Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 4: Tripping Balls (Spoilers)

[mdmost 43001]

So Kang either gets recast or blown away by Doom

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/jonathan-majors-marvel-studios-dropped-kang-1235587971/

Edited December 18, 2023 by mdmost

[Js1 85337]

10 minutes ago, mdmost said:

So Kang either gets recast or blown away by Doom

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/jonathan-majors-marvel-studios-dropped-kang-1235587971/

Recast with Michael B Jordan and say nothing

Do it, Marvel.  I dare you. 

[UT_OB1 2223]

12 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Recast with Michael B Jordan and say nothing

Do it, Marvel.  I dare you. 

Half the people in this thread are complaining that back to the future 2 level of complexity time travel / multiverse is too confusing already. The bitching would never end. 

[atomheartbevo 89668]

 

[rantanamo 143]

6 hours ago, mdmost said:

I mean he faces up to a year in prison. What exactly do you think we're missing? That he was not guilty on the other charges? Sure he could get no jail time at all but the damage is done. 

The headlines are not bothering with details.

 

5 hours ago, BeardIP said:

It’s a shame he’s a crappy human and an abuser; he was awesome in Loki S2 and he thought he was the bright spot of S1 finale.

Didnt care for him in Ant man though. 

Yeah?

[Liquor and Poker 3659]

They could just completely scrap everything story-wise since the movie where Iron Man died and Captain America got old.  No one would really care. 

[Michael Knight 12977]

[atomheartbevo 89668]

 

[CooterBrown 18012]

17 hours ago, UT_OB1 said:

Half the people in this thread are complaining that back to the future 2 level of complexity time travel / multiverse is too confusing already. The bitching would never end. 

Yep.  Majors sacrificed himself to give Marvel an easy way out of the multiverse quagmire they created.  Doom poofs Kang and the multiverse out of existence. Problem solved.  Now do a soft reboot of the Marvel universe.

[atomheartbevo 89668]

11 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

Post End Game MCU has generally been bad, but DC has just never figured it out. It’s weird. I watched Blue Beetle on a plane yesterday and it would be better than only a handful of MCU movies (eternals, antman3) and was a pretty weak movie. So, I guess what I’m saying is, it could have been worse for MCU? At least we got the Endgame era MCU? Smile because it happened, don’t cry because it’s over.

What's really weird is that unlike Marvel, DC always had their A-Team (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Justice League in general) and all of their major villains, whereas Feige from the start and for many years after, had to work without Spider-Man, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four, and the villains tied to Spidey/X-Men/F4.

Maybe that forced Feige and Co. to put a lot more work into introducing and developing the original MCU characters so that non-comic book fans would get invested in them, and so the product was better.  DC had decades of Batman and Super-Man movies and the 1960s Batman and 1970s Wonder Woman TV series so everybody knew them and their villains already.

[Buzzrock 14920]

When the multiverse thing first surfaced I thought it was a brilliant way to have endless content and maybe tell some What If style new stories. Instead they made all the stories ABOUT the multiverse and it got tedious. Too bad.

[Js1 85337]

Well the MCU fatigue will get a nice break in 2024 from the endless content and movies: 

• What If Season 2 - Friday (released daily until December 30)
• Echo - January 10
• Deadpool - July 26
• Agatha: Darkhold Dairies - fall 2024
• Eyes of Wakanda - TBD
• X-Men 97 - TBD
• Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man - TBD

[atomheartbevo 89668]

4 minutes ago, Js1 said:

• Agatha: Darkhold Dairies - fall 2024

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Marvel released the official MCU Timeline book a few months ago and spoilers, the creation of the infinity Stones was the first canon MCU event in history  

Also, rumors of a new Iron Fist project with a female lead and Danny Rand being just Danny Rand.

Dumb fucking rumors, because Iron Fist season 2 literally ended with Colleen Wing becoming the new Iron Fist while Danny Rand went back to being.…Danny Rand (he lost the Iron Fist power earlier in the season).  Spoiler: He lost the power because the actor wasn’t charismatic.

If it’s not a continuation of the IF series, well the first Iron Fist was a woman so maybe they could be delving into the IF origins and explaining the stuff about the corpse of a previous Iron Fist that was in season 2. 

[Scary Stranger 1714]

Saw The Marvels yesterday. Horrible. Hands down the worst villain of any of the Marvel movies. The whole singing planet bit was painful. Some decent banter and the Flerkins. Otherwise, it was poo.

[mdmost 43001]

Cousin is The Thing. And hell yes on Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm. 

 

 

[Js1 85337]

[LCHorn 2620]

51 minutes ago, mdmost said:

Cousin is The Thing. And hell yes on Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm. 

 

 

That’s a pretty old foursome if they intend for it to have sequels.  

[crash_davis 23113]

On 1/27/2024 at 6:56 PM, Scary Stranger said:

Saw The Marvels yesterday. Horrible. Hands down the worst villain of any of the Marvel movies. The whole singing planet bit was painful. Some decent banter and the Flerkins. Otherwise, it was poo.

I had no interest in watching it but on the Deadpool thread someone mentioned Beast and Binary being in the credit scenes. So I watched it. 

What the fuck happened to Marvel? This was yet another absolute shit offering. Story wasn't even compelling. Not even remotely badass villain gets killed by falling stone building shit. And then someone reminds Cpt Marvel that she's powerful enough to kick start a star. Who the fuck writes and greenlights these shit scripts?

If Deadpool is stupid, I am not watching another Marvel product again. The whole universe probably should've ended with Endgame.

Actually, post Endgame reminds me of GOT after season 5. It was absolute shit when the writers ran out of source material.

In the same vein, it's like the good writers left Marvel after Endgame, and they hired fanfiction writers from the internet.

Edited February 14 by crash_davis

[mdmost 43001]

Interesting

 

[Buzzrock 14920]

I had no interest in watching it but on the Deadpool thread someone mentioned Beast and Binary being in the credit scenes. So I watched it. 
What the fuck happened to Marvel? This was yet another absolute shit offering. Story wasn't even compelling. Not even remotely badass villain gets killed by falling stone building shit. And then someone reminds Cpt Marvel that she's powerful enough to kick start a star. Who the fuck writes and greenlights these shit scripts?
If Deadpool is stupid, I am not watching another Marvel product again. The whole universe probably should've ended with Endgame.
Actually, post Endgame reminds me of GOT after season 5. It was absolute shit when the writers ran out of source material.
In the same vein, it's like the good writers left Marvel after Endgame, and they hired fanfiction writers from the internet.

Some of the fan fiction stuff is better than what they actually released.

[mdmost 43001]

Hell yeah

 

[speed817 19271]

[Stringer 1439]

Hell yeah
 

Awesome. My 7 year old daughter has gotten into the original series somehow. It’s not a great show but the theme song still rips.

She’ll love this.

[kingkoopa6 8350]

 

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[mdmost 43001]

Daredevil: Born Again casting spoiler

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/jon-bernthal-the-punisher-daredevil-born-again-set-photos-1235959021/ 

[Parliament 14260]

Concerning

 

[Scary Stranger 1714]

Well, it was ordered after She Hulk initially where they had the less-dark Daredevil. My hope is this is them scrapping that to send it back the direction of the original series. 

Spoiler

Punisher being covered in blood is a good sign.  Also, I hadn't seen that Bullseye would be back.  That could be good news on the violence front too.

 

Edited April 3 by Scary Stranger

[freyguy 4272]

24 minutes ago, Parliament said:

Concerning

 

Nick Kroll??

[LCHorn 2620]

I'm on episode three of Echo and don't really understand what's going because on because I kept falling asleep during the first two episodes.  Does it get better?

[Scary Stranger 1714]

No.  It gets much worse.  The fight in episode 1 was the high point.

[BrazilHorn 6606]

Part of what is screwing Marvel IMO is:

 

A) “The Guardians of the Galaxy” effect. They caught excellent casting lighting in a bottle with the cast of GoTG and the efforts since to take “C” level MCU characters in terms of name recognition and wrap a movie around them isn’t working

B) “The Deadpool” effect. Ryan Reynolds killed it in an R rated role seemingly made for him. Challenge is Marvel hasn’t really embraced going dark/ultra violent in a compelling manner outside of Deadpool. 
 

The false narrative to me is MCU has gone “woke” or some shit. All they care about is $. They aren’t looking to fuck up the golden MCU goose over politics. Ultimately MCU got too cute thinking they could just throw movies out there with rando characters and people would come out in droves. Add in fact now that the movies are so bad the actors in them are making fun of them (Madam Web eg) and Marvel needs to hit pause and figure some shit out. 

[mdmost 43001]

Don't conflate Sony Marvel movies with the MCU. The only MCU Sony tie-in is Tom Holland's Spiderman. Madame Web, Kraven, Morbius are all Sony exclusive properties. Venom is an exception to the rule as far as Sony films not sucking.

I'd argue GOTG was a hit because of the writing and dialogue combined with having a great cast. It was a completely different tone than the previous Marvel movies. I don't think Marvel has a writer like Gunn in their bullpen now. I think anything post-Endgame was going to be difficult to perform well unless it was a continuing character like the Guardians and Black Panther. You can only go to that well so many times and it won't always work out like the last Thor and Antman movies. GOTG was a good ending for the franchise as only Gunn could write it.

But Endgame was the perfect culmination of 10 years of movie making. The drop off after it was always going to happen. Kang is just not compelling compared to Thanos. Also, Thanos was being built towards as the looming threat. Kang just doesn't meet that since you kill one and there's more that will pop up. That gets tiring. 

The MCU's best hope is Deadpool resetting everything and the Fantastic Four being a success. That's definitely not a given. Thunderbolts could be decent but this has been done to death already with Suicide Squad. Falcon Cap isn't going to move the needle as Anthony Mackie just isn't leading man material. Then you have to hope an X-Men reboot pays off. Maybe Deadpool helps with that. 

[LCHorn 2620]

I don’t they are eager to reboot X-Men at the moment.  
 

I expect they will spend every dollar possible making sure the F4 story works before going into preproduction-this is Disney’s best chance for a reset.  Kang would have been ideal as a villain if Majors wasn’t fired.  

11 minutes ago, mdmost said:

Thunderbolts could be decent but this has been done to death already with Suicide Squad. Falcon Cap isn't going to move the needle as Anthony Mackie just isn't leading man material.

Totally agree with all of this.  I have to think they aren’t stupid and Feige and co know it, too, and have adjusted budgets so they aren’t spending $200m before advertising.  

[Scary Stranger 1714]

I hope deadpool makes several uncomfortable jokes about Kang/Majors.

[ajax 2616]

2 hours ago, LCHorn said:

I'm on episode three of Echo and don't really understand what's going because on because I kept falling asleep during the first two episodes.  Does it get better?

I lasted until Kingpin showed up and he was all like...

 

And I was out.

[LCHorn 2620]

I kind of don’t understand why they are fucking around with a side character when you could easily make a show that’s just about D’Onofrio’s Kingpin clawing back his criminal empire.  That was the best part of Daredevil, anyway.  Plus it‘d be cheap.  

[Guadaloopy 10971]

1 hour ago, BrazilHorn said:

Add in fact now that the movies are so bad the actors in them are making fun of them (Madam Web eg) and Marvel needs to hit pause and figure some shit out. 

Not an MCU movie.  It's Sony's turdpile.

[mdmost 43001]

24 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

I kind of don’t understand why they are fucking around with a side character when you could easily make a show that’s just about D’Onofrio’s Kingpin clawing back his criminal empire.  That was the best part of Daredevil, anyway.  Plus it‘d be cheap.  

I think it truly was trying out a different kind of character (female, deaf, Native American) since she was supposedly popular in the comics. There wasn't anything about her in the Hawkeye show that made me interested in tuning in. And I'm Marvel's target audience. I also have no idea why they think an Ironheart show would be something that would do well. If she's a part of the Young Avengers, I guess. But not a standalone series. I feel like this is one that won't be happening. 

[mdmost 43001]

Eh…okay? Big fan of Ozark, I guess. Edit: she is playing the Shalla Bal version of the Silver Surfer as it has been speculated that the FF is set in an alternate Earth. 

 

Edited April 4 by mdmost

[LCHorn 2620]

4 minutes ago, mdmost said:

But not a standalone series. I feel like this is one that won't be happening. 

IMDb says it’s in post-I agree with you, though-there was nothing about the character’s introduction in BP2 that made me think “I want to know more about her story.”  
 

I actually appreciate Marvel trying to grow the audience by adding more diversity both in front and behind the camera, but it’s pretty clear that there’s just a finite numbers of performers charismatic enough to pull it off.  Anthony Mackie is a great example-he’s a solid enough actor, I like him in a supporting capacity, but I don’t feel any particularly curiosity about his story out of the orbit of Steve Rodgers.  
 

Thunderbolts is going to be a test case for “you wouldn’t pay $10 for a ticket to see any single one of us, but will you pay $10 to see ALL of us?!?!”

[atomheartbevo 89668]

2 hours ago, BrazilHorn said:

A) “The Guardians of the Galaxy” effect. They caught excellent casting lighting in a bottle with the cast of GoTG and the efforts since to take “C” level MCU characters in terms of name recognition and wrap a movie around them isn’t working

1 hour ago, mdmost said:

I'd argue GOTG was a hit because of the writing and dialogue combined with having a great cast. It was a completely different tone than the previous Marvel movies. I don't think Marvel has a writer like Gunn in their bullpen now. I think anything post-Endgame was going to be difficult to perform well unless it was a continuing character like the Guardians and Black Panther. You can only go to that well so many times and it won't always work out like the last Thor and Antman movies. GOTG was a good ending for the franchise as only Gunn could write it.

I think a huge part of the problem is that fatigue set in after Endgame with too many heroes, worsened by them pumping out more movies than they should have, without a clear "endgame" (pun intended) for the audience - most of the audiences for the pre-Endgame movies knew that something big is on the horizon.  The hero bullpen was fairly small, everybody could easily identify most of them, and most of the movies were moving either plot lines or characters towards where they were going to be when Endgame happened (Tony Stark was going to be neurotic/PTSD/worn out, Thor was going to have self-doubt where he had none before, Captain America was going to be weary, more cynical, etc.).

Since Endgame, there have been groups or super heroes introduced where you have no idea if their storylines will come together as happened with Endgame.

Will the Marvels and Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Thunderbolts and Doctor Strange and the new characters from Black Panther 2 come together?  How does Deadpool and Wolverine fit into that?  Blade?  We've got these three heroes with related Marvelous cosmic powers, we have super heroes that have been around for thousands of years and inspired ancient mythologies, we have this Shang-Chi guy with magic powers and dragons, we have this former Army guy who was disfigured and is kind of like Captain America in that he's super strong and heals fast, and then there's Wolverine who is an experimental soldier or wait, he's been around for centuries and had powers hundreds of years ago so how did he get that metal skeleton, and then we are going to have a vampire fighting vampires.

 

 

Edited April 3 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 89668]

1 hour ago, mdmost said:

But Endgame was the perfect culmination of 10 years of movie making. The drop off after it was always going to happen. Kang is just not compelling compared to Thanos. Also, Thanos was being built towards as the looming threat. Kang just doesn't meet that since you kill one and there's more that will pop up. That gets tiring. 

The MCU's best hope is Deadpool resetting everything and the Fantastic Four being a success. That's definitely not a given. Thunderbolts could be decent but this has been done to death already with Suicide Squad. Falcon Cap isn't going to move the needle as Anthony Mackie just isn't leading man material. Then you have to hope an X-Men reboot pays off. Maybe Deadpool helps with that. 

With the first phase or two of the MCU, we had basically half-a-dozen or so main characters, and outside of Thor/Loki (and the Guardians), they were mostly contemporaries whose powers/etc. were easily shown/developed on screen, and we had one overriding baddie (Thanos).  Even before Majors' legal issues, there was no sign/clue for most of the mainstream audiences that Kang was the Thanos of this next grouping (the Multiverse Saga, which many fans don't even realize is the name).

The ancillary heroes introduced during/after the first phase of the Infinity Saga (Ant-Man, Hulk, Wanda, etc.) were still in service of moving the main plot lines along towards Endgame.

Too many of the current movies (Eternals and Marvels stand out) and shows feel superfluous or they are standing on their own island and have nothing to do with anybody else, and don't feel like they are pushing towards the Secret Wars showdown in three years.  Shit, if you mention Secret Wars, many fans might think it's season two of Secret Invasion.  And it's all muddied by the Sony movies (Venom, Kraven, Madame Web, etc.) having the Marvel label, further confusing fans.

I think they fucked up by not having everybody in the first phase or two of the Multiverse Saga come together earlier.  In the Infinity Saga, we had 5 movies covering 4 main heroes and then the first Avengers movie.  This time we are going to have 15 movies cover over 20 main characters before they come together.  The confusion will be/is high.

I think we should have had the Doctor Strange movie start really pulling more heroes together like the first Avengers did...  And the Doctor Strange movie was the 28th MCU movie - let that sink in for a moment.

The brilliance of Endgame was that even the seemingly unrelated movies (Captain America in 1940s war-torn Europe, Thor doing his thing) were still driving the plot because they focused on the Infinity gems.  That's not the case with the current movies.  They feel like they are their own self-contained shows.

Edited April 3 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 89668]

1 hour ago, BrazilHorn said:

The false narrative to me is MCU has gone “woke” or some shit. All they care about is $. They aren’t looking to fuck up the golden MCU goose over politics. Ultimately MCU got too cute thinking they could just throw movies out there with rando characters and people would come out in droves. Add in fact now that the movies are so bad the actors in them are making fun of them (Madam Web eg) and Marvel needs to hit pause and figure some shit out. 

Bingo.  The "woke" bullshit is just that - bullshit.  9 times out of 10 if somebody uses "woke", it means they are intellectually lazy and don't want to have to think hard about defending why they don't like something.  And way too many of those idiots have never watched the movie/series (because it's "woke"), or are not a fan of comic book stuff in general, or may even be DC fanboys.

And I've actually had people ask me if the MCU is flailing around because they heard it went "woke" and I have to explain that "no, it's flailing around because the writing went to shit, the overall plots that should tie all of the movies together are not being clearly laid out, people don't know who the main baddies are, and several of the movies seemingly have no connection to one another and just exist for the sake of existing, because somebody thought the comic did well so they should make a movie out of it.

Marvel's biggest problem is not some "woke" bullshit, it's how are they going to bring alien-powered humans who are out doing space shit, eternal superheroes who inspired earth's mythologies and who are in hiding, vampires, Deadpool and Wolverine, Asian mysticism, and some American super soldiers together.

 

7 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

I actually appreciate Marvel trying to grow the audience by adding more diversity both in front and behind the camera, but it’s pretty clear that there’s just a finite numbers of performers charismatic enough to pull it off.  Anthony Mackie is a great example-he’s a solid enough actor, I like him in a supporting capacity, but I don’t feel any particularly curiosity about his story out of the orbit of Steve Rodgers.  

Thunderbolts is going to be a test case for “you wouldn’t pay $10 for a ticket to see any single one of us, but will you pay $10 to see ALL of us?!?!”

Yeah, they have this massive stable of comics and people should not have been surprised that they'd tap that well (especially since when they started laying it out, they were lacking the X-Men and Spidey).  I'd argue that they had to start hitting up the B-list and C-list comic book heroes, because if they had simply rehashed the originals (Thor, Cap, Ironman/War Machine, Hulk, Black Widow/Hawkeye and a few others (Ant-Man)) or worse, recast the originals with new actors and new names, it would have bombed miserably.

But they are fucking up by trying to bring all of these very disparate heroes and plots together.  They pulled it off with Endgame because of the infinity gems touched on all the main plots/heroes in some manner. 

I think they should have been just willing to make some stand-alone movies (Eternals and Marvels are great examples), have the phases be more self-contained (the current phase should have wrapped with a Doctor Strange movie), and not have this desire to have these movies all somehow feed into Secret Wars.  

[freyguy 4272]

1 hour ago, mdmost said:

Eh…okay? Big fan of Ozark, I guess

 

Uhhh...hmmm...

Not what I'm used to, but ok...

 

Shoulda stuck with Nick Kroll.

[mdmost 43001]

10 minutes ago, freyguy said:

Uhhh...hmmm...

Not what I'm used to, but ok...

 

Shoulda stuck with Nick Kroll.

I realized I should've read the article. She is playing Shalla Bal, the female Silver Surfer. So I'm guessing this is a variant version where she is forced to choose to serve Galactus to save their planet. 

[freyguy 4272]

Darn clickbait headline

[atomheartbevo 89668]

Just a comic book mini-series.....for now.

[Michael Knight 12977]

The multiverse is simply too confusing and not compelling when it seems there's no stakes. People have revisionist memories with the whole infinity saga. Not every movie was a banger that everyone says, Iron Man 2 and 3 were mostly forgettable, they made a hulk movie I guess, Thor didn't work until the 3rd movie, Ant Man 1 was a tonal mess, Avengers 2 was a letdown, no one liked Hawkeye or Black Widow at first and Civil War was just OK. RDJ, Brolin and Chris Evans made Endgame work