Marvel Cinematic Universe general stuff

The White Wolf

I should have added that I see FF as a key turning point much like Civil War was, as for me that film kicked off the MCU's peak years in terms of quality.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121384486#Comment_121384486

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121384536#Comment_121384536

Really, we can't know if it's dying til the MCU is dead; cos when it does we'll have seen the trajectory in its entirety. For now every cough might be the start of decline, or just a cough.

But if they can't even get a script together for something like Blade, I'm not convinced even they know the answer here, or how to arrest the decline. The rest of Disney's big ticket properties don't suggest a strong hand at the tiller either.

Agreed on FF; that'll be the acid test here and I don't know. Previous iterations of the property have been ... well, the definition of mixed and the Miles Teller version is a fascinating case study in studio meddling. It's an odd property, speaking even in the context of this MCU, Guardians n all.

The 2015 flick had the right idea in keeping it small, but it just fell apart in the execution (would be curious to see the original, supposedly more horror inflected version Josh Trank supposedly made).

pjohnson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121384710#Comment_121384710

Tbf Blade is probably Marvel's weirdest property within their catalogue in the sense that he generally has no business being there.

He is generally operating by himself against vampires in his own little corner of things. Outside of Blade series vampires have just never really established themselves much, even years ago during "Twilightmania", Jubilee was made a vampire for a few years, and there was an alternate vampire version of Storm for a few months, but vampires as a species have just never really took off in Marvel for whatever reason.

The White Wolf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121384710#Comment_121384710

Re Blade, I completely agree and I think this is where the lessons have been learned. There's no reason why a Blade film needs to cost more than a 100m.

On FF, I can't stress enough how huge this film will be for the future of the MCU. They should be taking the money from reduced budgets elsewhere and putting it all on FF, and this is where we disagree. The Fantastic Four are not meant to be grounded like the 2015 film, they are space explorers. The scale should be huge, and the leaks about starting with Galactus does not surprise me. They have to go all out with this film, its critical.

Slutmonkey57b

You must be smoking something. They've done how many versions of the fantastic 4 and they've all been box office and critical disasters. More to the point, absolutely nobody who isn't a marvel comics nerd gives a toss about the characters, because they're demonstrably outdated and uninteresting. The whole enterprise is tainted by the previous attempts. You'd have a cinema going audience being presented with "remember that studio that's lost the ability to write decent films? They're doing a reboot of that series that's already failed 3 times. How much money do you fancy wasting on tickets?"

pixelburp

They were by no means critical darlings but the first F4 film did make 330 million off of a 100 million budget in 2005 ... so success enough to get a sequel, during post Spider-Man gold rush. So there's potentially an audience if they leaned into the cosmic boisterousness of it all, make them Captain America esque, out of time throwbacks ?

Penn

https://marvel-movies.fandom.com/wiki/Captain_America_%281990%29

Can't believe Marvel had the audacity to try reboot Captain America after it already failed the previous time.

(Also applies to the 2003 Hulk film, Spider-Man after the failure of the Andrew Garfield films which also killed their Sinister Six plans, X-Men reboot with First Class after the failure of X-Men 3 and Wolverine Origins, Deadpool after the failure of Wolverine Origins).

The first two F4 films did okay. They weren't great by any stretch, but they were decent and a bit of fun. The latest reboot was just horrible, and plagued with issues far beyond what ended up on the screen. It was doomed from the start.

Neither are indicators on how a reboot within the MCU will do. It's not the characters and whether or not people care about them. Nobody "cared" about Iron Man, Cap or Thor in 2006. But Iron Man was done so well, the stinger at the end hinting towards the Avengers raised more interest in Cap and Thor, and then the rest led to the MCU we know.

If F4 were done well, people could easily care about them again.

The White Wolf

Fox botching their Fantastic Four films is not a reflection of their popularity, especially in America.

Edit Just seems a bit mad to me to say the property is a dud when Marvel have built the MCU around secondary characters from their gallery.

johnny_ultimate

I have no doubt X-Men will create a bit of a buzz in the MCU if done right, but also worth remembering they have never been Spider-Man / Batman sized megahits film-wise either. They've done perfectly fine, especially given the more modest budget these types of films used to be produced under. But only Days of Future Past and, to a slightly lesser degree, Logan have done really well by modern / MCU standards. Of course, modern standards are demented, but given how big the original Spider-Man trilogy was, for example, X-Men has never been on that level.

Fan favourites of course, but will be interesting to see if they're any kind of panacea for any wider audience frustration with superhero movies given there's been no shortage of 'em in the past. There's been some seriously **** X-Men movies in the wake of Future Past, too, which won't help.

That said, X-Men adjacent Deadpool 3 does seem the closest thing they have to a guaranteed hit on the roster at the moment. If that doesn't hit - and I'd be surprised if it doesn't, regardless of quality (a Shawn Levy directed Deadpool film is something I'm personally not going to be going anywhere near!!) - then they'll really be in trouble.

Slutmonkey57b

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121387978#Comment_121387978

It makes perfect sense because audiences had very few preconceived ideas about the characters before the films came out. At that point, marvel was focused on one thing at a time so characters got a chance to be introduced and there was an element of quality control. Whereas for the 4, people do have preconceived ideas about the characters (they're **** and boring and their films will not be worth going to) and there is no clamouring to bring them back because they've been given multiple introductions and have been shown the door by cinemagoers.

pjohnson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121356437#Comment_121356437

2 seasons down.

I'd completely forgotten just how hilarious pre-framework Fitz was, granted he was still funny after but more as a straight man for Enoch/Deke, but pre-Framework Fitz is priceless.

pjohnson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121418756#Comment_121418756

Ah no, Mack saying goodbye to Hunter and Bobbi. Thats one of, if not the biggest cut onion moments in the whole MCU. I'd deleted that from my memory.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121425617#Comment_121425617

Ah yeah, the Spy's Goodbye. Great scene. Really started to solidify Mack as one of my favourite characters.

Mad to think Hunter and Bobbi were leaving for a potential spin-off...

Mitch Connor

Mack in the framework..... CCCCRRRRYYYYY.

flazio

Apart from Ming Na, who was already a big name anyway, nobody on Agents of SHIELD has gone on to much, not even Clark Gregg.

McFly85

The MCU is something that won’t be finished any time soon but the culmination of the infinity saga and the expansion into Disney+ has made what’s come since a complete mess.

2/3 films a year that could largely stand by themselves with slight ties to the overarching story with 1 team up worked well as a process.

With Disney+ it’s really expanded the roster where there’s new incidents, mythologies and heroes being added practically every week - and the integration of these into the main films makes everything more confusing and requires a significantly larger time commitment from the viewer. I don’t expect this strategy to change, I assume Disney want this to get subscriptions to their platform.

pjohnson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121425695#Comment_121425695

Yeah actually Mack really went through the blender when ya think about it.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121427480#Comment_121427480

They've already announced that a lot of the upcoming Disney+ shows will be under a new banner; Marvel Spotlight, which will focus on smaller "street-level" stories and characters with little-to-no integration into the main MCU arc/films. They're not really going to be the level of required viewing that the likes of Wandavision, Falcon & Winter Soldier or Loki have been.

They're definitely recognising that it's becoming far more of a hindrence than a help, and that a lot of fans are checking out due to the amount of content, so they're dividing it all up a bit.

one armed dwarf

They won't ever grab the momentum back for this I think tbh. It'll sort of hit a lull and a general plateau and they'll adapt a release strategy around that.

Reminds me of when an MMO dips after its peak, sometimes people just permanently burn out on a thing. Doesn't matter how much you try to adjust the flow, the films are too similar in their overall narrative structure and style. Once they hit a cadence that doesn't involve just releasing huge bombs into the cinema they'll find a way to make something that appeals to the next generation of cinema goers and doesn't have so much interconnected homework. But they won't see success like they did with the Infinity films for a very long time, if ever imo

Deadpool will be a hit though because people like those two actors a whole lot. They need to bring that star appeal back in some way

johnny_ultimate

I definitely think there’ll still be occasional hits - things like Deadpool, Spider-Man or other well-known characters will do well. What I’d doubt at this stage is whether the MCU alchemy - where almost anything they release was a megahit - can continue. And that means the big team-up events become less important too, unless they really double down on a handful of big, important characters.

Ditto with DC - you’ll have Batman and maybe Superman continue to hit most likely, but it’s also a really bad time for them to be betting on them doing a whole reboot with a lot of niche properties and serialised stories. James Gunn has his work cut out for him, to put it mildly.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121428597#Comment_121428597

Hey, don't forget Sony in all this; sure don't they have Madame Web and Kraven on the way? They're surely about to cream it in 🤭

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121428605#Comment_121428605

It’s a bit too raw talking about those films for me, as my mom was also in the Amazon when she was researching spiders, right before she died.

Agent Coulson

Decent choice to write it.

‘Loki’ Creator Michael Waldron To Write Marvel Studios’ ‘Avengers: The Kang Dynasty’

https://deadline.com/2023/11/loki-michael-waldron-marvel-studios-avengers-kang-dynasty-1235638887/

Sudden Valley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121429316#Comment_121429316

i thought Kang was being written out of the MCU due to problems with the actor?

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121429351#Comment_121429351

Think that was a rumour and unconfirmed. They thought Secret Wars or something was gonna take precedent.

flazio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121428605#Comment_121428605

Spider-Verse and the PlayStation videogames are probably the best things carrying the Marvel logo at the moment.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121430779#Comment_121430779

I definitely get the distinct impression from a wild guess those running the SpiderVerse films are definitely not those running ... ... whatever you call that live action universe. Not sure if you can chalk up the Miles Morales movies as intentional success from Sony!

~Rebel~

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121430540#Comment_121430540

It'll be very hard to use Majors given the sheer number and content of the allegations and the impending court case that could drag on for a while - but it wouldn't be toooo hard to swap actors. It's already been shown in-universe that the different iterations of the same character can look very different. We've seen a whole bunch of different Loki's. So they can just pull an "Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" and have the Kang that emerges be a different version. Or have some bit of time travel make some little change, and 'pop' that change has resulted in all the Kangs having a different face instead of Majors. Since the solution is built into the story already, it seem easier than trying to course correct the whole planned narrative arc.

(side note - just realised that the two high profile in-movie "magic'ed" face changes I can think of both involved Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell. Both replaced Heath Ledger in Doctor Parnassus after he passed away, and then Johnny Depp was replaced by Mads Mickelson, having previously been disguised as Colin Farrell in the Fantastic Beasts movies.)

Cotts72

I said the same thing the other day when debating the Kang situation...considering it's Kang and the amount of variants out there ...marvel can easily replace Majors if required to do so!

David Washington maybe even Denzel himself

Donald Glover

Aldis Hodge

Winston Duke (it's a multiverse after all!)

Lakeith Stanfield

Idiris Elba (see multiverse)

To name a few

pixelburp

Aye: considering an entire show, Loki, has gone out of its way to demonstrate that alternative versions of a character don't necessarily equate to having the same face, race or gender, if the Jonathan Majors controversy becomes untenable I don't see why they can't just recast. Though I don't imagine Marvel would be foolish enough to cast a white person to replace Majors - the press and viral sledging alone would be something.

Agent Coulson

He can just be replaced by a variant who looks different.

Agent Coulson

I do wonder were all the 2024 releases actually delayed till 2025 so they can do reshoots next year for that reason if he has to be removed from already filmed scenes and those movies have to be rewritten in some form.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121432313#Comment_121432313

It's as good a guess as any: if nothing else a surprise recasting might drum up and restore a little hype and excitement for a situation that has rapidly declined since Majors became a questionable choice. Bad enough the general response has been meh to Kang as the new Thanos - worse still if the actor yet turns out to be toxic.

Fysh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121432271#Comment_121432271

Tbh, watching the second season of Loki I was half-expecting

Spoiler Warning

to see Renslayer take over as the "new" Kang/He Who Remains.

There are a number of ways this particular issue could be dealt with that would have little impact on the larger narrative.

flazio

2 geekdom names to throw out there who probably wouldn't command astronomical pay demands. LeVarr Burton or Michael Dorn.

Agent Coulson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121432524#Comment_121432524

On the spoiler that was the guess I posted in the Loki thread as Marvel's get out of jail card they could play.

I think it would work myself and the actor is good enough to pull it off.

Agent Coulson

Jonathan Majors trial started today

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/jonathan-majors-assault-trial-jury-selection-1235810846/

~Rebel~

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121432242#Comment_121432242

Would love Donald Glover or Lakeith Stanfield for it.

Agent Coulson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121434433#Comment_121434433

Watched the trailer for Stanfields new film (The Book of Clarence) and it had me in stiches he would be a good choice.

Foxtrol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121432313#Comment_121432313

Possibly but those movies seem like strange ones for Kang to be involved in outside of an end credit. They look like they'll be earth based and none of the heroes or their storylines really fit taking him on.

If they are rewritten to remove him, it would be more to get all the pieces in position to a position to kick off the two Avengers movies by a different path.

Feel most likely that what they were seeing had all the flaws that have caused the most recent movies to have issues so trying to resolve them. Obviously one of the issues of recent movies were the changes that were made so they might be causing more issues than they're fixing.

The White Wolf

A recast is the easiest route as there's no need to fast track Doom for example, which is being speculated online.

When you think about it Marvel were quite fortunate. Of all the characters they could have found themselves in this situation, Kang gives them the easiest out. I'd say they're just kicking themselves over that Quantamania post credit scene.

Varik

Kang normally has the blue face which he'd for some of the time in Ant man, they could easily have anyone play him with a CGI face and just get close with the voice.

~Rebel~

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121444453#Comment_121444453

Generally for movies you don't want to hide someone behind a mask too much though, you want to be able to see them emote and perform, and also to have that recognition to be able to use a big character for promotional work etc. There's also the element that the reason they might drop Majors is to actively distance themselves from him and his alleged actions, so it'll have to be a more firm distinction rather than just hiding the character behind a mask. Actually just recasting him works better anyway, fits within the world they've established, and lets them bring in someone interesting they can make the most of (like Donald Glover/Lakeith Stanfield etc).

Agent Coulson

Hopefully Feige sticks to his word on this.

Downey’s Iron Man made his exit in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, still a high-water mark for the series. Marvel has a reputation for resurrecting characters who seemingly meet their ends, but Feige says that won’t happen to Stark. “We are going to keep that moment and not touch that moment again,” Feige says. “We all worked very hard for many years to get to that, and we would never want to magically undo it in any way.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/12/robert-downey-jr-cover-story

pleasant Co.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121450023#Comment_121450023

Iron man return confirmed 🤣

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121450023#Comment_121450023

Considering the money Downey Jr. was on before EndGame, could you imagine how much he could demand from Marvel were they to come knocking? I'd say Feige's comments are as much driven about the cost as anything - plus the actor himself seems keen enough to put some distance on the role.

pjohnson

I'd completely forgotten JUST how bloody amazing season 4 of Agents of Shield was. How has Gabriel Luna not gone onto more things!

And I somehow never copped till now that Polly Hinton was played by Elle from Season 1 of Criminal Minds. I thought she'd completely retired from acting after Criminal Minds!

Foxtrol

They have left enough room from maneuver though in how they framed it. Downey appearing as a different, likely evil, Iron Man from another universe doesn't 'magically undo it', as it isn't the MCU Iron Man so shouldn't take away from that moment. They could probably make the argument that it could enhance it if you see the reaction of other characters (I do not agree with that argument).

There is really only negatives of them doing it outside of a very short term money grab so hopefully everyone looks at that perspective.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121453457#Comment_121453457

Season 4 was such a high point and legitimately good TV; and it's crazy to think much of the season was spent in an ostensible virtual reality where nothing that happened should have mattered - but they made it work so, so very well. The stuff with Mack was heartbreaking but wow wow: turning Fitz into a Dr. Mengele figure - then letting him remember every damn minute of it? Chef's kiss.

Varik

Set photos for Deadpool 3 doing the rounds they spoil something big.