch the movie. You don’t need too be aware of the wider MCU either, the movie stands well on its own.

I will miss this series going forward.

Movies, Rant

I am done with the MCU

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After a long time, a movie post.
I won’t say I was a big MCU fan, ever. I did follow the movies in the Infinity Saga as they were entertaining. Wholesome superhero movies. 1-2 movies a year; I could easily handle that. I do remember waiting (not too excitedly) for Endgame, which I went to see with my nephew. Epic battle, many people die but the good guys win.

MCU: Avengers Endgame
MCU: Avengers Endgame

I wish Disney had left the MCU at that. But no, like a true corporate giant, they wanted to milk the MCU for whatever it was worth. And in the process, they ruined it.

They began Phase 4 with renewed energy. Movies, TV shows what not! I tried my best to keep up, I did.

My Effort

Even though I found WandaVision average, I finished all the episodes. I needed to keep in sync with the story, I said to myself or I will lose the plot.
Shang-Chi was below average but I still saw it.
The Falcon and the Winter soldier was below average. I could only watch a few episodes.
Eternals was so shit, I didn’t watch it altogether.
Spider-man No Way Home was good, but I felt the movie relied too much on the re-appearance of the older spideys to carry the movie.
Loki was average.
Multiverse of madness was a super bore. I couldn’t stand the Scarlett Witch.
Hawkeye was average.
Love and Thunder was surprisingly bad, especially coming from Taika Waititi.

But my MCU journey ended with Ms Marvel. I started watching it thinking there’s finally a superhero from the Indian sub-continent but it was such a drag, I gave up on the entire MCU after a few episodes.

Frankly speaking, Disney is putting out too much content and most of it is not up to the mark. If one watches only a few select movies, they will lose the plot quickly because important events happen in the TV shows, too.

Eventually, I realised I don’t have the willpower or the time to follow the MCU anymore and have given up on it. I may not even watch the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

Life is too short to consume average content.