Marvel Cinematic Universe general stuff

~Rebel~

Ms Marvel was one of the few bright spots post-endgame, and Iman Vellani is great, so i think for that element alone it'll be worth a watch.

eightieschewbaccy

I'm definitely giving The Marvels an in cinema chance if reviews are reasonable. Even if The Flash had reviewed well, I'm not sure if I'd have gone simply because of Ezra Miller and that general scandal.

Penn

Word of mouth will definitely play a big part in The Marvels' box office performance. The Flash was pretty much dead on arrival. The Marvels, whereas it might have a slow opening, if reception is generally positive it could see a decent return in the following weeks, especially thanksgiving weekend.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121330317#Comment_121330317

I actually liked Wandavision because it was so different but havnt watched anything since as it all looked very generic. I guess with this movie if it does badly it will just solidify that Marvel is done as far as the public is concerned , that people dont want to have to do homework to watch a movie or be bothered watching films based on increasingly obscure characters.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121330317#Comment_121330317

It's a mixture of a Deadpool (no punt intended) as to when the MCU's first proper & bonafide flop will transpire, mixed with how Brie Larsen has become something of a rallying cry for all the whingebags on the internet who like to get upset about women in blockbusters.

Full_Circle_81

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121330732#Comment_121330732

I really wanted to like WandaVision and I enjoyed the general approach to the story, using the novelty of sitcoms across the decades. But I didn't appreciate the weird way they made Wanda the victim at the end, undercut the whole show for me. Then Multiverse of Madness Wanda seemed to ignore any progress/self reflection made on the show, making the whole endeavour feel rather pointless.

On your second point, it will be interesting to see how Marvel tackle things if the movie does bomb. I'd hope it makes them lean towards more sub-100mil productions in the future, with a lot more planning in advance (giving more time for quality VFX work and less time on hasty reshoots).

But I think part of the reshoots were to make it easier for audiences to understand who the new characters are without any prior knowledge of the shows. It probably should have been written that way anyway. Heck, I've seen all related movies and shows and even I'm a little foggy as to their exact relationship/bond to each other!

pjohnson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121330945#Comment_121330945

Yeah Wandavision aged terribly almost immediately.

It had cool moments but was essentially just an incredibly extended prologue with a lot of meaningless fluff immediately discarded just to make her the antagonist in Multiverse of Madness.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121330956#Comment_121330956

Wandavision was great up until the last episode, where it just devolved into "big CGI battle in the sky". After that, even though it was set up how Wanda might become corrupted by the Darkhold, the leap between her at the end of Wandavision and how she was in DS:MoM was jarring even for people who did watch Wandavision, never mind people who skipped it.

pjohnson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121330980#Comment_121330980

The 2 Visions were great in the finale.

pixelburp

I didn't even mind the CGI as oppossd to the script being so afraid to make Wanda a villain it had the village's people forgive her actions. She literally trapped an entire town in her fantasy, the people stuck as puppets to her whim... but at the end it was like oooh, but she was in love, she had children etc .

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121331023#Comment_121331023

If I remember right I think the people in the town didn't forgive her, but it was just Monica who was far too forgiving and just let her go. Saying something about how the people in the town wouldn't understand the pain of her loss etc. Yeah they would, Wanda literally caused some of them that exact same pain. Anya from Buffy was pleading for Wanda to let her please see her daughter.

That scene was mostly what ruined the finale for me. Sky battle aside (and pjohnson is right that the Vision v Vision scene was great, though an unresolved ending that hasn't been addressed yet), they very quickly washed away what Wanda did and tried to still make her seem like a hero, and then she's mega-villain the next time we see her in DS:MoM.

Loughc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120245778#Comment_120245778

Posted this in Feb 15th and it's looking more and more true, I genuinely think we are watching the no longer slow death of the MCU, I think Marvel Studios will continue but the cinematic universe will die. It's no longer giving them the returns they're expecting. Ant-Man flopped and now The Marvels are set to flop, Secret Invasion was an awful series that ultimately went no where.

Mitch Connor

they need better writing and better product. Guardians showed the apitite is there if the quality is there.

Ant-Man was terrible (imo), Doctor Stange didn't lean hard enough into the Multiverse, imo. They've given us no reason to care about Shang-Chi.

Secret Invasion was poor as well - had all the budget, but the plot was poor and they also created the most OP character in their universe, which I would assume is going to be bizarrely ignored.

I liked Thor: L&T to be honest.

They've tried to create too much, rather than focusing on the stories.

Why did they introduce Kate Bishop? Why did they have Pugh involved in that show? Why did they hint at the young captain america kid in Falcon, why did they introduce Hulks FREAKING SON, at the end of She-Hulk? None of these things have gone anywhere, none of them look like going anywhere.

Hawkeye was 2 years ago. What was the point of it?

I thought we were going to get an Young Avengers TV show on Disney+, with a cross over movie for them. But Nope. Nothing.

Clareman

I'm probably just a stupid old man, but for me 1 of the great things about the MCU was that you could believe they were happening in the real world, to paraphrase the original Superman tag line, "you will believe a man can fly", this was done by grounding everything in the character with a reason/purpose, Tony was nearly killed, Cap wanted to be a hero, Hulk was a scientist, Thor was cast out by Odin, then you had a couple that just turned up (Black Widow & Hawkeye) and a couple who were introduced (Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver). They all had a reason and the special effects looked natural. They also just had the characters be who they were in the comics, could you imagine a scene in a current MCU movie where Stark & Rhodes have a chat on a plane while girls dance around them?

There was a couple of mis-steps, Iron Man 2, Thor 2, Hulk, Agents of SHIELD, but they made it work with a tweak here and there but by and large it came together, in my opinion mainly because they concentrated on the movies and cut the TV shows aside.

Now the MCU seems hell bent on having the special effects front and centre, loads of clouds of colours, flames, the likes of Ant-Man and Shang-Chi seemed more cartoon than movie at some stages. They are also doing a weird job of introducing the new characters, you either needed have done your homework before the movies or it's just skipped through.

Finally, I think the biggest problem that the MCU have created for themselves is that they have made everyone too powerful, there was always the risk that the superhero could die, or the world be destroyed or whatever, now they've had Thanos destroy half of living things only to have it reset, where do they go from there in regards to risk? Sure if the baddie wins all that'll happen is the Avengers will reset it. Then you have the power of the superhero, Avengers 1 had New York at complete risk from an alien invasion, fast forward a few years and a larger invasion comes along and it just needs Captain Marvel to come along to take out most of them, anytime there's a risk now in any of the movies the thought in the back of your mind would be "why don't they just call X?" or watching the movies back you think "Why didn't Fury just call Captain Marvel instead of bringing the Avengers together and risking all of New York to a nuke?"

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121331502#Comment_121331502

Yeah that's my two biggest bugbears with the MCU at the minute; the writing just isn't on par and they're hiring writers who simply don't have the experience for these types of projects, and they're throwing in things to set up future events/characters but not properly planned or thought out, just doing it for the sake of getting attention and building hype for something that they might never actually do anything with.

I didn't mind Pugh being in Hawkeye. In fairness it was all a way to help close out Clint & Nat's roles in the MCU, and basiclaly set up Yelena and Kate as the new Widow & Hawkeye. At least Yelena is due to be in Thunderbolts. Hailee Steinfeld, we might never see again, which would be a shame.

Loughc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121331557#Comment_121331557

I thought they had the next 10-15 years mapped out but it really doesn't feel that way, the problem about introducing threads here and there is they too slow in trying to tie them together.

pixelburp

It's worth pointing out that if you look at Phase 1 & the directors alone you see a marked difference in terms of caliber: nobody spectacular in terms of creative heavyweights, but you had Jon Favreau, Louis Leterrier, Joe Johnston, Kenneth Branagh and Joss Whedon in charge of The Avengers; sure Whedon was the weak link by far but the rest are working pros with decades of experience.

Now you look at the folks helming these things and they're anonymous indie directors who got these sudden career boosts but have absolutely zero experience running large productions, or have the experience at least to bring their own determination or vision - which is, perhaps, the intent on the part of Marvel. Said it before but we went from Sam Raimi helming the Spider-Man movies to Jon Watts, a director with absolutely no voice or vision of his own. I liked Cop Car, but ye gods good luck trying to mark out what he brings to the table beyond, I suspect, a deference towards Studio Notes.

johnny_ultimate

TBH the problem is they have so many moving parts it can take a half decade or more for teases to pay off - if (and that’s an increasingly big if) they pay off at all. Like they introduce Charlize Theron at the end of the new Doctor Strange, but there’s no sense of when that might actually pay off as it doesn’t look like there could be a follow up til maybe 2026 at the earliest? Or a Shang-Chi sequel which seems to be delayed until after the next Avengers movies.

Compare that to the speed of the original sequels like Iron Man, or even the pace they were getting Spider-Man films out. You kind of need that pace if you want to invest audiences in an ongoing story, rather than four or five years between sequels, or jumping straight into big team ups. And then you have COVID delays and now strike delays - that one’s definitely outside of Marvel’s control, but definitely shows how hard it can be to get multi-pronged serialised stories out at any kind of realistic pace when there’s dozens of moving parts.

Loughc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121331590#Comment_121331590

Isn't the whole point of the indie directors is they will shape the movie that the Marvel Studio execs want and they don't command a large fee as it's a massive career boost for them, the like of Sam Raimi want too much influence which often goes against the tone and the MCU Style, look at Dr Strange MOM, it became almost horror-eque in parts.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121331585#Comment_121331585

They might have had some of the big plot points/movies mapped out, but public reaction, actors deciding to move on, delays etc.... you can only plan so much. But it also means if they do have plans in place and then stuff changes, you're left trying to cover the gaps or tie up plot points in other areas, and it becomes messy.

The early phases of the MCU, the post-credits scenes were nearly always about one of the next films to come out (bar the Avengers films which were setting up Thanos, though I believe they weren't even really planning on doing Infinity Gauntlet/Thanos by the time of Avengers 1 because they didn't know if Avenger 1 would do well, so the Thanos appearance was more of a "Here's where we could go" than anything else). But now they're setting up things in post-credits that could be 5 years before we see anything further on it, and plans might change drastically in between. I gave the example earlier of the post-credits of Doctor Strange 1 setting up Baron Mordo as a future DS antagonist, and then by the time they got around to Multiverse of Madness, the original plan would have been Wanda killing Baron Mordo early in the film.

twinytwo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121331502#Comment_121331502

The problem with Disney is Disney Plus - it is basically the straw that broke the camels back. They have to pump out stuff (including a lot of Mavel related content) to try and get people to continue paying for the service. As a result all of their content has suffered.. a lot.

Clareman

They used to say that Marvel was the biggest Indie movie house in Hollywood, now it's just a section of Disney.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121331633#Comment_121331633

penny wise and pound stupid comes to mind, cheap out on directors/writers and spend obscene amounts on soulless effects as if 100 things to look at on one screen is more impressive than something more focused. Its like all the nonsense on Trek and Star wars with just copy pasting stuff all over the screen, complete hacks!!

pjohnson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121331624#Comment_121331624

Yep its like what @Mitch Connor said aswell they did 90% of the origin work for a Young Avengers series (maybe keeping Yelena off the board for now if she was gunna be with Thunderbolts). Maybe bringing Kamala in instead depending on her placement after The Marvels.

Yet they went for an Agatha series instead post WandaVision? They've ignored the open goal they created with a Young Avengers lineup.

Similarly they never seem to have given any inkling that Vision is going to do anything again further undermining his "conclusion" in WandaVision. Hell come to think of it, he could have very well served as some kind of senior mentor to the Young Avengers group, maybe exploring his memories/feelings of Tommy and Billy from WV by mentoring these young generation of heroes.

Moon Knight is oft forgotten but was quite good, almost Legion-esque in places. But given that they had already acquired FOX by then, it was definitely a big miss to have an Egyptian based show which lent into gods/legends give no allusions to Apocalypse or his Horsemen. Thats a seed/egg that woulda been used in the first 3 phases.

Instead it was Agatha and WonderMan because.......??

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121331711#Comment_121331711

I think what would have been better for the D+ TV shows would be if they were a step separated from the movies, kind of similar to when the Marvel shows were on Netflix. If the D+ shows were about the smaller characters/stories which didn't have as much of an effect on the movies, but maybe interacted with each other instead of having to go from movie, to TV, to movie etc. The movies affecting the TV shows, but the TV shows having a minor effect on the movies (as opposed to completely changing Wanda's whole character & motivations, setting up the cast of Thunderbolts etc).

It seems to be the direction they're planning on going, with Echo being the first Marvel Spotlight show which will be more about grounded heroes and smaller stories. Daredevil will probably be under the same banner.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121331793#Comment_121331793

Might have been confusing referencing Apocalypse in Moon Knight considering who previously played him in the X-Men film.

Mitch Connor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121331624#Comment_121331624

Forgot all about Theron, and I love her as an actress.

Which then reminded me that Harry Styles popped up in a post credits, as Thanos' brother.

I can't get excited for these things, cause there is no sense of them actually happening.

They appear to be just making movies to make them.

Why did they bother doing Eternals. Not only have we not seen those characters again, but the GIANT FREAKING MONSTER STICKING OUT OF THE PLANEY, or the other giant freaking monster that enveloped the world to talk to someone has been mentioned. When there is no impact on the world, I don't care.

pjohnson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121331814#Comment_121331814

Well they used Evan Peters for an extended dick joke so probably not.

But if not him they could have had "mysterious American Union Uniform from the American Civil War found in an ancient pyramid dated from before the Civil War" on display at the museum (one of the horseman was a confederate soldier), or hieroglyphs of Archangels wings etc) Easter Eggs like that were prevalent in earlier phases as a signpost of the future direction.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121331984#Comment_121331984

Haha, fair point. I actually loved them using Evan Peters a Pietro in Wandavision, I thought it was genius way to utilise the formula of the show (Darcy saying that he's been recast), reference his past as Quicksilver, and was a lot of fun. The dick joke though.... that was just awful and really annoyed people who were already annoyed that he was Quicksilver but not the Fox Quicksilver.

eightieschewbaccy

The more I think about it, the more I think the earlier poster who suggested bringing back Chris Evans etc back as dark Nazi versions of themselves might be a genuinely fun way to approach a reboot team up of some kind.

But God, they wrote them into corners with certain characters. Eg neighbourhood spiderman becoming impossible by naming Parker as spiderman resulting in stupid spells to reset memories. Slightly smaller worlds would be refreshing. Even accepting the concept of the multiverse leaves them free to do properly standalone stories around characters in certain universes but that doesn't seem to have even been considered.

Tangent completed, it just feels like it's all about figuring out the next big event rather than properly standalone stuff.