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Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 4: Tripping Balls (Spoilers)


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Posted (edited)

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 by mdmost
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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?!?!”

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Posted (edited)
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 by atomheartbevo
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Posted (edited)
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 by atomheartbevo
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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.  

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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. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

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

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5 hours ago, Michael Knight said:

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

Sir, I kindly disagree.  

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17 hours ago, Parliament said:

Sir, I kindly disagree.  

Yup disagree with that bit and...

22 hours ago, Michael Knight said:

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

Ant Man 1 was widely enjoyed by many, and was a refreshingly different style of movie compared to most of the rest of the MCU.  They weren't really able to recapture that in 2 or 2 IMO, but the first one was extremely entertaining.

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I'll go ahead and say it, the Multiverse thing is stupid af. I can't even remember when it was first introduced, Spiderman maybe? At this point, I don't give a shit who's coming from where and especially don't care to try to map out how they relate to anything or each other. 

Basically the gist is none of anything matters because there are a gazillion different realities and there's going to be a war to save all the other gazillion realities that I don't give a fuck about.

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Jonathan Majors was actually awesome though and while the premise of the whole overarching arc sucked, he was a bright spot as an actor and his characters lept. Sucks he had to be an abuser in real life for a myriad of reasons, one being that he got fired. But maybe MCU will see it as a good time to pivot and move on to another story arc.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Quote

On Disney’s fiscal second-quarter earnings call, Disney CEO Bob Iger told analysts that the company is finally moving away from “a vestige, basically a desire in the past to increase volume.

“I’ve been working hard with the studio to reduce output and focus more on quality, that’s particularly true with Marvel,” he added.

“We’re slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four, and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two or at the maximum three,” Iger added. “And we’re working hard on what that path is, we’ve got a couple of good films in ’25 and then we’re heading to more Avengers, which we’re extremely excited about.” Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is listed for 2026.

 

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/marvel-studios-cut-back-films-tv-shows-1235892364/

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1 hour ago, mdmost said:

Maybe go back to 1 every year that's really well written with good SFX. 

Go back to?  When did that ever occur?  I love the whole MCU. I like quite a few movies that everyone gripes about, but people remember or refer to pre Endgame with some very strongly tinted rose colored glasses. 

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5 minutes ago, UT_OB1 said:

Go back to?  When did that ever occur?  I love the whole MCU. I like quite a few movies that everyone gripes about, but people remember or refer to pre Endgame with some very strongly tinted rose colored glasses. 

My kid and I are rewatching the MCU now and we're up to Ultron. Winter Soldier to Civil War was a pretty strong run. Hell, everything till Ant-Man and the Wasp was pretty solid. Ragnarok, Black Panther, Homecoming. The GI didn't seem as shitty back then. The SFX studios weren't overworked. The writing wasn't mediocre.

Most of the post-Endgame stuff isn't very rewatched except No Way Home and Guardians 3. Iger has the right idea with only have Deadpool 3 this year. Slow it down and make it quality. Stop with the needless Disney+ tie-ins. If you do have them, maybe have the writer of one show talk to the writer of the movie (WandaVision>>>Dr. Strange 2) so continuity makes sense. I'm hoping Falcon Cap can be good but I'm not optimstic. Thunderbolts seems like it will be MCU's Suicide Squad. Both directors don't exactly seem like thrilling choices. 

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Posted (edited)
18 minutes ago, mdmost said:

My kid and I are rewatching the MCU now and we're up to Ultron. Winter Soldier to Civil War was a pretty strong run. Hell, everything till Ant-Man and the Wasp was pretty solid. Ragnarok, Black Panther, Homecoming. The GI didn't seem as shitty back then. The SFX studios weren't overworked. The writing wasn't mediocre.

Most of the post-Endgame stuff isn't very rewatched except No Way Home and Guardians 3. Iger has the right idea with only have Deadpool 3 this year. Slow it down and make it quality. Stop with the needless Disney+ tie-ins. If you do have them, maybe have the writer of one show talk to the writer of the movie (WandaVision>>>Dr. Strange 2) so continuity makes sense. I'm hoping Falcon Cap can be good but I'm not optimstic. Thunderbolts seems like it will be MCU's Suicide Squad. Both directors don't exactly seem like thrilling choices. 

After a good start with iron ma we got:

hulk > Im2 > thor > ca1, four of the lowest ranked MCU movies (all in the lower 1/3 rotten tomatoes). We’re lucky we got Avengers. Personally I enjoy all but hulk. That streak was broke. Up by Avengers but promptly followed up by IM3 and Thor 2. That’s a pretty rough stretch, and I’d take Eternals, multiverse, or Rings over either any day. 
 

Agree winter soldier to IW was great and unmatched. 
 

I also just disagree with how the post Endgame movies are viewed. I loved BW, and very much enjoy Rings, multiverse, and Spider-Man. I also enjoyed most of the tv shows. 

Edited by UT_OB1
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And on a rewatch I will say Hulk is terrible, Iron Man 2 is not as good but not awful since Tony is still a great character and you get War Machine. I never minded Thor. It did its job of enlarging the universe. I'll fight anyone on Captain America. It was a perfect period piece/propaganda flick. 

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2 minutes ago, mdmost said:

And on a rewatch I will say Hulk is terrible, Iron Man 2 is not as good but not awful since Tony is still a great character and you get War Machine. I never minded Thor. It did its job of enlarging the universe. I'll fight anyone on Captain America. It was a perfect period piece/propaganda flick. 

9 minutes ago, UT_OB1 said:

hulk > Im2 > thor > ca1

I think all of those have their merits, and yeah, Captain America was pretty terrific and played great in the theater.  
 

Hulk was an attempt to do something different and it’s failure is probably part of why they’ve been willing to change up the character movie to movie (and to an extent, doing that also freed them up to do it with Thor).  
 

Weirdly enough, my kids seem to really like Iron Man 2 over the other two.  
 

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26 minutes ago, mdmost said:

And on a rewatch I will say Hulk is terrible, Iron Man 2 is not as good but not awful since Tony is still a great character and you get War Machine. I never minded Thor. It did its job of enlarging the universe. I'll fight anyone on Captain America. It was a perfect period piece/propaganda flick. 

I agree with you 100% on those. I will say I didn’t leave CA theaters as excited as when I went in. I honestly was a bit disappointed. I don’t know if the character grew on me in Avengers or WS, I don’t know if the actor grew on me, I don’t know if I just needed to see first avenger a few more tomes, but sometime by Av2 and ever since, he’s become my favorite character and I really enjoy that movie now. 

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Posted (edited)

I was massively disappointed when Chris Evans was announced as Captain America. I saw him through the lens of the awful Fantastic Four movie he was in. I'm so glad I was wrong because Cap was my favorite MCU character. He blew me away from the get go. Winter Soldier is also my #1 MCU movie. 

Speaking of Winter Soldier, I saw this online about Falcon Cap. Looks very much like Steve's uniform from Winter Soldier.

sam-wilson-captain-america-s-new-costume

 

Edited by mdmost
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Posted (edited)

Interesting since there were rumors that Giancarlo Esposito had been cast in the FF movie in a mystery role. The thought was he was voicing Galactus. But maybe he's Doom. John Malkovich has been cast as well. Maybe he'll play Mole Man. He's probably the voice of H.E.R.B.I.E. 

 

Mole_man.jpg

Edited by mdmost
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I like that they will be running it over Halloween. I like that they trolled/generated buzz by releasing multiple title in the run-up to this.

I also really like that Aubrey Plaza is in the cast.

These bits were dropped today as well:

  •  Ironheart will debut in 2025.  "Dominique Thorne and Anthony Ramos star in Ironheart, which follows the young tech genius who debuted in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"

  • Daredevil Born Again will debut in March 2025.  Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Jon Bernthal return for Daredevil Born Again, and The Punisher will be making his "official" MCU debut.

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I can't believe this shit is still ongoing. It's going on 20 years of continuous output. There are people drinking in bars at this moment who never knew of life without constant superhero movie bombardment. 

I was into it at first quite a bit but damn it's time to give it a break. I'd shelve all the live action blockbuster movies and focus on animation. Loved the Spiderverse movies and can't wait for the 3rd one, and those actually feel fresh. 

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I'm chuckling at how clueless and kneejerky people can be with this Agatha show title. People actually thought Marvel couldn't decide on the show name and not that this is directly a sendup of what happened in WandaVision with Agatha in the different TV eras. 

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38 minutes ago, mdmost said:

I'm chuckling at how clueless and kneejerky people can be with this Agatha show title. People actually thought Marvel couldn't decide on the show name and not that this is directly a sendup of what happened in WandaVision with Agatha in the different TV eras. 

I just wan a full episode of this version of Agatha, because 1980s me would have been…intrigued and literally retiring to my bunk bed.

tmp_vtdas2_e5ba0609d2a9016f_Screen_Shot_

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12 hours ago, Hermanator said:

I can't believe this shit is still ongoing. It's going on 20 years of continuous output.

Sherlock Holmes, Godzilla, James Bond, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, Star Trek, Rocky/Creed, Batman, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, and even Fast & Furious are all amused by just 20 years of output.

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2 hours ago, Herpa Derpa said:

Sherlock Holmes, Godzilla, James Bond, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, Star Trek, Rocky/Creed, Batman, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, and even Fast & Furious are all amused by just 20 years of output.

Those are a single franchise that throws out something every few years on average. 

This has been almost 20 years of 3 or 4+ per year bombardment of almost all garbage with a gem mixed in here and there. The fatigue is immense. 

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24 minutes ago, mdmost said:

Supposedly Hawkeye is getting a 2nd season. I enjoyed the first but it sure seems like he had hung up the bow at the end.

I would assume it's fully Kate assembling her young NY avengers group.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So this doesn't seem good. I know reshoots happen but 22 days and a new villain seems like a lot. Also, why is it so difficult to write a story for Blade? He's a half human/half vampire that hunts other vampires. It's not that difficult of a concept. 

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/captain-america-brave-new-world-reshoots-1235912919/

Edited by mdmost
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Yeah but the other movies that they reference were not great like Dr Strange 2. I'm hoping it just stays grounded. Captain America doesn't need to be an off-world character with things like Kang variants. I guess I'm just skeptical about Anthony Mackie carrying a movie. I also would be more hopeful if the writer and director were better. The Falcon and Bucky show started out well and just kinda fell flat. Maybe that was due to having to abandon the vaccine angle because of Covid. I guess I'm thinking this feels like it's going to be a movie that should've been on Disney+, kinda like the Marvels. 

I am interested in who Giancarlo Esposito is playing. He indicated his character would have his own series. 

I'm also wondering if the reshoots have to do with the Sabra character. Feels like that's a landmine right now. 

Edited by mdmost
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40 minutes ago, mdmost said:

I'm also wondering if the reshoots have to do with the Sabra character. Feels like that's a landmine right now. 

*spit take* ho lee fuk. I avoid most spoilers so didn’t know she was in it. L o fucking L. Talk about bad luck as far as timing goes for the storyline. Sam version of Cap may be cursed between vaccine plot line and this. Watch out if the next sequel involves nuclear Armageddon. 

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1 minute ago, UT_OB1 said:

*spit take* ho lee fuk. I avoid most spoilers so didn’t know she was in it. L o fucking L. Talk about bad luck as far as timing goes for the storyline. Sam version of Cap may be cursed between vaccine plot line and this. Watch out if the next sequel involves nuclear Armageddon. 

Or a president wanting to stay in office past his term? It's kind of a shame that the MCU hasn't introduced this Earth's version of Norman Osborn. Though that might be who Giancarlo is playing? I'm not up on the comics now a days but I believe Norman Osborn is President at some point. 

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