Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies and Streaming Series Discussion

[Ru1977]

If the next two Avengers movies flop, they'll change their minds. We saw it happen with Star Wars.

What I'm really pissed at you for is getting me to defend the ST, but Rise of Skywalker brought in over a billion dollars. I definitely agree how the next two Avengers perform will determine everything though.

 

[TheSameIdiot]

What I'm really pissed at you for is getting me to defend the ST, but Rise of Skywalker brought in over a billion dollars. I definitely agree how the next two Avengers perform will determine everything though.

When you factor in the marketing budget, they probably barely broke even. They also haven't made one in six years.

 

[Ru1977]

 

[Ru1977]

I don't really grasp how LFL apparently spending $800,000,000 on marketing one movie proves Iron Man shouldn't be on screen though.

 

[Sgt. Stinky]

I love this post. My man @TFitz has summed up my feelings exactly.

We've had Superman and Fantastic Four movies before, of course. But except for that first Superman movie back in 1978 they've all kind of missed the mark.

Fox really blew it with the FF. It was clear they just didn't get it. The FF is not a situation comedy nor is it dark, gritty and "grounded". The Fantastic Four are just the exact opposite of grounded. They're ... FANTASTIC. It's the lost city of Atlantis, Monster Island, the Negative Zone, the Blue Area of the Moon, the Savage Land, Attilian, Wakanda, Latveria ... it's Dr. Doom's time machine, the Watcher, the Kree, the Skrulls, the Devourer of Worlds ... it's epic fantasy on an incredible scale. The FF are a family. They're not superheroes per se. Fighting crime is not what gets them out of bed in the morning. I mean, if they're tooling around town in the Fantasticar and they see a bank robbery or something they'll obviously stop it. But at their core, the Fantastic Four are explorers. They're scientists. They challenge the unknown (as their counterparts at a different comic book company did). Based on what I've seen of this film so far, I really feel that Marvel Studios gets it. Finally.

Superman. What is Superman to me? Remember that scene in the 1978 movie, when Margot Kidder as Lois Lane asked "Who are you?" and Superman said "A friend." Bingo. That's it. He's a friend. He's hope when all seems lost. He can fight the battles that we can't. He's everything we wish we could do and everything we wish we could be. And his world is Smallville, Metropolis, the woman he loves, his best friend, his boss, his parents, his dog, his Kryptonian cousin and his home. He values life. Everyone's life. It's the bottled city of Kandor, it's Jimmy Olsen's signal watch, it's the Legion of Super-Heroes, it's a race against the Flash, it's the Fortress of Solitude, it's being part of the World's Finest team with another caped crusader. That's what Superman is to me.

So, based on what I've seen so far, it would appear that Kevin Feige and James Gunn get it. They really, really get it. At last, we're going to get the Fantastic Four and Superman movies I've waited my entire life for. No more Galactus as a storm cloud, no more dour and brooding Man of Steel.

I'm sixty six years old, but a part of me will always be six. When comics were so much fun. And that's how old I'm going to be at the movies next month.

Can't wait.

I turn 60 in September and couldn't say it any better. Superman was exactly this and Fantastic Four so far feels the same. Can't wait to see it Friday with my two best friends who I swapped and bought comics with all those years ago.

 

[TheSameIdiot]

I don't really grasp how LFL apparently spending $800,000,000 on marketing one movie proves Iron Man shouldn't be on screen though.

I'm just saying, if they expect Doomsday to do Endgame numbers, they're sadly mistaken.

What I said here is more to do with Iron Man/Cap coming back:

Exactly. That character, so much as it exists in Marvel canon, is Spider-Man. I think people would show up for Hulk and Wolverine, too, to a lesser extent.

Yep. The MCU project was interesting because they didn't have Spidey, Hulk, or Wolverine to play with. They had to establish Cap and Iron Man as true A-list heroes.

I'd much rather see them try to make another A-lister than return to the same well over and over again. As I said before, they haven't really tried with the new crop of heroes.

 

[Ru1977]

Right, and I'm not gonna argue against your preference, but I still see Doomsday doing Endgame numbers as a possibility. No Way Home came out after Covid and made almost $2 billion, Deadpool & Wolverine made $1.33 billion, so a movie pitting Avengers against nostalgia bait could do real money.

And I will honestly be shocked if these Avengers movies don't introduce a new Cap, Iron Man, etc, especially since Feige is already laying that track.

 

[Ru1977]

Kevin Feige on the X-Men and their costumes

There’ve been more X-Men movies than there were Spidey movies or ‘Fantastic Four’ movies, so a lot has been done. But again, because it’s because it’s almost a comic legacy onto itself, there’s so much more to tap into it and there’s so many sagas within sagas for X-Men that that’s part of what we’re talking about now is which saga to grow and build to while doing the most important thing, which is introducing all of these characters and giving them their due in our first film…I’m not going to speak to the makeup of the characters that will be in the first movie, but look at Galactus, […] look at Gambit in Deadpool & Wolverine, look at Wolverine in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine.’ We want to embrace that which was not embraced 25 years ago when I was around on those early ‘X-Men’ movies, which is those comic-accurate looks,”

Yep, great. I am all for this.

 

[Ru1977]

More Feige. No Miles anytime soon:

Sony has their brilliant, genius, incredible Spider-Verse animated franchise going and until that finishes, we’ve been told to stay away.

Brand New Day will feature

street-level crime, as opposed to world-ending events.

Michael Waldron (Loki, but also MOM) is helping with writing Doomsday.

We produced 50 hours of stories between 2007 and 2019, but in the six years since 'Avengers: Endgame,' we've had well over 100 hours of stories — in half the time. That's too much.

Blade has had four different scripts:

We didn’t want to simply just put a leather outfit on [Ali] and have him start killing vampires, it had to be unique and it fell right into the time when we started pulling back and saying 'only accept insanely great' and it wasn’t insanely great at the time.

Fans can look at the Secret Wars comic for clues how the MCU will look after that movie:

Reboot is a scary word. Reboot can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Reset, singular timeline — we’re thinking along those lines. 'X-Men' is where that will happen next. (Secret Wars) very, very much sets us up for the future.

 

[Ru1977]

I know I posted about Schreier directing X-Men but more Feige quotes!

It’s official, Jake Schreier is doing X-Men for us, and we’re very, very lucky to have him and very excited to have him. And so we’re beginning. It’s all starting now. The script’s underway. Jake’s an incredibly smart guy, and he’s an incredibly talented filmmaker. We had a great experience with him on Thunderbolts*. And if you saw that movie, what he did with those character interactions, he also has his pulse on, shall we say, a younger demographic. He’s younger than me for sure, but he’s tapped into that in a way that I think was important for Thunderbolts*, much more important for X-Men. Because X-Men, as it was in the comics, will be a very youth-oriented, focused and cast movie.”

 

[fac]

I don't know if the MCU ever needs anyone narratively since writers can just write anything. But I would think the bigger drive is having access to ALL their characters at the same time for the first time, and having an MCU where anyone can cameo in anyone else's project is too good to pass up just because they already told great stories with some of them.

I get that, but ultimately though I am coming at this from three angles:

1. I want the MCU versions of the FF and X-Men to breathe for a bit and have the spotlight and not seem secondary to "The Avengers".
2. I don't want shenanigans to bring back Cap and IM undermine what I think was outstanding and earned endings for both characters.
3. I don't want those characters to take the place of the Young Avengers in terms of focus. Point blank if you asked me if I could only choose between them making another legacy Avengers movie or a movie led by Kamala, Kate, Yelena, Jen, Monica et al, I would go with the new group every time.

They haven't yet shown, so don't attempt to let them?

Not what I meant, I was trying to say that just because you can reboot Bats and Supes and Spidey because they are magnitudes bigger doesn't mean it will go over as well for IM or Cap or BP. The question is at what point do they "end" the MCU and then start over - if they did I would just go right to classic Avengers with the Mansion, Jarvis, and the team already together with a rotating membership.

They do, but I would be shocked if Evans wants to commit to multiple appearances as Steve again. He's pretty vocal about not wanting to maintain the Cap physique. I imagine one, if he is gonna be in Doomsday or Secret Wars (which is heavily rumored, but still not known as which character), is easier for him that another trilogy or more.

I wouldn't want multiple appearances of Cap either but just was pointing out there are ways to get more of him on screen without retconning the whole thing. Harder with Stark. Of course I think that Doom is going to be Stark from another universe...

 

[Ru1977]

if you asked me if I could only choose between them making another legacy Avengers movie or a movie led by Kamala, Kate, Yelena, Jen, Monica et al, I would go with the new group every time

If those are the only choices, I'm totally with you. I really want that set up to go somewhere. But I'm hoping bringingback retired characters isn't done at the expense of the characters they've recently introduced.

Not what I meant, I was trying to say that just because you can reboot Bats and Supes and Spidey because they are magnitudes bigger doesn't mean it will go over as well for IM or Cap or BP

Thank you for explaining. But maybe not being such big characters can help with the transition too, heh.

The question is at what point do they "end" the MCU and then start over

Seemingly, given what Feige has been saying the last week, not anytime soon. He seems to want all his toys in play without starting all over.

just go right to classic Avengers with the Mansion, Jarvis, and the team already together with a rotating membership

Honestly, I'm for that at this point. We really don't need another origin story for any of them. My idea yesterday was rather than the FF being stranded in the main universe and continuing on from there, having some of the heroes from the main universe ending up in the FF one and THAT being the new prime universe. They could even do an Avengers movie later on without showing any origins, not even for the formation of the team itself, but it wouldn't be crazy to accept the FF's retro sixties world has their own Tony, Steve, Natasha, etc. Just jump right in.

just was pointing out there are ways to get more of him on screen without retconning the whole thing.

Right, and if he were younger and willing, that would be cool. I would love for that to happen. Even have a secret 80s Avengers movie with T'challa's dad, Hank and Janet, and a cameo of Red Guardian when he actually really did fight Steve.

I also would like a low budget, minor threat story for Avengers 3.5 set after Thanos's snap, really exploring the world at that time.

Of course I think that Doom is going to be Stark from another universe...

Definitely one of the possibilities.

 

[PanchaMaestro]

It would be cool if you go longer than that.

eh ... well 2 hours and 20 minutes longer; sure.

I will not be into Doom being a Stark variant if that is the rout they are going.

 

[Ru1977]

At least!

 

[docsilence]

I don't think any of us, or Feige, or anyone else can figure out how to keep the MCU going forever because there's no template for success. It is something that has NEVER happened before and NOBODY has been able to replicated it since... but I wonder if Marvel, by casting the Avengers too well, painted themselves into Star Wars territory (fans rejecting a recast like Star Wars fans did with Solo) or if in general they just won't be able to catch lightning in a bottle again. I think there's a chance they can pull a Spider-Man/Batman/Superman thing and reboot the entire franchise all over again, but also... it's fuckin' huge. I don't think it's a bad thing to do a hard reset on the MCU and just go to MCU 2.0, but they may have built too big a universe to start over again. (And we've talked in one of the threads around here about how a hard reset for Star Wars wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, but there's a lot riding on them NOT rebooting and if anything, Hollywood is not known for its courage...)

But again, we're all just armchair quarterbacking it right now, because nobody's ever done 36 interconnected films and 29 interconnected TV series without a soft reset. They might have run the engine into the ground by being too good for too long and then not recognizing when it was time to trade the car in for a new model. It won't be as easy as a Bond or even a Spidey reset, and I reckon they've got one shot in our lifetimes to not fuck it up.