To be fair, each phase had it's own unique aspect to be excited about.
Phase 1, everything was new and exciting.
Phase 2, the new characters and cross overs, plus hinting to what was coming on Phase 3.
Phase 3 was just awesome.
To me, the story ended on phase 3, everything we had been building for finally came true with Infinity War and Endgame after so many movies. We are in limbo with these new movies since we can expect the crossover of characters, but we don't know what the bigger picture will be.
Yeah, I don't disagree with that much. Except that, for me, the excitement in phase 1 wasn't that "everything was new and exciting." In fact, for me, the first few films weren't exciting for me in concept much at all, since they involved characters I was only lukewarm about. For me, it was the promise of the upcoming crossover(s) and hinting at bigger connections, which up to that point, hadn't really been done in a movie universe before. I hadn't read Iron Man comics, and didn't think the character was all that interesting. But it was supposedly a superhero movie that was pretty well done, so that was cool. And then that post-credit scene mentioned "other heroes" and the Avengers initiative."
That got me and others excited. I had not idea what it would look like or how it would work, but if they could do some sort of crossover and have an Avengers team, that would be pretty cool.
Then Hulk came out. I wasn't really excited
about that movie, specifically. I didn't care for the character. And the prior Hulk movie was okay, but not great. And was this a sequel? A reboot? Not sure. Oh, but the post-credit scene doubles down on "a team is being put together."
They're serious about this!
Iron Man 2 excited me. The first one was good. And they started sprinkling in new characters, like Black Widow. And...Mjolnir! IT'S ON!
Thor: I didn't care that it wasn't great as a movie. I had always loved the character, and just the fact that they were doing a Thor movie was enough for me.
Captain America: Holy crap! I liked, but didn't love the character in the comics. But, man, they were going to great lengths to truly build a credible Avengers team. This was going to be spectacular!
Then Avengers was SO well done, and we got the teaser of Thanos in the end credits scene. Couple that with the other films in phase 2, and it was clear we were moving toward infinity war. And off we went. At that point, I didn't really overly care which movie was next and get too wound about about specific plots. It was all about the bigger story and how we were doing to get there, and it was largely all very cool.
I mean Black Widow is one of the least interesting Avengers anyway so I don't blame anyone for being lukewarm on the MCU currently
But Shang-Chi, Dr. Strange 2, Guardians 3, c'mon, lots of goodness to come later
I thought phase 2 was kind of dry and boring personally but it still had a couple goodies
In and of themselves, none of those interest me. I'm not saying there is anything "bad" about that lineup. But they are characters and storylines that, on their face, I don't have any emotional investment in. And without any hint a a bigger, overall storyline, there isn't that big arc to get me excited either. That said, as I've mentioned before, Marvel has done so well with their storylines in the past with characters I didn't much care for either. So I'm not ruling out getting sucked back in and enjoying every minute of it. It's just that, as of right now, for my particular tastes, there just isn't really any hook
yet. Maybe there will be. But I'm just not excited
now.