I think one "problem" was that Phase Four was the aftermath of the first three phases. The Infinity Stones had revealed themselves after who knows how long, the enhanced beings came forward and joined together (Avengers, Guardians, etc.) to thwart their ill-use, culminating in the coming of Thanos and realization (and, ultimately, undoing) of his goal. The aimlessness of Phase 4 felt "right", in that there's going to be a lot of dazed wandering around for a bit due to what's just happened. Shell shock on an existential level. Either you just lost five years of your life and everyone you knew is now older -- or dead from other causes -- or you were just getting over half of everyone being gone when suddenly they were back and had not shared your trauma, while experiencing their own that you can't relate to.
I think my big problem was contracts and compression. RDJ and the Chrises only had so many, and anything past those was a case-by-case gamble. Already in Phase 1 we saw problems. The tonal problem of Ed as Bruce/Hulk. Yeah, it ultimately led to Mark, but at the time it didn't quite seem to land right. Then the Iron Man 2 mess. Terence being stupid and thinking he was untouchable because "they needed him", not even trying to find an actor who at least vaguely resembled him to take over the part, the same minor niggle I have with the first film repeated (I find "killing the bad guy" weak writing). I really hoped, after seeing his final battlesuit, that Vanko would end up becoming the MCU's Crimson Dynamo. I would have preferred Stane survive to beome -- even temporarily -- the nemesis he was to Tony in the comics.
Then Phase 2 got into other problems. Iron Man 3 should have been two films. There was too much story crammed into too little run-time, with too many scenes rushed and too much linking either cut or shoehorned in. I still liked it, and, where many didn't, Thor 2. The problem of compression culminated in Age of Ultron, which also should have been two films -- perhaps having Tony working on Ultron right after the Battle of New York in Iron Man 3, and calling the whole phase "The Age of Ultron", with the linking threads woven through -- Project: Insight seems like it could dovetail with the Ultron Project nicely. And I'm not sure how I feel about Ant-Man placed where it is -- at the end of the phase. After the big team movie. Or, given how I feel AoE itself should have been two films (how many moments in there do people forget even existed, or thought were from another movie?), maybe Ant-Man could have been a nice, light palate-cleanser between them.
The structure works best when the new phase starts out with the aftermath of the previous. Iron Man 3, he's still actively dealing with the trauma of the alien invasion of New York that just happened. Phase 3 starts with Civil War, and that really should have come right on the heels of the Battle of Sokovia. And, as with Phase 2, 3 suffers from compression, as well, from the end of Ragnarok/beginning of Infinity War. And, similarly, I feel the Infinity War should have been three big team films, spread out with more between. We never really felt the impact of the Snapture. We just got told two films later that five years had passed.
And that's where some of the un-helpful aimlessness of Phase 4 could have been avoided/prevented. Before losing Black Widow was a good time to go into her backstory and introduce people who would be trying to find her after the Snap was undone. Good place to introduce Shang-Chi, the Eternals, Moon Knight... Kamala Khan getting her powers, say, from the Un-Snappening would have, I feel, worked better than all of the random backstory they piled onto a character who was barely mentioned in the comics. Since they kinda borked the roll-out of the Inhumans and didn't have the terragin mist bomb over the New York metro area.
"And it's still a better love story than Twilight." That to say... I don't put Kevin Fiege on an unrealistic pedestal. He has overseen a more-consistent long-form cinematic saga than anything else I've run across, for all that it still has missteps and clinkers. I am still mad that they didn't unfridge Killmonger to show up in Wakanda Forever. Missed opportunity, there. But, overall, I have loved all the ideas and visions and takes on things that have gone through the lens of the MCU. I am far from burned out on it, even if there are some installments I am unlikely to watch again.
Star Wars... has never had a guiding vision. Early on, it was collaborative and contexts shifted as new ideas came into the mix. Because all he had were notes and notions, as George asserted more direct control over things with ROTJ and into the Prequels, he felt free to use or overwrite whatever from wherever to suit his latest hot take. And after he sold it to Disney, it got exponentially worse. Iger pushed to have a film out ASAP, and TFA got pushed out the door with no over-arching vision. Just vague notions about where the story could go. That's why I can't get too mad about TLJ. They didn't present Rian with an outline and say, "Do this." They said, "Here's the first film. Take it from there." And he did his thing and it didn't fit their plans, but since they hadn't given him any/many restrictions, whose fault, really, is it? So TROS was as much of a slapdash mess as it was due to a very preventable crisis of their own making.
Twice over, actually, because it didn't have to be a damn trilogy. We already know there was nothing mystical about it. That it was only the Star Wars Trilogy by many convergent accidents of fate. George never intentionally laid down a "Trilogy Model", as Kathleen and others in post-Disney Lucasfilm have referred to it. The story needs the room it needs, in the MCU or the GFFA. Real-world practical considerations like COVID or the death of an actor, can be worked around, if one is at all creative. Corporate convenience -- contract limitations, schedule and timeline, actors saying inconvenient things, writers'-room spitballing... These are the things that impact quality. And they are wholly a product of corporate-think.
Every time I watch a movie that had the potential to be incredible and it fell on its face, I remember that it was the product of a committee -- which Heinlein defined as "a life-form with six or more legs and no brain". From that, we get, "The dead speak! Somehow Palpatine has returned." There needs to be a voice, a keeper, a guardian of the i.p. Someone who knows the lore, listens to the ideas, and then says, "This is the direction we're going to go." Someone who understands the business side of things and can work within that to get the creative side of things to happen with internal integrity.
And if I knew how to make that happen, I'd suggest it. *lol*
